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And then she gave Mr. Standfast her ring. "Behold," she said, as Mr. Honest came in "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!" Then Mr. Ready-to-halt came in, and then Mr. Despondency and his daughter Much-afraid, and then Mr. Feeble-mind. Now the day drew on that Christiana must be gone. So the road was full of people to see her take her journey.
Standfast was like the apostle when he preferred to take the twenty miles from Troas to Assos on foot and alone, rather than to round the cape on shipboard in a crowd. "Minding himself to go afoot," says the apostle's companion.
He used to talk about Mr Standfast in his queer way as if he were a friend of us both, like Blenkiron ... I tell you I was humbled out of all my pride by the sight of Peter, so uncomplaining and gentle and wise. The Almighty Himself couldn't have made a prig out of him, and he never would have thought of preaching. Only once did he give me advice.
The inhabitants were all of that respectable old standfast family who make it a point to be born, bred, married, die, and be buried all in the selfsame spot. There were just so many houses, and just so many people lived in them; and nobody ever seemed to be sick, or to die either, at least while I was there.
Prayer, my sin-beset brethren, standfast prayer, is the otherwise unidentified haemony whose best habitat was the Garden of Gethsemane; and with that holy root in your heart and in your mouth, there is "no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel." "Thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah." Isaiah.
It was now that we learned the worth of Grace Standfast, who fairly took us poor silly girls in hand as her pupils, setting us tasks to do both in the house and the sick chamber, and keeping us in heart with cheerful words and looks. But for all her skill and her cheerfulness, our patient visibly grew worse and worse, and as the year wore into winter, we saw that we should lose her.
Standfast, when he was called to pass the river: the great calm the firm footing the address to by-standers until his countenance changed, his strong man bowed under him, and his last words were, 'Take me, for I come to thee. Then the joy among the angels while they welcomed the hero of such spiritual fights, and conducted his wandering soul to the New Jerusalem, which he had so beautifully described as 'the holy city'; and then his wonder and amazement to find how infinitely short his description came to the blissful reality.
It will, no doubt, put the best-prepared of us into a deep muse, as it put Standfast, when we are first told that we must at once prepare ourselves for a change of life. But I for one would not for worlds miss that solemn warning, and that last musing-time.
It will all be just as my Master pleases; but if it is within His will I shall till then continue to petition Him that I may have a passage over the river like the passage of Standfast. Or, if that may not now be, then, at least, a musing-time like his. The post from the Celestial City brought Mr. Standfast's summons "open" in his hand.
'I warned her of it, quoth she; 'I said to her, "You will rue it yet, Margaret; with such an one you should have no dealings, no, not so much as to eat," and now see what has come of her perverseness! and such-like stuff she said, which moved Grace Standfast to say disdainfully, when our visitor was gone, 'Yon woman surely owes us a little grudge, that 'twas our house and not hers which entertained so rare a monster as a wandering Quaker; she asked me twenty questions about him the day after, I remember it well; but we hardly had heart to laugh, though we were sure enough she had given no such warnings as she spake of.