What were the things, asked Christian of his young companion, that first led you to leave off the vanities of the fair and to think to be a pilgrim? Many things, replied Hopeful. Sometimes if I did but meet a good man in the street. Or if mine head began unaccountably, or mine heart, to ache. Or if some one of my companions became suddenly sick. Or if I heard the bell toll that some one was dead. But, especially, when I thought of myself that I must quickly come to judgment. And then it is told in the best style of the book how peace and rest and the beginning of true satisfaction came to poor Hopeful's heart at last. But you must promise me to read the passage for yourselves before you sleep to-night; and to read it again and again till, like Hopeful's, your heart also is full of joy, and your eyes full of tears, and your affections running over with love to the name and to the people and to all the ways of Jesus Christ.
And then, it is very encouraging and reassuring to us to see how Hopeful's true conversion so deepened and sobered and strengthened his whole character. He remained to the end in his mental constitution and whole temperament, as we say, the same man he had always been; but, while remaining the same man, at the same time a most wonderful change gradually began to come over him, till, by slow but sure degrees, he became the Hopeful we know and look to and lean upon. To use his own autobiographic words about himself, it was "by hearing and considering of things that are Divine" that his natural levity was so completely whipped out of his soul till he was made at last an indispensable companion to Christian, strong-minded and serious-minded man as he was. "Conversion to God," says William Law, "is often very sudden and instantaneous, unexpectedly raised from variety of occasions. Thus, one by seeing only a withered tree, another by reading the lives and deaths of the antediluvian fathers, one by hearing of heaven, another of hell, one by reading of the love or wrath of God, another of the sufferings of Christ, may find himself, as it were, melted into penitence all of a sudden. It may be granted also that the greatest sinner may in a moment be converted to God, and may feel himself wounded in such a degree as perhaps those never were who have been turning to God all their lives. But, then, it is to be observed that this suddenness of change or flash of conviction is by no means of the essence of true conversion. This stroke of conversion is not to be considered as signifying our high state of a new birth in Christ, or a proof that we are on a sudden made new creatures, but that we are thus suddenly called upon and stirred up to look after a newness of nature. The renewal of our first birth and state is something entirely distinct from our first sudden conversion and call to repentance. That is not a thing done in an instant, but is a certain process, a gradual release from our captivity and disorder, consisting of several stages and degrees, both of life and death, which the soul must go through before it can have thoroughly put off the old man. It is well worth observing that our Saviour's greatest trials were near the end of His life. This might sufficiently show us that our first awakenings have carried us but a little way; that we should not then begin to be self- assured of our own salvation, but should remember that we stand at a great distance from, and are in great ignorance of, our severest trials." Such was the way that Christian in his experience and in his wisdom talked to his young companion till his outward trials and the consequent discoveries he made of his own weakness and corruption made even Hopeful himself a sober-minded and a thoughtful man. "Where pain ends, gain ends too."