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the Scriptures, or changing the plan of God in his own favour, he was prepared for a firmer and more rejoicing faith, when his feet were at length delivered from the snares of hell, and placed upon the Rock of Salvation. The Scriptures that he saw to be so unchangeably against himself when outside the fortress, he found to be all in his favour, and all combining for his soul's protection, when once he was within.

The temptations endured by Bunyan at this time were surprisingly similar to some recounted by Luther in that Commentary on Galatians with which Bunyan was already familiar. And there is one passage in that book, from which, or by means of which, the tempter himself may have succeeded in shooting into Bunyan's conscience, as from a catapult, the morbid imagination under which he had fallen of selling Christ. For Luther relates how such a thing happened to one Dr. Krause of Halle, who said, "I have denied Christ, and therefore He standeth now before His Father, and accuseth me." And, by the illusion of the devil, he had so strongly conceived in his mind this imagination, that never, by any exhortation, or consolation, or promises of God, he could be brought from it. And it had like to have been so with Bunyan himself, after the tempter had succeeded in fastening the same morbid imagination upon Bunyan's sensitive and trembling heart. But God would not permit Bunyan to be tempted above that he was able to bear, and would make the temptation itself a source of glorious victory and lasting strength.

The relief from it came gradually and at intervals. One day, as Bunyan was absent in a neighbouring town, and sitting to rest himself upon a bench in the street, always thinking upon his spiritual difficulties, and exclaiming to himself, "How can God comfort such a wretch

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to him to think that he had as good right to the promises and to prayer as any other sinners. And though shortly again his faith was losing hold of that support, yet still he went earnestly to prayer, and found new comfort and relief in the sentence, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." He strove to hold by that promise, which he did, by God's help, for several days, although, such was the conflict and anxiety in his soul, that still the passage about Esau would be flying in his face like lightning twenty times in an hour. Then, again, that sweet passage from the Psalms was of great comfort to him: "If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, O Lord, who should stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared." A most gracious and encouraging passage.

But still the graces of Bunyan's hope and faith were to go through other trials; they were not yet, as fixtures of his character, ready for God's purposes. Bunyan's piety was as a ship destined for a long and terrible voyage; all the materials must be of the soundest, securest nature, and put together in the most solid manner, every knee and stick of the best tried timber. His hope must be thoroughly scriptural, and nothing in it of the nature of second-hand experience. So now, before many weeks, he began to consider again, that whatever comfort and peace he thought he might have from the word of the promise of life, yet, unless there could be found in his refreshment a concurrence and agreement in the Scriptures, let him think what he would thereof, and hold it never so fast, he should find no such thing in the end, for the Scriptures could not be broken. And so again his heart began to ache, and on this ground, and with this fear, he began with all seriousness to examine his former comfort. And so again, for a long while Esau troubled him, and beat him down, in that whole passage concerning the lost birthright, combined with other texts in regard to those who sin wilfully, and those who fall away. He was a very long time in this new conflict, mourning up and down during the greater part of it, and, as he says, sticking in the jaws of desperation.

At length one day, when his mind had been all day long dwelling with great anxiety upon the question whether the blood of Christ was sufficient to save his soul, he received a gleam of strong comfort from those blessed words in Hebrews vii. 25: "Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them." That word able seemed to him a mighty word, and writ in great letters; and the sword of that passage was for a little time a thrust to the very heart of his fear and doubt. And all this was as the picture that Bunyan has drawn among the sights in the house of the Interpreter, of the Lord Jesus pouring

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oil upon the fire of Divine grace in the heart on one side, while Satan is unavailingly pouring water on the other to quench it.

And now at length, in prayer, Bunyan's final deliverance from this desperate and long-continued conflict began with that promise to Paul, "My grace is sufficient for thee." And oh, says Bunyan, how good a thing it is for God to send His word! For God Himself to send it, and not man merely find it; for about a fortnight before, Bunyan was looking at that very place, and then, because it did not come near his soul with comfort, and he could not find that it was large enough for him, he says he threw down his book in a pet. But now he found its arms

of grace wide enclosing him, and he rejoiced, though still with exceed ing great and constant conflicts, for seven or eight weeks; for still this passage about the sufficiency of grace, and the former terrible one about Esau parting with his birthright, fought against one another in his soul, and were as a pair of sharp glittering swords crossing and clashing, or as a pair of scales going up and down; sometimes the hope and sometimes the fear being uppermost, sometimes Esau and sometimes Christ.

It was a conflict now between faith and unbelief, and Bunyan's description of it is one of the most instructive and interesting portions of the Grace Abounding. He still pleaded with God that He would give him the whole of that great Scripture about the sufficiency of Christ's grace, that He would let him have the words for thee, and enable him to apply them to himself, as well as the abstract sufficiency of grace. For as yet Bunyan could not apply the whole sentence, but, as he says, could only gather what God gave, the words for thee being still left

out, and he being not able to rise to that appropriating faith in Christ, as addressing himself, My grace is sufficient FOR THEE. So he prayed earnestly for the whole passage, and, in answer to prayer, the whole came. It came unexpectedly, in the midst of a meeting of the people of God, when Bunyan, in sadness and terror, was waiting upon God, with his fears again strong upon him; then suddenly, with great power, the whole passage broke into his soul, with glory and refreshing comfort; it broke his heart, filled him full of joy, laid him low, and sent him mourning home: a beautiful and

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most scriptural union of the varieties of true religious emotion. He received the whole, MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR THEE; and every word was a mighty word to him: and thus it continued for several weeks, when again Esau came back once more, and he was now in peace and again in terror, sometimes comforted and sometimes tormented.

And again the question and examination as to the agreement of diverse Scriptures in his hope was forced upon him, and he was as if some flaw in a very old title to a piece of land had been brought up, and the owner compelled to a costly and perplexing litigation. So Satan renewed the conflict every step of the way, and Bunyan could hardly forbear sometimes wishing the perplexing passages out of the book. But he trembled at them; he quaked at the Apostles; he knew their words were true, and must stand for ever; and furthermore, notwithstanding all his distresses, he would not for the world rest in the embrace of a false hope; he dreaded that, and he would not take up with any comfort which he could not feel was sanctioned by the Scriptures.

At length the time for the final conquest by the promise came. He was one day reflecting upon the singular variety of his frames of spirit, and how their light changed even in a moment, just according to the nature of the Scripture that shone upon them, whether of grace, for quiet, or of Esau, for torment, when he thought he would be thankful to have these Scriptures meet in his heart at once, and try their strength together. Accordingly, for this he prayed, and this very thing came to pass, this very conflict and trial took place; the passages met, and, to Bunyan's unspeakable delight, the terrible passage about Esau's birthright began to wax weak, withdraw, and vanish; and the sweet promise about the sufficiency of grace prevailed with peace and joy. This was a great wonder to Bunyan, who, even in regard to God's work upon himself, was almost as a child, gazing with amazement at His work upon another; and after twenty years, behold how cautiously and modestly he speaks, and with what affecting simplicity and beauty, of the meeting of these passages, and the triumph of the promise: "Truly," says he, "I am apt to think it was of God; for the word of the law and wrath must give place to the word of life and grace, because, though the word of condemnation be glorious, yet the word of life and salvation doth far exceed in glory. And Moses and Elias must both vanish, and leave Christ and His saints alone."

And now, out of this conquest, came to Bunyan, as a divine hand with leaves from the tree of life, that other comprehensive promise, on which his soul ought to have rested from the outset: "Him that cometh

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unto Me, I will in no wise cast out." "Oh, the comfort I had," says Bunyan, "from this word, 'in no wise;' as who should say, 'By no means, for nothing whatever he hath done."" And in the light, power, and sweetness with which this promise was now revealed to Bunyan, we have the origin and peculiarity of the admirable little work of his, Come, and welcome, to Jesus Christ; a work written, like the Pilgrim's Progress itself, out of his own heart, and produced by this very conflict with Apollyon. "Oh, what did I see in that blessed sixth of John! 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.' If ever Satan and I did strive for any word of God in all my life, it was for this good word of Christ; he at one end, and I at the other: oh, what work we made! It was for this in John, I say, that we did so tug and strive; he pulled and I pulled, but, God be praised, I overcame him; I got sweetness from it." And always the sweetness that Bunyan so obtained from the Word of God (of which he gives this almost ludicrous account, out of the deep vein of humour in his character), with all passages thus fought for, were the source of great power to him, and were put to great use. "They were the nest of honey," as he said afterwards, "in the dead conquered lion."

And now, having got this fortress and vantage-ground in his possession, and a solid comfort in Christ, out of which he could sally forth against his enemies, Bunyan began to take heart so far as to come up and examine both his own sin and those terrible Scriptures under which he had so long lain trembling, and afraid even to question them. But his perils and the anguish of his wounds had made him very critical, and carefully and critically did he now look at the nature both of his own sin and of those dreadful texts that had well-nigh slain him with despair. And now he found, on drawing near to them and looking them in the face, as a child of God from the bosom of the promise, that they were not so grim and terrible in reality, but, rightly understood, were in agreement with the promise, and not against it. So after this thorough and believing examination, the thunder of the tempest was all gone, and only a few big scattered drops now and then fell upon him, though still the very memory of the thunder and the flames was fearful.

And now indeed the hand came to Bunyan with leaves from the tree of life, as he has so sweetly described it in the Pilgrim's Progress after Christian's fight with Apollyon, and he was refreshed with heavenly refreshments. He now found Christ made unto his soul of God, his wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. Christ, in all His exaltation and glory, was now the subject of his thoughts, the object of his affections, the life of his soul; he was loosed from his afflic