one another, and that we had the sweet comforting presence of the Lord among us, for our encouragement, blessed be his name therefor. I confess myself guilty no otherwise.

Keel. Then, said he, hear your judgment. You must be had back again to prison, and there le for three months following; and at three months' end, if you do not submit to go to church to hear divine service, and leave your preaching, you must be banished the realm; and if, after such a day as shall be appointed you to be gone, you shall be found in this realm, or be found to come over again without special license from the king, you must stretch by the neck for it, I tell you plainly. And so he bid my jailer have me away.

Bun. I told him, as to this matter I was at a point with him; for if I was out of prison to-day, I would preach the gospel again to morrow, by the help of God.

Thus ended the examination and commitment of John Bunyan. This answer of his is equal

IF

in nobleness to any thing recorded of Luther. I WAS OUT OF THE PRISON TO-DAY, I WOULD PREACH THE GOSPEL AGAIN TO-MORROW, BY THE HELP OF

GOD. There was neither obstinacy nor vain-glory in it, but a calm, steadfast determination to obey God rather than man. Bunyan had good examples for his steadfastness and courage. The scene reminds us more than almost any thing else, of certain events in the Acts of the Apostles. What shall we do to these men, said the Jewish rulers. That it spread no further among the people, let us straitly threaten them, that they

speak henceforth to no man in this name. And they called them, and commanded them not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered and said unto them, Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. And again they spake; and again. they were thrust into prison; and again they spake; and again the council and high priest charged them, Did we not straitly command you that ye should not teach in this name? So they beat the apostles, and commanded that they should not speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. And what next? Why, just this: And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach, and to preach Jesus Christ.

In all these trying and vexing examinations, Bunyan appears to the greatest advantage, both as a man and a Christian. If he sometimes answered a fool according to his folly, it was never with railing or bitterness; and with all his prejudices against the Common Prayer Book, he has not one word to say against those who choose it, or conscientiously use it, or against their religion. And now, to those who may think it strange that so strong a prejudice should have prevailed against that book, so that men would rather go to prison than use it, we would simply say, What think you would be your feelings in regard to the Presbyterian Book of Discipline, if you were compelled by law to use it, and abide by it, or else have no religion at all? If the strong grasp of civil and ecclesiastical

tyranny were laid upon you, and your face were pressed in the dust beneath that book, and it were said to you, Either abide by this and obey it, or you shall neither preach nor teach, nor hold any civil office; nay, you shall be thrust into prison, or banished, and if found returning, you shall be hanged by the neck till you are dead! I say, what think you would be your feelings towards that book? Why, if it were better than the Pilgrim's Progress itself, you would abhor it, and I had almost said, you would do well to hate it; and you would, as an instrument of pride and tyranny. Prejudice against the Common Prayer Book? If men wish to bring it into disgrace, let them persevere in their assumption that there is no true church, and no true ministry without it. The cross itself, the moment you erect it into a thing of worship, the moment you put the image in place of the thing signified, becomes an idol, a mark of sin instead of glory. Just so it was with the Brazen Serpent. There was a race of Romanists in that day, who kept it as an object of idolatrous adoration; had they been let go on in their absurdities, they would have passed a law that no person should worship without the Brazen Serpent. But good King Hezekiah, the noble old royal image-breaker, took, it, and called it with the utmost contempt, a piece of brass, Nehustan, and burned it in the fire, and ground it to powder.

Here I am reminded of a very beautiful remark by Mr. Coleridge, taken partly from an old writer, that an appropriate and seemly religious ceremony is as a gold chain about the neck of faith; it at once

adorns and secures it. Yes, says Mr. Coleridge, but if you draw it too close, you strangle it. You strangle and destroy religion if you make that which is not essential, and especially that which is not commanded in scripture, to be essential and inevitable. And just so with the prayer book, the liturgy; if you seek to enforce it on men's consciences, if you make it essential to religion or to the true church, you suffocate and strangle your religion, and instead of finding in it a living seraph, it will be to you a dead corpse. Let no man judge you in regard to these things, saith Paul; let no man be admitted to spy out and destroy your liberty, which ye have in Christ Jesus. Give no place in subjection to such an one, no, not for an hour.

One of the most instructive and important lessons to be drawn from this part of Bunyan's history, and from the survey of his times, is the invaluable preciousness of that discipline of trial, which God, in infinite wisdom and mercy, has appointed for his people, as their pathway to the kingdom of heaven. We scarcely know how the church of Christ could have existed, or what she would have become, without the purifying and ennobling fires of persecution to burn upon her. The most precious of her literary and religious treasures have come out of this furnace. The most heavenly and inspiring names in the record of her living examples are the names of men whose souls were purged from their dross by just such discipline, and perhaps taken out of their bodies, and conveyed in a chariot of fire to heaven. The martyr literature of England, a possession like which, in

glory and in value, no nation in the world can show the counterpart, grew out of that fiery process upon men's souls; it is as gold seven-fold purified in the furnace. This book of Bunyan's, the heavenly Pilgrim's Progress, grew out of just such a pro cess; for such is the nature of adversity in the hand of God, not only to refine and purify, but to bring out hidden virtue into exercise, and to give to all qualities so wrought, a power over the universal heart of man, such as no learning can sway, and no philosophy communicate. The best work of Baxter's was written on the borders of the grave, in weakness and suffering, having bidden the world adieu, and being raised by the magic of such discipline to a mount of vision, from whence he could take a broad and near survey of the glories of heaven. And perhaps self-denial, by the grace of God, is still more efficacious to raise a man's soul, impart to it power, and transfigure it with glory, than even adversity under the hand of God. any rate, here is the true secret of greatness. tue, said Lord Bacon, is like precious odors, most fragrant when they are either burned or crushed. This is the power of adversity with noble natures, or, with the grace of God, even in a poor nature. But self-denial is a sort of self-burning, that makes a purer fire, and more surely separates the dross from a man's being, than temptation and affliction. Indeed, self-denial is the great end in this world, of which temptation and affliction are the means; a man being then most free and powerful, when most completely dead to self and absorbed in God the Saviour.

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