leaves from the Tree of Life for Bunyan's spirit, came into his hands by God's providence, while he was longing to see some ancient godly man's experience, an old tattered copy of Martin Luther's Comment on Galatians; in which he had but a little way perused, before he found his own condition in Luther's experience so largely and profoundly handled, as if the book had been written out of his own heart. Oh with what joy did Bunyan in the midst of his temptations, hail this trumpet voice of the old Reformer! He saw now that he was not alone. It was like that voice which his own Christian heard, when groping in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and which caused his heart to leap for gladness to find that some other soul that feared God was in that Valley with him, the voice as of a man going before and crying, Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me! I must, said Bunyan, declare before all men that I do prefer this book of Martin Luther upon the Galatians, before all the books, excepting the Holy Bible, that I ever have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.

Now was Bunyan in great blessedness in the love of Christ; but it lasted only for a little, and then again the Tempter rushed upon him with a dreadful violence for the space of another whole year, in which, if I should take the whole evening, I could not describe to you the twinings and wrestlings, the strivings and agonies of Bunyan's spirit. Strange, as it may seem, the temptation presented was that of selling Christ, sell him, sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as man

can speak, which tortured Bunyan as upon the rack, and against which, with a morbid fear lest he should consent thereto, he bent the whole force of his being with a strife unutterable. At length, one morning there seemed to pass deliberately through his heart, as if he were tired of resisting the wickedness, this thought, "Let him go if he will," and from that moment down fell Bunyan, "as a bird that is shot from the top of a tree into great guilt and fearful despair."

And now commenced a great strife of scripture against scripture in his soul, the threatenings against the promises, the law against the gospel, a conflict of unbelief and terror, in which he was indeed in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and not a glimpse of light through its darkness. Deep called unto deep at the noise of God's water-spouts; all the waves and billows seemed to have gone over him. And now, like a man seeking to escape from a labyrinth of fire, in which he was bewildered, he would run from scripture to scripture, from this avenue to that in the Bible, but found every door closed against him. With a dreadful perverseness and ingenuity of unbelief under the power of his adversary, who seemed now indeed to have gotten the victory, he would compare his case with that of all the greatest criminals recorded in the Bible, but always turned every comparison against himself. In this state of mind he met with that terrible book, the despairing death of the Apostate Francis Spira, which, he says, was to his troubled spirit as salt rubbed into a fresh wound; and so it must have been inevitably, such a picture of the

sufferings of a soul in despair; and that sentence was frightful to him, "Man knows the beginning of sin, but who bounds the issues thereof?" And that scripture, which was pursuing his soul all this year like one of the avenging furies, fell continually as an hot thunderbolt upon his conscience: "For ye know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears."

Now he is in the midst of his own Death-Valley, beset behind and before; and if we compare the account of this Valley with Bunyan's own experience, we shall see that the picture is simply the elements of his own inward sufferings combined and reorganized. "Thus Christian went on a great while, yet still the flames would be reaching towards him; also he heard doleful voices and rushings to and fro, so that sometimes he thought he should be torn to pieces, or trodden down like mire in the streets. This frightful sight was seen, and these dreadful voices were heard by him for several miles together; and coming to a place where he thought he heard a company of fiends coming forward to meet him, he stopt and began to muse what he had best to do: sometimes he had a thought to go back; then again he thought he might be half way through the valley: he remembered also how he had vanquished many a danger already; and that the danger of going back might be much more than to go forward."

"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 stept 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 those blasphemies came."

Nothing could be more vividly descriptive than this passage from the Pilgrim's Progress, of the state of Bunyan's own mind, as from a point of calm and clear observation, he afterwards looked back upon it in light from Heaven. His obstinate unbelief, his entanglement in the wrathful places of God's word, his jealousy against all consolation, and his holding of the dagger to his heart, that he had sold Christ, these things in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, were as much the work of the unseen Devil, as the crowds of blasphemous suggestions that were shoaled upon him, well-nigh driving him distracted. And now you see his own thoughtful, deliberate, well considered judgment in regard to that state of mind. "He had not the discretion either to stop his ears, or to know whence those blasphemies came." And who would have had? Bunyan possessed a very strong mind; but let any man be thus assaulted of the Devil, and see if he will possess his soul in patience any better

than Bunyan did? How tender was his conscience! How fearful of offending God! How pierced with anguish in the thought of such ingratitude to Christ! And how fervid and powerful his imagination at work amidst Eternal Realities? Ah! here were materials for Satan to work upon in order to persuade Bunyan that he had sinned irrecoverably, in order to make him endorse against himself the bill of blasphemy and unbelief presented by his implacable, malignant, hellish adversary! And he did endorse it, in all the anxiety, trembling and agony of despair, he did endorse those bitter dreadful things against himself; but it was a forged bill; it was known in Heaven's Chancery; the Saviour himself denied it.

Upon a day when Bunyan was bemoaning and abhorring himself in this abyss of misery, there came as it were a voice from Heaven, in a sweet pleasant wind, that like the wings of angels rushed past him, with this question, "Didst thou ever refuse to be justified by the blood of Christ ?" and Bunyan's heart, in spite of all the black clouds of guilt that Satan's malignity had rolled around his conscience, was compelled honestly to answer, No. Then fell with power that word of God upon him, See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. This, says

Bunyan, made a strange seizure upon my spirit; it brought light with it, and commanded a silence in my heart of all those tumultuous thoughts, that did before use, like masterless hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous noise within me.

Not Milton himself could have described this with more energy; nay, you may apply the very lan