snares of vice at other places along the Broad Highway.
I saw also, farther down the valley, that Satan used all manner of
traps and nets to catch the silly and the foolish. That which attracted
my attention the most was a series of stations built close to the
King's Highway. At each place Satan employed a company of expert men
who were trained to use a lasso. I saw certain men and women of the
King's Highway who became so inflated with their own vanity and
imaginations that they rose head and shoulder above their humbler
comrades, thus enabling the lasso of Pride to get hold of them. Some,
by heeding advice, escaped; others submitted to the drawing power and
landed in the kingdoms of the World where they could worship their new
god with increasing ardor.
There was also a certain young man who doted so much on his own ways
that his head rose unusually high. He was, therefore, easily caught
by a lasso called Conceit. Good friends came to his rescue and told
him to realize at once that he was nothing, and thereby he would
suddenly become so small that he would drop completely out of his
trouble.
But he said that he could not believe a lie, whereat the lasso tightened
still more about his neck, and he succeeded by still further struggling
to remain a very brief time on the King's Highway; but being in pain,
he soon yielded to the inevitable and went to worship before the shrine
of his own god.
I also saw that the women of the King's Highway were an exceeding great
army, mighty in battling against the foe, much to the discomfiture of
Satan and his allies.
To counteract the influence of this sex Satan has plied his ingenuity
ever since the beginning. In his Pharaoh fashion he has so manipulated
the customs of the world that woman is trampled under foot in
uncivilized lands, and in lands of light she is ostracized by sections
of the Christian church and despised in the civil realm. And yet, with
a faithful heart, she suffers this indignity and, looking up from
underneath this weight, she offers to the powers that crush her down
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