suited to their peculiarities. So it is like the sun of God's Word, in which the prism of each individual mind, under the influence of the Divine Spirit, separates the heavenly colors, and puts them in a new aspect, so that every Christian, in the rays of Divine Truth, becomes a new reflection of the Divine Attributes. Bunyan's book has the likeness of this universality, and Christians of every sect may take what they please out of it, except their own sectarianism; they cannot find that. In this respect it bears remarkably the divine stamp.

Bunyan's mind was long under the law, in his own religious experience, under a sense of its condemnation. This alone would never have prepared him to write the Pilgrim's Progress, though it must have prepared him to preach with pungency and power. It fitted him to sympathize with men's distresses on account of sin, wherever he found them. A man's religious anxieties are sometimes so absorbing, that they defeat their own end, they oppose themselves to his deliverance. Just as in a crowded theatre on fire, the doors of which open inward, the very rush of the multitude to get out shuts them so fast, that there is no unclosing them. Such at one time, seemed to be Bunyan's situation; so it often is with the heart that has within it the fire of a guilty conscience; and in this case it is only the Saviour, who knocks for admittance, that can open the door, put out the flames, and change the soul from a theatre of fiery accusing thoughts into a living temple of his grace. The Pilgrim's Progress would never have been given to the world, except Bunyan had been

relieved of his difficulties, but these difficulties were as necessary, to furnish him with the experimental wisdom requisite for the author of that book, as the relief itself.

There is one book in our language, with which the Pilgrim's Progress may be compared, as a Reality with a Theory, a Personification with an Abstraction, and that is Edwards on the Religious Affections. This book is the work of a holy, but rigid metaphysician, analyzing and anatomizing the soul, laying the heart bare, and I had almost said, drying it for a model. As you study it, you know it is truth, and you know that your own heart ought to be like it; but you cannot recognize in it your own flesh and blood. Edwards' delineations are like the skeleton leaves of the forest, through which, if you hold them to the sun, you can see every minute fibre in the light: Bunyan's work is like the same leaves as fresh foliage, green and glossy in the sunshine, joyfully whispering to the breathing air, with now and then the dense raindrops glittering on them from a June shower. In Edwards' work you see the Divine life in its abstract severity and perfection; in Bunyan's work you see it assuming a visible form, like your own, with your own temptations and trials, touched with the feeling, and colored with the shade of your own infirmities. Yet both these books are well nigh perfect in their way, both equally adapted to their purpose. We love the work of Bunyan as a bosom friend, a sociable confiding companion on our pilgrimage. We revere the work of Edwards, as a deep, grave teacher, but its stern accuracy

make us tremble. Bunyan encourages, consoles, animates, delights, sympathises with us; Edwards cross-examines, probes, scrutinizes, alarms us. Bunyan looks on us as a sweet angel, as one of his own shining ones, come to take off our burden, and put on our robe; Edwards, with the rigidity of a geometrician, as a sort of military surveyor of the king's roads, meets us with his map, and shows us how we have wandered from the way, and makes us feel as if we never were in it. Bunyan carries our sensibilities, Edwards our convictions. In short, Bunyan is the Man, the Pilgrim; Edwards the Metaphysician.

Bunyan was as great a master of Allegory as Edwards was of Logic and Metaphysics; but not artificially so, not designedly so, not as a matter of study. He scarcely knew the meaning of the word allegory, much less any rules or principles for its conduct; and the great beauty of his own is that it speaks to the heart; it is the language of nature, and needs no commentator to understand it. It is not like the allegorical friezes of Spenser or of Dante, or like those on a Grecian Temple, which may pass into darkness in a single generation, as to all meaning but that of the exquisite beauty of the sculpture, except there be a minute traditionary commentary. Bunyan's Al- ✔ legory is a universal language.

D'Israeli has well designated Bunyan as the Spenser of the people; every one familiar with the Fairy Queen must acknowledge the truth of the description. Johnson thought Bunyan must have read Spenser, and there are some passages