Divine purity and majesty, surely it were wise to hesitate before we rashly ascribe mental distress of this character either to enthusiastic and fallacious notions, or to physical distemper. Despondency, indeed, does not consist with a healthful state of mind; and religious despondency is inconsistent with right views of the gospel, which forbids any one to despair of the Divine mercy. Religion is not the cause of despondency more than it is of unbelief, or than light is the cause of blindness. We may admit, however, that such states of distress involve both mental and moral infirmity. The pressure upon the spirit produces, if we may so express it, a temporary paralysis of the judg ment, and the heart labours under a terrible nightmare. We exclude from consideration how far, in such cases, the mind may be acted upon from without itself, and external suggestions add to the terror and agitation of the spirit. But we cannot forbear to remark, that such periods of mental darkness and agitation, if not to be viewed as direct inflictions, are often permitted and overruled for the purposes of moral discipline. The Saviour himself "suffered being tempted." This is the proper light in which to view Bunyan's religious experience. He was allowed for a while to wrestle alone, and in the dark, that he might come forth from the conflict the stronger and better man. In the language of an able critic already referred to, "the Spirit of God was his teacher; the very discipline of his intellect was a spiritual discipline; the conflicts that his soul sustained with the powers of darkness, were the sources of his intellectual strength."* During this severe probation, he was, to use his own expressive language, "led from truth to truth by God; for never did any one owe less to

• North American Review, No. LXXIX. art. Southey's Life of Bunyan. "We incline to think," says the Reviewer, "that Southey, with all his talent, is incapable of fully appreciating a character of such directness and originality as that of Bunyan, or of doing justice to the workings of his mind. It would have been the truth, as well as the better philosophy, if he had said, that the Spirit of God was preparing Bunyan, by this severe discipline, to send forth into the world the Pilgrim's Progress."

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human teaching." What other men learn from books, he, with the aid only of his Bible, spelt out and put together by the light from heaven that irradiated his darkness. He was educated by this severe process of thought; and the coarse, boisterous, ignorant, profane rustic became transformed like his own pilgrim, who, after emerging from the slough of despond, lost his burden and his rags together at the foot of the Cross.

He was beginning to emerge from these "temptations," when a translation of Luther's Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians fell into his hands; an old copy, so tattered that it was ready to fall to pieces if he did but turn it over. He had not read far, before he found his own condition "so largely and profoundly handled," and his own experience so faithfully mirrored, in its pages, that it seemed as if the book had been "written out of his own heart." Such a book he had longed to meet with; and it had for the time the happiest effect upon his mind. In writing his Narrative long afterwards, he declares his preference of this work of Martin Luther's above all others that he had ever seen, the Bible alone excepted, as most fitted for a wounded conscience." Dr. Southey finds or imagines a resemblance between "the passionate and mighty mind of Luther," and that of Bunyan. "Like Luther, he had undergone the agonies of unbelief and deadly fear, and, according to his own persuasion, wrestled with the Enemy." But here the parallel begins and terminates. Both were men of powerful imagination, but of opposite spirit and very different mental temperament.

The peaceful assurance and serene composure to which Bunyan had now attained, were not of long continuance; and the state of mind into which he relapsed, is characterised by Dr. Southey, not without some reason, as "the strangest part of his history." "An almost unimaginable temptation came upon him, which," remarks the learned Biographer," he might well call more grievous and dreadful than any with which he had before been afflicted:" it was, 'to sell and part with Christ,―to exchange him for the things

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of this life,-for any thing." For the space of a year, was haunted by this strange and hateful suggestion; and so continually, that he was not rid of it one day in a month, nor sometimes one hour in many succeeding days, unless in his sleep. Such is Bunyan's own account, who attributes the suggestion to the immediate agency of the Tempter; and he describes the series of assaults to which he believed himself to be exposed from the Enemy of souls, with a vividness of language which reminds us of his description of Christian's allegorical combat with Apollyon.

The task of a biographer, in referring to this stage of Bunyan's mental history, becomes one of extreme delicacy, as it requires him to touch upon points of inscrutable mystery. The origin of our thoughts must ever remain beyond the reach of discovery. That they ordinarily obey the law of association, every one must be aware; and this is doubtless the case in a thousand instances where the connecting link is not perceived. But sometimes a thought will present itself with all the effect of an extraneous suggestion, clothed, it may be, in words which the mind does not recognize as of its own coining; just as, in dreams, we seem to be present at conversations, and mingle with persons whose features are those of strangers. Under ordinary states of feeling, such thoughts come and go without being questioned as to their origin, and leave but a faint, if any impression. The apparent suggestion may be trivial or ludicrous. But most persons of reflective habits will recollect occasions on which actions and events of the greatest moment to themselves, hinged upon some thought that seemed to dart into their minds, perhaps with astonishing suddenness and vividness. Such an occurrence of thought, not less than any external occurrence, a devout man would not hesitate to ascribe to the overruling and all-pervading providence of God; and it matters nothing, in this point of view, whether we regard such thoughts as proceeding from the natural operation of reflection, or as imparted to the mind. Those persons, however, who acknowledge that from God "all holy desires and all good counsels pro

ceed," must believe that our minds and hearts are open to an ordinary inspiration, not less real, and perhaps not more imperceptible in its mode of influencing us, than the extraordinary and plenary inspiration under which the prophets and apostles spoke and wrote " as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." The Holy Scriptures, moreover, not only contain the promise of such heavenly inspiration as the source of wisdom and consolation, but they very plainly intimate that evil thoughts, while the natural produce of the human heart, are sometimes the result of an inspiration of an evil and malignant character. The conception of crime in the mind of Judas, and of Ananias, is distinctly referred to Satanic influence operating upon the heart, yet so as not to interfere, any more than human suasion, with conscious responsibility. No violence is done to the mind in either case, more than by involuntary dreams, or by the social influences which are perpetually governing and modifying our thoughts and actions, but of which we can no more detect the actual operation, than we can that of the atmosphere upon our bodily functions; and it must, therefore, be impossible to discriminate between the spontaneous action of the thoughts, and the good or evil inspiration, except by the reflex act of the judgment. Many persons of enthusiastic temperament have, no doubt, erroneously ascribed to a foreign influence, the natural though unrecognized suggestions of their own minds; especially when the mind itself was in a morbid state. The impossibility of detecting the true source of what may be termed morbid thoughts, is beautifully illustrated by Bunyan himself, than whom no man, perhaps, ever suffered more agony of spirit from these internal visitations. In describing Christian's passing through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in which the Pilgrim was "worse put to it than in his fight with Apollyon," -evidently referring to what he himself suffered after having obtained a victory over the temptation to infidelity, - Bunyan says: "One thing I would not let slip. I took notice that now poor Christian was so confounded, that he did not know his own voice; and

thus I perceived it. Just when he was come over-against the mouth of the burning pit, one of the wicked ones got behind him, and stepped up softly to him, and whisperingly suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind. This put Christian more to it than any thing that he met with before, even to think that he should now blaspheme him that he loved so much before: yet, if he could have helped it, he would not have done it; but he had not the discretion either to stop his ears, or to know from whence these blasphemies came."

Since, however, Christian could not ascertain this by any thing of which he was conscious at the time, the knowledge that these grievous blasphemies were suggested by the wicked one, must have been obtained only by inference from their evil character and their repugnance to the mind. But, although knowledge obtained by inference, may be as certain as that which is derived from consciousness, there is some room to question, in the present case, the soundness of the deduction. Unless we were prepared to contend that all evil thoughts which spring up in the mind, and yet are repugnant to the feelings and judgment, so as to be condemned and rejected with abhorrence, have a source foreign to the imagination, and that the mind cannot be the author of any thoughts which affect it with this sense of contrariety and aversion, and of which it would fain rid itself,-unless, too, dreams of a painful description, and contrary to the tenor of the waking thoughts, are in like manner to be accounted for only by the same external and supernatural agency, we must require some stronger reason for ascribing wicked and blasphemous thoughts to infernal inspiration, in any particular case, than their hateful character.

That they may have this origin, is very possible. Yet, their very contrariety to the mind of the individual supplies a reason against the supposition. All heavenly inspiration is congenial with the holy character of those who have been the recipients and organs of the Divine communi