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neighbours, but that his mind was constantly occupied by religious considerations, that his fervour exceeded his knowledge, and that his imagination exercised despotic power over his mind and his body. He heard voices from heaven. He saw strange visions of distant hills, pleasant and sunny as his own "Delectable2 Mountains." From those abodes he fancied himself shut out, and placed in a dark and horrible wilderness, where he wandered through ice and snow, striving to make his way into the happy region of light. At one time he was seized with an inclination to attempt to work miracles,3 by way of testing his chance of salvation. At another time he thought himself actually possessed by the devil. He could distinguish the blasphemous whispers. He felt his infernal enemy pulling at his clothes behind him. He spurned with his feet and struck with his hands at the destroyer. Sometimes a violent impulse urged him to start up from his food, to fall on his knees, and to break forth into prayer. At length he fancied that he had committed the unpardonable sin. His agony convulsed his robust frame. He was, he says, as if his breastbone would split; and this he took for a sign that he was destined to burst asunder, like Judas. The agitation of his nerves made all his movements tremulous; and this trembling, he supposed, was a visible mark of his reprobation, like that which had been set on Cain.

At one time, indeed, an encouraging voice seemed to rush in at the window, like the noise of wind, but very pleasant, and commanded, as he says, a great calm in his soul. At another time, a word of comfort "was spoke loud unto him; it showed a great word; it seemed to be writ in great letters."

But these intervals of ease were short. His state during two years and a half was generally the most horrible that the human mind can imagine. "I walked," says he, with his own peculiar eloquence, "to a neighbouring town; and sat down upon the settle in the street, and fell into a very deep pause about the most fearful state my sin had brought

me to; and, after long musing, I lifted up my head; but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me light, and as if the very stones in the street and tiles upon the houses did band themselves against me. Methought that they all combined together to banish me out of the world. I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, because I had sinned against the Saviour. Oh, how happy now was every creature over I-for they stood fast and kept their station. But I was gone and lost." Scarcely any madhouse could produce an instance of delusion so strong or of misery so great.

But peace came at last to his tempest-tossed soul. In 1653 we find him attached to the Baptist community at Bedford; and three years later he began to preach as a Baptist minister. This he continued to do until the Restoration of Charles II. (A.D. 1660), when he was arrested while preaching, tried, condemned, and thrown into prison for Nonconformity. Such was the spirit of religious intolerance which then prevailed in the country. It was not until 1672, when the King issued his Declaration of Indulgence, that Bunyan was released.

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While in prison, he contrived to earn a scanty support for his family of young children by making thread laces; and he relieved the monotony of his prison life by writing some of his smaller works, and by religious discourse with his fellow-prisoners as opportunity offered. Before he was set at liberty, he had begun the work which has immortalized his name—“The Pilgrim's Progress." This wonderful book has had a circulation second only to that of the Bible.

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"THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."

THIS famous book is an allegory,1 in which is traced out the course of a Christian on his heavenward journey, with a vivid account of his difficulties, temptations, dangers, and consolations on the way, and a glowing description of his ultimate triumph.2

"The characteristic peculiarity 3 of the Pilgrim's Progress," ,"" writes Lord Macaulay, "is that it is the only work of its kind which possesses a strong human interest. Other allegories only amuse the fancy. The allegory of Bunyan has been read by many thousands with tears. In the pleasure derived from other allegories the feelings have no part whatever. It is not so with the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' That wonderful book, while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics,1 is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.

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'Every reader knows the straight and narrow path as well as he knows a road in which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the highest miracle of genius-that things which are not should be as though they were; that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turnstile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted. The wicket-gate, and the desolate swamp which separates it from the City of Destruction; the long line of road, as straight as a rule can make it; the Interpreter's house and all its fair shows-the prisoner in the iron cage, the palace, at the doors of which armed men kept guard, and on the battlements of which walked persons clothed all in gold; the cross and the sepulchre; the steep hill and the pleasant arbour; the stately front of the House Beautiful by the wayside, the chained lions crouching in the porch; the low green valley of Humiliation, rich with grass and

covered with flocks,-all are as well known to us as the sights of our own streets.

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'Then we come to the narrow place where Apollyon strode right across the whole breadth of the way to stop the journey of Christian, and where afterwards the pillar was set up to testify how bravely the pilgrim had fought the good fight. As we advance, the valley becomes deeper and deeper. The shade of the precipice on both sides falls blacker and blacker. The clouds gather overhead. Doleful voices, the clanking of chains, and the rushing of many feet to and fro, are heard through the darkness. The way, hardly discernible in gloom, runs close by the mouth of the burning pit, which sends forth its flames, its noisome smoke, and its hideous shapes to terrify the adventurer. Thence

he goes on amidst the mazes and pitfalls, with the mangled bodies of those who have perished lying in the ditch by his side. At the end of the long dark valley (which he calls the Valley of the Shadow of Death) he passes the dens in which the old giants dwelt amidst the bones of those whom they had slain.

"Then the road passes straight on through a waste moor, till at length the towers of a distant city appear before the traveller; and soon he is in the midst of the innumerable multitudes of Vanity Fair. There are the jugglers and the apes, the shops and the puppet-shows. There are Italian Row, and French Row, and Spanish Row, and British Row, with their crowds of buyers, sellers, and loungers, jabbering all the languages of the earth.

"Thence we go on by the little hill of the silver mine, and through the meadow of lilies, along the bank of that pleasant river which is bordered on both sides by fruit trees.

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the left branches off the path leading to Doubting Castle, the courtyard of which is paved with the skulls of pilgrims; and right onward are the sheepfolds and orchards of the Delectable Mountains."

"From the Delectable Mountains the way lies through the

fogs and briers of the Enchanted Ground, with here and there a bed of soft cushions spread under a green arbour; and beyond is the land of Beulah, where the flowers, the grapes, and songs of the birds never cease, and where the sun shines night and day. Thence are plainly seen the golden pavements and streets of pearl, on the other side of that black and cold river' over which there is no bridge.

"The style of Bunyan is delightful to every reader, and invaluable as a study to every person who wishes to obtain a wide command over the English language. The vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. There is not an expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, which would puzzle the rudest peasant. We have observed several pages which do not contain a single word of more than two syllables. Yet no writer has said more exactly what he meant to say. For every purpose of the poet, the orator, and the divine, this homely dialect, this dialect of plain working men, was perfectly sufficient. There is no book in our literature on which we would so readily stake the fame of the old unpolluted 10 English language-no book which shows so well how rich that language is in its own proper wealth, and how little it has been improved by all that it has borrowed."

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1 An allegory. A fictitious story having an inner meaning.

2 Ultimate triumph.-Victory in the end [L. ultimus, last]. 3 Characteristic peculiarity. That feature which gives it a character of its own.

• Fastidious critics.-Judges who are over-nice or difficult to please.

City of Destruction. The city that Christian started from.

Delectable Mountains.-Mountains of Delight.

"Cold river.-This represents death. It is said to be a river without a bridge,

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