surly warder, there stands, with heart of grace and consolation strong, the Heavenly Comforter; and from overhead, as if anointing him already with the unction of the recompense, there rushes the stream of glory.

And now it is night-fall. They have had their evening worship, and, as in another dungeon, "the prisoners heard them." The blind child receives the fatherly benediction. The last good night is said to the dear ones, and Bunyan is alone. His pen is in his hand, and his Bible on the table. A solitary lamp dimly relieves the darkness. But there is fire in his eye, and there is passion in his soul. "He writes as if joy did make him write." He has felt all the fulness of his story. The pen moves too slowly for the rush of feeling as he graves his own heart upon the page. There is beating over him a storm of inspiration. Great thoughts are striking on his brain, and flushing all his cheek. Cloudy and shapeless in their earliest rise within his mind, they darken into the gigantic, or brighten into the beautiful, until at length he flings them into bold and burning words. Rare visions rise before him. He is in a dungeon no longer. He is in the palace Beautiful, with its sights of renown and songs of melody, with its virgins of comeliness and of discretion, and with its windows opening for the first kiss of the sun. His soul swells beyond the measure of its cell. It is not a rude lamp that glimmers on his table. It is no longer the dark Ouse that rolls its sluggish waters at his feet. His spirit has no sense of bondage. No iron has entered into his soul. Chainless and swift, he has soared to the Delectable Mountains-the light of Heaven is around him— the river is the one, clear as crystal, which floweth from the throne of God and of the Lamb-breezes of Paradise blow freshly across it, fanning his temples and stirring his hair: from the summit of the Hill Clear he catches rarer splendours-the new Jerusalem sleeps in its eternal noon-the

shining ones are there, each one a crowned harper unto God -this is the land that is afar off, and that is the King in his beauty; until prostrate beneath the insufferable splendour, the dreamer falls upon his knees and sobs away his agony of gladness in an ecstasy of prayer and praise. Now, think of these things endearing intercourse with wife and children, the ever fresh and ever comforting Bible, the tranquil conscience, the regal imaginings of the mind, the faith which realized them all, and the light of God's approving face shining, broad and bright, upon the soul, and you will understand the undying memory which made Bunyan quaintly write "I was had home to prison."

In 1672, Richard Carver, a member of the Society of Friends, who had been mate of the vessel in which King Charles escaped to France, after his defeat at Worcester, and who had carried the king on his back through the surf, and landed him on French soil, claimed, as his reward, the release of his co-religionists, who crowded the jails throughout the land. After some hesitation, Charles was shamed into compliance. A cumbrous deed was prepared, and under the provisions of that deed, which was so framed as to include sufferers of other persuasions, Bunyan obtained deliverance, having lain in the prison complete twelve years.

From the time of his release his life flowed evenly on. Escaped alike from Doubting Castle and from the net of the flatterer, he dwelt in the Beulah land of ripening piety and immortal hope. The last act of the strong and gentle spirit brought down on him the peace-maker's blessing. Fever seized him in London on his return from an errand of mercy, and after ten days' illness, long enough for the utterance of a whole treasury of dying sayings, he calmly fell asleep.

and in honour of that nativity "all the bells of the celestial

city rang again for joy." From his elevation in heaven, his whole life seems to preach to us his own Pentecostal evangel, "There is room enough here for body and soul, but not for body, and soul, and sin."

There are various phases in which Bunyan is presented to us which are suggestive of interesting remark, or which may tend to exhibit the wholeness of his character before us, and upon which, therefore, we may not unprofitably dwell.

As a WRITER, he will claim our attention for a while. This is not the time to enter into any analysis of his various works, nor of the scope and texture of his mind. That were a task rather for the critic than the lecturer; and although many mental anatomists have been already at work upon it, there is room for the skilful handling of the scalpel still. His fame has rested so extensively upon his marvellous allegories, that there is some danger lest his more elaborate works should be depreciated or forgotten; but as a theologian he is able and striking, and as a contributor to theological literature he is a worthy associate of the brightest Puritan divines. His terse, epigrammatic aphorisms, his array of "picked and packed words," the clearness with which he enunciates, and the power with which he applies the truth, his intense and burning earnestness, the warm soul that is seen beating, in benevolent heart-throbs, through the transparent page, his vivacious humour, flashing out from the main body of his argument like lightning from a summer sky, his deep spirituality, chastening an imagination princely almost beyond compare-all these combine to claim for him a high place among that band of masculine thinkers, who were the glory of the Commonwealth, and whose words, weighty in their original utterance, are sounds which echo. still. The amount of actual good accomplished by his writings it would be difficult to estimate. No man since

the days of the Apostles has done more to draw the attention of the world to the matters of supremest value, nor painted the beauty of holiness in more alluring colours, nor spoken to the universal heart in tenderer sympathy or with more thrilling tone. In how many readers of the "Grace Abounding" has there been the answer of the heart to the history. What multitudes are there to whom "the Jerusalem Sinner Saved" has been as "yonder shining light" which has led through the wicket gate, and by the house of the Divine Interpreter, to the blest spot "where was a cross, with a sepulchre hard by," and at the sight of that cross the burden has fallen off, and the roll has been secured, and jubilant, and sealed, and shining, they have gone on to victory and heaven. How many have revelled in silent rapture in his descriptions of "the Holy City" until there have floated around them some gleams of the "jasper light," and they felt an earnest longing to be off from earth-that land of craft, and crime, and sorrowfulness

"And wished for wings to flee away,
And mix with that eternal day."

Oh, to thousands of the pilgrims that have left the city of Destruction-some valiant and hopeful, others much afraid and fearing has Bunyan come in his writings, to soothe the pang or to prompt the prayer, to scare the doubt or to solve the problem—a Great-heart guide, brave against manifold illfavoured ones-a faithful Evangelist, ever pointing the soul. to the Saviour.

Of the "Pilgrim's Progress" it were superfluous to speak in praise. It seizes us in childhood with the strong hand of its power, our manhood surrenders to the spell of its sweet sorcery, and its grasp upon us relaxes not when "mingles the brown of life with sober gray;" nay, is often strongest amid the weariness of waning years. Its scenes are familiar to us as the faces of home. Its characters live to our per

ceptions, no less than to our understanding. We have seen them all, conversed with them, realised their diversities of character and experience for ourselves. There never was a poem which so thoroughly took possession of our hearts, and hurried them along upon the stream of the story. We have an identity of interest with the hero in all his doubts and dangers. We start with him on Pilgrimage; we speed with him in eager haste to the Gate; we gaze with him on the sights of wonder; we climb with him the difficult hill; the blood rushes to our cheek warm and proud as we gird ourselves for the combat with Apollyon; it curdles at the heart again amid the "hydras and chimeras dire" of the Valley of the Shadow of Death; we look with him upon the scoffing multitude from the cage of the town of Vanity; we now lie, listless and sad, and now flee, fleet and happy, from the cell in Doubting Castle; we walk with him amid the pleasantness of Beulah; we ford the river in his company; we hear the joy-bells ringing in the city of habitations; we see and greet the hosts of welcoming angels, and it is to us as the gasp of agony with which the drowning come back to life, when some rude call of earthly concernment arouses us from our reverie, and we wake, and, behold, it is a dream. There must be marvellous power in a book that can work such enchantment, wrought withal with the most perfect self-unconsciousness on the part of the enchanter himself. "The joy that made him write " was, in no sense, the prospect of literary fame. With the true modesty of genius he hesitated long as to the propriety of publication, and his fellow-prisoners in the jail were empanelled as a literary jury, upon whose verdict depended the fate of the story which has thrilled the pulses of the world. In fact, his book fulfilled a necessity of his nature. He wrote because he must write : the strong thoughts within him laboured for expression. The "Pilgrim's Progress" was written without thought of