give you a hint or two; a word that may stir up the godly to bless God, and to pray for me; and also to take encouragement, should the case be their own, 'Not to fear what man can do unto them.'

"I never had, in all my life, so great an inlet into the word of God as now: those scriptures that I saw nothing in before, were made, in this place and state, to shine upon me; Jesus Christ also was never more real and apparent than now; here I have seen and felt him indeed. Oh! that word, 'we have not preached unto you cunningly devised fables,' and that, 'God raised Christ from the dead, and gave him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God,' were blessed words unto me in this my imprisoned condition.

"Before I came to prison, I saw what was coming, and had especially two considerations warm upon my heart; the first was, how to be able to encounter death, should that be here my portion. For the first of these, that scripture was of great information to me, namely, to pray to God to be strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and long-suffering with joyfulness.' I could seldom go to prayer before I was imprisoned, for not so little as a year together, but this sentence, or sweet petition, would, as it were, thrust itself into my mind, and persuade me, that if ever I would go through long-suffering, I must have patience, especially if I would endure it joyfully.

"As to the second consideration, that saying was of great use to me, 'But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we might not trust in ourselves, but in God that raiseth the dead.' By this scripture I was made to see, that if ever I would suffer rightly, I must first pass a sentence of death upon every thing that can properly be called a thing of this life, even to reckon myself, my wife, my children, my health, my enjoyments, and all as dead to me, and myself as dead to them.

"But notwithstanding these helps, I found myself a man encompassed with infirmities; the parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place, as the pulling the flesh from the bones; and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants that my poor family was likely to meet with, should I

be taken from them; especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all beside: oh! the thoughts of the hardship I thought my poor blind one might go under, would break my heart to pieces.

66

'Poor child! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee! But yet recalling myself, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. Oh! I saw in this condition, that I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children; yet, thought I, I must do it-I must do it."

But we now turn from these to other matters. Bunyan's chief sources of mental occupation in prison were his Bible, Concordance, the Book of Martyrs, a rose-bush, and a sand-glass. We may add to these, a friend in the shape of a spider which hung its web in his prison window, and the view which the iron gratings afforded him of the road and the river. Poor Bunyan! so

"Cribbed, coffined, and confined!"

But even these were sources of thought and even of amusement. In patience he possessed his soul. He had learnt in whatsoever state he was, therewith to be content: and so a blank prison became a chamber of imagery, and not seldom of tranquil joy. He paid court to the rose-bush in the following mirthful vein.

"This homely bush doth to mine eye expose

A very fair, yea comely, ruddy rose.

This rose doth always bow its head to me,

Saying, 'come pluck me; I thy rose will be.""

But, as Philip says, "it pricked his fingers ;" and so he adds—

"Yet, offer I to gather rose or bud,

"Tis ten to one but bush will have my blood.

Bush! why dost bear a rose, if none must have it?
Why thus expose it, yet claw those that crave it ?"

And so, feeling himself jilted, he breaks off his courtship rather sharply :

:

"Art become freakish? Dost the wanton play?
Or doth thy testy humour tend this way?
This looks like a trepan, or a decoy,

To offer, and yet snap, who would enjoy!"

Bunyan's spider seems to have conveyed much sound instruction in his allegorical movements. For example :-"The fly in the spider's web is an emblem of a soul, which Satan is trying to poison and kill. The fly is entangled in the web. At this, the spider shows himself! If the fly stir again, down comes the spider, and claps a foot upon her. If the fly struggles still, he poisons her more and more. What shall the fly do now? why, she dies, if somebody does not quickly release her. This is the case with the tempted. Their feet and wings are entangled. Now Satan shows himself. If the soul struggleth, Satan laboureth to hold it down. If it maketh a noise, then he bites with a blasphemous mouth, more poisonous than the gall of a serpent. If it struggle again, he then poisons it more and more; insomuch, that it must needs die, if the Lord Jesus help not. But though the fly is altogether incapable of looking for relief, this tempted christian is not. What must he do therefore? If he look to his heart, there is blasphemy. If he look to his duties, there is sin. Shall this man lie down in despair? No. Shall he trust in his duties? No. Shall he stay away from Christ till his heart is better? No! What then? Let him look to Christ crucified! Then shall he see his sins answered for, and death dying. This sight destroys the power of the first temptation, and both purifies the mind, and inclines the heart to all good things."

Bunyan's sand-glass became a moralizer, as its sands fell all too swiftly.

"This glass when made, was, by the workman's skill,

The sum of sixty minutes to fulfil.

Time, more or less, by it will not be spun;

But just an hour, and then its sands are run.
Man's life we will compare unto this glass,
The number of his months he cannot pass."

A fly cannot run a tilt against his "small candle," but he must narrate the encounter, which he has done in the happiest

manner.

"What ails this fly, thus deperately to enter
A combat with the candle? Will she venture
To clash at light? Away, thou silly fly!
Thus doing, thou wilt burn thy wings and die.
But 'tis a folly-her advice to give:

She'll kill the candle, or she will not live.

'Slap says she, 'at it!' Then she makes retreat;
So wheels about, and doth her blows repeat.
Nor doth the candle let her quite escape,
But gives some little check unto the ape:
Throws up her nimble heels, till down she falls,
Where she lies sprawling, and for succour calls.
When she recovers, up she gets again,

And at the candle comes, with might and main !
And now behold the candle takes the fly,

And holds her till she doth, by burning, die !"

In this way much of Bunyan's time was spent. It was an amusement to his mind, and a relief in the midst of heavier labours. The least change in the limited sphere of his outward being was welcome to him, and the smallest variation in the monotony of prison life was a novelty. When we remember how, and how long he was confined, how the very floor was familiar to his tread, and even the iron bars to his touch, we shall not wonder. at the charm conveyed by such little incidents as those which he mused upon, and which his pen has recorded. Let us be thankful that he made so good an use of them.

THE EVILS LEFT UNTOUCHED BY THE

REFORMATION.
[Paper the Third.]

One of the monster evils connected with the Papal system is the spirit and power of PERSECUTION. It were a vain task to tell how many have suffered at the hands of the Romish church, on account of their religious opinions.

"After the decree of the Lateran council, the Albigenses were murdered by thousands, for no other reason but because they were heretics. They are represented by their adversaries

as traitors and as seditious in their principles: but separation from the church was their treason-and defending themselves against legalised and consecrated murderers was the only proof of their sedition. In the reign of our Henry the Fourth, the Popish clergy obtained an act of parliament, by which a bishop, without the intervention of a synod, could convict of heresy, and unless the convict abjured his opinions, or if after abjuration he relapsed, the sheriff was bound ex officio, if required by the bishop, to commit the unhappy victim to the flames, without waiting for the consent of the crown. The reigns of Mary in England, of Charles the Fifth in Germany, and of Louis the Fourteenth in France-the massacre of the Irish Protestantsthe fatal Bartholomew day in Paris-the revocation of the edict of Nantz, in consequence of which thousands fled to other countries, and thousands were murdered at home-all these authentic and undisputed facts speak volumes on the subject."

Nor is the spirit of persecution banished from the Romish system to this day. It is a necessary part of it. Let the appea be made not to any particular body of men, who have not the power to carry out the principles of their church, such as the Roman Catholics in England and Ireland; but to canons, and creeds, and councils. These speak out but too plainly on the subject. They condemn the right of private judgment; they consider every instance of deviation from their creed as heresy, and all without the pale of their church as schismatics; they declare heresy and schism to be mortal sins; and they always employ, when they can, the power of the civil magistrate to aid them in executing the sentence of their ecclesiastical courts— delivering over" to the secular powers," as the phrase is, all who differ from them. Who can doubt respecting the persecuting genius of such a system? who that knows anything of Romish history, questions whether this evil genius has not been displayed, to the desolation of many a heart and many a home?

Well would it have been for the world if Protestantism, at her first onset, had denounced the spirit and practice of persecution -as inimical to religion and social right, and hateful alike to God and man. For is not this its true character? To persecute a man for his opinions is a task which should be devolved upon the tyrants of mankind alone-with them should the monopoly be