against his early life. As we have seen, Bunyan's particular sins were sins of speech-cursing, swearing, blaspheming. He was one who should have been early taught to say with the Psalmist: "I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue; I will keep my mouth with a bridle." Gifted as he was with extraordinary powers of imagination and expression, and feeling the natural impulse to use them, he was inevitably tempted to dazzle his companions (themselves not very choice in their speech) by what Royce calls his abounding wealth of skilfully bad language." But it was a sign of grace in him that he could not bear to hear such language from the lips of those whom he esteemed better than himself; for he says, on "hearing one to swear that was reckoned a religious man, it had so great a stroke upon my spirit, that it made my heart ache."

He recalls some merciful dealings of God with him. Once, falling into the sea he narrowly escaped drowning. Again, when he was a soldier in the civil war, it was his turn to go on sentry duty at a siege, but just as he was about to go, another man came along and asked to be allowed to go in his stead. On getting Bunyan's consent, he went, and was shot at his post and died. These escapes from death, however, failed to make any serious impression on him at the time, or to bring about any amendment of his life. The first step towards better things was taken when he married at the age of 21. "My mercy," he says, was to light upon a wife whose father was counted godly. This woman and I, though we came together as poor as poor might be (not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt

1 Studies in Good and Evil, p. 55.

us both), yet this she had for her part, The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, and The Practice of Piety, which her father had left her when he died." A poor legacy, these two books; but more precious than gold; infinitely precious indeed they proved to be, seeing that they helped to start the pilgrim on his way to the Celestial City. They were popular works in their day, but are interesting to us now only because they were among the possessions, so pathetically scanty, of that humble couple who began their married life in a little cottage still standing at Elstow, and because they were among the forerunners of Bunyan's immortal book.1 The change that was being wrought in Bunyan began to show itself in his regular attendance at Church on Sundays, and in a great reverence for everything pertaining to the Church, including the preacher's vestments. But still he continued to join in the Sunday sports on the village green, as had been the common practice since the issue of King James' Book of Sports in 1618, wherein that monarch proclaimed that after service on Sundays, no lawful recreation should be barred to his good

"

1 The Plainman's Pathway to Heaven, by Arthur Dent, was first published in 1601. These words from its opening dialogue anticipate many a delightful passage in the Pilgrim's Progress: Philagathus: Well met, good Master Theologus.

Theologus: What! mine old friend Philagathus !

Philagathus: Are you walking here all alone in this pleasant meadow?

Theologus: Yea, for I take some pleasure at this time of the year to walk abroad in the fields for my recreation, both to take the fresh air, and to hear the sweet singing of birds.

Philagathus: Indeed, Sir, it is very comfortable, especially now in this pleasant month of May; and thanks be to God we have had a very forward spring, and as kindly a season as came this seven years.

Theologus: God doth abound towards us in mercies; Oh that we could abound towards him in thanksgiving!

people." He took part in the games without thinking that there was any harm in doing so until one Sunday the clergyman, who was a strict Puritan, preached a sermon against such sports; and Bunyan went home with a heavy heart and an uneasy conscience. But after he had had his mid-day meal the impression of the sermon began to wear off, and by and by he was on the green as usual, and playing the game of Cat. In the midst of the game, however," a voice," he says, "did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to Hell?' At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me, and as if he did severely threaten me with some grievous punishment for those and other ungodly practices." That, it seems, was the moment when Bunyan became, as he would have said, convicted of sin; it was the moment when the Pilgrim became aware of the great black burden on his back. But the immediate effect was to plunge him into despair. As he felt that he had sinned beyond the possibility of recovery, he thought he might as well be damned for many sins as for few; and so he went on with his Sunday games, and his speech continued to be as ribaldrous and ungoverned as ever. But one day, as he was standing at a shop window, and cursing and swearing as usual, the woman who kept the shop, and who was herself rather a disreputable character, overheard him, and she forthwith began to tell him plainly what she thought of him. She said that his language

I

made her tremble, that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever heard, and that he was spoiling all the youth of the place who came into his company. The reproof, coming from such a quarter, filled him with shame; and, he says, "while I stood there, hanging down my head, I wished with all my heart that I might be a little child again, that my father might learn me to speak without this wicked way of swearing." (§27.) And indeed a reform in this respect took place immediately. He gave up using oaths, and found, somewhat to his surprise, that he could say what he wanted to say much more effectively without them. Then he took to reading the Bible, and the neighbours began to think of him as" a very godly man, a new and religious man, and did marvel much," he says, "to see such great and famous reformation in my life and manners," though, he adds, "I knew not Christ, nor grace, nor faith, nor hope." (§31.) He felt well satisfied with himself, and was pleased with the good name he was winning. Still there were some things about which his conscience troubled him from time to time; two especially. One of these was the pleasure he found in ringing the Church bells. He gave up the practice of it himself; but after he had done so he could not for a time resist the temptation to go to the Church steeple to watch others doing it, until one day when he was there, he was seized with fear that the bells might fall on him. At this he stood aside under a great beam, where he thought he would be safe. Then it occurred to him that the beam might crash down on him, and he withdrew to the door of the steeple. Finally, in dread lest the steeple itself should tumble upon him, he fled from the place altogether.

The other thing which he was feeling uneasy about was dancing. He had found great delight in it, and it was hard for him to give it up, but at length he did so. When he had gone on thus lopping off such pleasures as in his puritanical judgment he regarded as sinful, he began to think that he was as pleasing in the sight of God as any man in England.

But one day when he was in Bedford he saw some poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and he heard them talking in a way that was strange to him-talking of the new birth, the work of God in their hearts; of how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord Jesus, and with what words and promises they had been refreshed, comforted and supported... and they spake," he says, "with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world." It was to their talk, thus apparently so casually, but really-who can doubt it?-so providentially heard, that Bunyan ascribed the beginnings of his real conversion. But it was long before he was to have such a happy faith as those women of Bedford possessed, earnestly and devoutly as he wished for it. They seemed to him to be on one side of a mountain, enjoying the pleasant beams of the sun, while he was on the other shivering and shrinking in the cold. He had a troublesome way to travel ere he found inward peace, and almost every turn of the way is described in Grace Abounding, with all its alternations of hope and fear. We are told how he was beset with doubts as to the existence of God and the truth of Christianity; how in an old copy, that hardly held together, of Luther's Commentary on