silenced clergy, gathering in pestilence immunity from law, made the red cross the sad badge of their second ordination, and taught the anxious, and cheered the timid, at the altars from which hirelings had fled. Then followed the death of the dissolute king-the accession of James, at once a dissembler and a bigot-the renewal of the struggle between prerogative and freedom-the wild conspiracy of Monmouth -the military cruelties of Kirke and Claverhouse, the butchers of the army, and the judicial cruelties of Jeffreys, the butcher of the bench-the martyrdoms of Elizabeth Gaunt, and the gentle Alice Lisle-the glorious acquittal of the seven bishops-the final eclipse of the house of Stuart, that perfidious, and therefore fated race-and England's last revolution, binding old alienations in marvellous unity at the foot of a parental throne. What a rush of history compressed into a less period than threescore years and ten! These were indeed times for the development of character-times for the birth of men.

And the men were there; the wit-the poet-the divine —the hero—as if genius had brought out her jewels, and furnished them nobly for a nation's need. Then Pym and Hampden bearded tyranny, and Russell and Sydney dreamed of freedom. Then Blake secured the empire of ocean, and the chivalric Falkland fought and fell. In those stirring times Charnock, and Owen, and Howe, and Henry, and Baxter, wrote, and preached, and prayed. "Cudworth and Henry More were still living at Cambridge; South was at Oxford, Prideaux in the close at Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. Sherlock preached at the Temple, Tillotson at Lincoln's Inn, Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at St. Paul's Cathedral, Beveridge at St. Peter's, Cornhill. Men," to continue the historian's eloquent description, "who could set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with such justness of thought and such energy of language

that the indolent Charles roused himself to listen, and the fastidious Buckingham forgot to sneer.". But twelve years before the birth of Bunyan, all that was mortal of Shakes peare had descended to the tomb. Waller still flourished, an easy and graceful versifier; Cowley yet presented his "perverse metaphysics" to the world; Butler, like the parsons in his own Hudibras,

"Proved his doctrine orthodox

By apostolic blows and knocks;"

Dryden wrote powerful satires and sorry plays "with longresounding march and energy divine;" George Herbert clad his thoughts in quaint and quiet beauty; and, mid the groves of Chalfont, as if blinded on purpose that the inner eye might be flooded with the "light which never was on sea or shore," our greater Milton sang.

In such an era, and with such men for his cotemporaries, John Bunyan ran his course, "a burning and a shining light" kindled in a dark place, for the praise and glory of God.

With the main facts of Bunyan's history you are most of you, I presume, familiar; though it may be doubted whether there be not many-his warm and hearty admirers withal,— whose knowledge of him comprehends but the three salient particulars, that he was a Bedfordshire tinker, that he was confined in Bedford jail, and that he wrote the "Pilgrim's Progress." It will not be necessary, however, to-night, to do more than sketch out, succinctly, the course of his life, endeavouring-Herculean project--to collate, in a brief page, Ivimey, and Philip, and Southey, and Offor, and Cheever, and Montgomery, and Macaulay; a seven-fold biographical band, who have reasoned about the modern, as a seven-fold band of cities contended for the birth of the ancient Homer.

He was born at Elstow, a village near Bedford, in the year 1628. Like many others of the Lord's heroes, he was of

obscure parentage, "of a low and inconsiderable generation," and, not improbably, of gipsy blood. His youth was spent in excess of riot. There are expressions in his works descriptive of his manner of life, which cannot be interpreted, as Macaulay would have it, in a theological sense, nor resolved into morbid self-upbraidings. He was an adept and a teacher in evil. In his 17th year, we find him in the army--" an army where wickedness abounded." It is not known accurately on which side he served, but the description best answers certainly to Rupert's roystering dragoons. At 20 he married, receiving two books as his wife's only portion“The Practice of Piety," and "The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven." By the reading of these books, and by his wife's converse and example, the Holy Spirit first wrought upon his soul. He attempted to curb his sinful propensities, and to work in himself an external reformation. He formed a habit of church-going, and an attachment almost idolatrous to the externalisms of religion. The priest was to him as the Brahman to the Pariah; "he could have lain down at his feet to be trampled on, his name, garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch him." While thus under the thraldom which superstition imposes, he indulged all the licence which superstition claims. He continued a blasphemer and a Sabbath-breaker, running to the same excess of riot as before. Then followed in agonizing vicissitude a series of convictions and relapses. He was arrested, now by the pungency of a powerful sermon, now by the reproof of an abandoned woman, and anon by visions in the night, distinct and terrible. One by one, under the lashes of the law, "that stern Moses, which knows not how to spare," he relinquished his besetting sins- swearing, Sabbath-breaking, bell-ringing, dancing; from all these he struggled successfully to free himself while he was yet uninfluenced by the evangelical motive, and with his heart alienated from the life

of God. New and brighter light flashed upon his spirit from the conversation of some godly women at Bedford, who spake of the things of God and of kindred hopes and yearnings "with much pleasantness of scripture," as they sat together in the sun. He was instructed more perfectly by "holy Mr. Gifford," the Evangelist of his dream, and in "the comment on the Galatians," of brave old Martin Luther, he found the photograph of his own sinning and troubled soul. For two years there were but glimpses of the fitful sunshine dimly seen through a spirit-storm, perpetual and sad. Temptations of dark and fearful power assailed and possessed his soul. Then was the time of that fell combat with Apollyon, of the fiery darts and hideous yells, of the lost sword and the rejoicing enemy. Then also he passed, distracted and trembling, through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and a horror of great darkness fell upon him. At length, by the blest vision of Christ "made of God unto him wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," the glad deliverance came- -the clouds rolled away from his heart and from his destiny, and he walked in the undimmed and glorious heaven. From this time his spiritual course was, for the most part, one of comfort and peace. He became a member of the Baptist Church under Mr. Gifford's pastorate, and when that faithful witness ceased his earthly testimony, he engaged in earnest exhortations to sinners,

as a man in chains speaking to men in chains," and was shortly urged forward, by the concurrent call of the Spirit and the bride, to the actual ministry of the gospel. His ministry was heartfelt, and therefore powerful, and was greatly blessed of God. In 1660 he was indicted" as a common upholder of unlawful meetings and conventicles," and by the strong hand of tyranny was thrown into prison; and though his wife pleaded so powerfully in his favour as to move the pity of Sir Matthew Hale, beneath whose ermine

throbbed a God-fearing heart like that which beat beneath the tinker's doublet, he was kept there for twelve long years. His own words are, "So being again delivered up to the jailor's hands, I was had home to prison." Home to prison. Think of that, young men ! See the bravery of a Christian heart! There is no affectation of indifference to sufferingno boastful exhibition of excited heroism; but there is the calm of the man "that has the herb heart's-ease in his bosom" -the triumph of a kingly spirit, happy in its own content, and throned over extremest ill.

Home to prison! And wherefore not? Home is not the marble hall, nor the luxurious furniture, nor the cloth of gold. If home be the kingdom where a man reigns, in his own monarchy, over subject hearts-if home be the spot where fireside pleasures gambol, where are heard the sunny laugh of the confiding child, or the fond “what ails thee?" of the watching wife; then every essential of home was to be found, 66 except these bonds," in that cell on Bedford Bridge. There, in the daytime, is the heroine-wife, at once bracing and soothing his spirit with her leal and womanly tenderness, and, sitting at his feet, the child-a clasping tendril-blind and therefore bestbeloved. There, on the table, is the "Book of Martyrs," with its records of the men who were the ancestors of his faith and love; those old and heaven-patented nobility whose badge of knighthood was the hallowed cross, and whose chariot of triumph was the ascending flame. There, nearer to his hand, is the Bible, revealing that secret source of strength which empowered each manly heart, and nerved each stalwart arm; cheering his own spirit in exceeding heaviness, and making strong, through faith, for the obedience which is even unto death. Within him the good conscience bears bravely up, and he is weaponed by this as by a shield of triple mail. By his side, all unseen by casual guest or