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and heart-inflaming music, that all who hear him play can scarcely hold from dancing; and yet behold the cymbal hath not life, neither comes the music from it, but because of the art of him that plays therewith; so then the instrument at last may come to naught and perish, though in times past such music hath been made upon it.

"Just thus I saw it was, and will be, with them that have gifts, but want saving grace; they are in the hand of Christ as the cymbal in the hand of David; and as David could with the cymbal make that mirth in the service of God as to elevate the hearts of the worshippers, so Christ can use these gifted men, as with them to affect the souls of his people in the church; yet when he hath done all, hang them by, as lifeless, though sounding cymbals.

"This consideration, therefore, together with some others, were, for the most part, as a maul on the head of pride, and desire of vain-glory. What, thought I, shall I be proud because I am a sounding brass? Is it so much to be a fiddle? Hath not the least creature that hath life more of God in it than these? Besides, I knew it was love should never die, but these must cease and vanish; so I concluded a little grace, a little love, a little of the true fear of God is better than all the gifts; yea, and I am fully convinced of it that it is possible for souls that can scarce give a man an answer, but with great confusion as to method; I say it is possible for them to have a thousand times more grace, and to be more in the love and favor of the Lord, than some who, by the virtue of the gift of knowledge, can deliver themselves like angels."

BUNYAN IN PRISON.

Illustrations of the Times of Bunyan.-Results of the spirit of persecution.-The Puritans driven to America.-Baxter in the Parliamentary Army.-The multiplicity of Sects, and Milton's opinion thereon.-Bedford Jail, and Bunyan in it, with his little child.-The Plague in London, and the persecuting King and Court in Oxford.Bunyan's conference with the Justice's Clerk.-Interview of Bunyan's wife with the Judges.- Bunyan's prison employments.-Suggestion and pursuit of the Pilgrim's Progress.

IN a former lecture, I have briefly sketched the principal movements of intolerance and persecution during the reign of those English monarchs who bore the name of Charles. In order the better to illustrate that persecuting spirit, which from the reign of James, passed into this, and the glorious issues that grew out of it, through that Omnipotent Prerogative, whereby the Divine Being causes the wrath of man to praise him, we will call up several great separate scenes from the past, with the actors in them; to note which will be better for our purpose, than would be a whole volume of historical dissertations. The first scene is in the great era of 1620, just eight years before the birth of Bunyan. It is a lowering winter's day; on a coast rock-bound and perilous, sheeted with ice and snow, hovers a small vessel, worn and weary, like a bird

with wet plumage, driven in a storm from its nest, and timidly seeking shelter. It is the Mayflower, thrown on the bosom of Winter. The very sea is freezing; the earth is as still as the grave, covered with snow, and as hard with frost, as iron; there is no sign of a human habitation; the deep forests have lost their foliage, and rise over the land like a shadowy congregation of skeletons. Yet there is a band of human beings on board that weatherbeaten vessel, and they have voluntarily come to this savage coast to spend the rest of their lives, and to die there. Eight thousand miles they have struggled across the ocean, from a land of plenty and com fort, from their own beloved country, from their homes, firesides, friends, to gather around an altar to God in the winter, in the wilderness! What does it all mean? It marks to a noble mind the invaluable blessedness of FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD! It means, that religious oppression is worse to bear, more hard, more intolerable to a generous mind, more insufferable to an upright conscience, than the war of the elements, than peril and nakedness, than cold and hunger, than dens and caves of the earth, than disease and the loss of friends, and the tomahawks of savage enemies! These men have fled from religious oppression; the hand of power has attempted to grasp and bind the conscience; and conscience, and an undying religious faith, have borne these men into the wilderness to worship God as freely as the air that breathes God's praises.

So noble, so grand, so holy, was the national birth of the best part of these United States of

America! Well may we glory in the name of PuRITAN. It is a synonyme for all that is holy in piety, unbending in moral rectitude, patient in selfdenial, illustrious in patriotism, precious in liberty and truth. But the virtues of our Puritan ancestors, in their development, at least, grew out of oppression; they were good out of evil, the wrath of man turned into the praise of God. It was the touch of the iron sceptre of the Stuarts, laid upon that sacred thing a pure, enlightened, religious conscience, and upon that sacred possession, a chosen, conscientious religious faith and worship, that brought to pass all this glory; it was the tyranny of an Established Church, the daring usurpation by the King of England of the prerogative of Christ as the head of his people, that planted on this continent the germ both of civil and religious liberty, the elements of the purest religious faith, and of the freest political institutions in the world!

This is one of the most remarkable instances on record, of the overruling sovereignty of God in its blessed purposes, by the instrumentality of his own enemies. The persecution, which in England threw John Bunyan into prison to write the Pilgrim's Progress, drove those holy men and women out of England into the wilderness, to form an asylum of liberty and religion for the whole world. It was one of King James' sayings, no Bishop, no King; and here in this land, under the oppression of James, a church without a bishop and a government without a king, secured and established that charter of civil and religious freedom, which king and prelate had alike violated and destroyed.

The colony of the Puritans was driven out of England, as the oppressed Hebrews were driver. out of Egypt; and to this country they came, under just as sacred and holy an invisible guidance, as the Israelites of old to the land of Canaan. In the simple, striking language of the Bible, "It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt; this is that night of the Lord to be observed of all the children of Israel, in their generations." And so was the night of the departure of our pilgrim ancestors a night of the Lord; it was to them a night of sorrow, both when they came, and when they landed; but it was that night of the Lord; and it brought a day of glory, such as the world had not seen for ages, and of which, God grant the light may never go out.

Ay! call it holy ground

The spot where first they trod!

They left unstained what there they found,

FREEDOM TO WORSHIP GOD!

We leave now this colony, growing, under God's protecting care, in numbers and in graces, and pass to another scene, about twenty years afterwards, when the conflict for liberty on the one side and tyranny on the other, was raging between King Charles I. and the Parliament with Oliver Cromwell.

The scene is in a church, and yet it looks like a camp, for it is crowded with soldiers, as well as with a village congregation. It is not the Lord's day, but a public talking day for sectarian controversy; and you might think the confusion of Babel had been

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