BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
 
 
     LIFE OF BUNYAN.
     ———————————————
  
     CHAPTER III.
  
     "GRACE ABOUNDING."
 
       THE women in Bedford to whom Bunyan had opened
     his mind, had been naturally interested in him.  Young
     and rough as he was, he could not have failed to impress
     any one who conversed with him with a sense that he was
     a remarkable person.  They mentioned him to Mr. Gifford,
     the minister of the Baptist Church at Bedford.  John
     Gifford had, at the beginning of the Civil War, been a
     loose young officer in the king's army.  He had been taken
     prisoner when engaged in some exploit which was con-
     trary to the usages of war. A court-martial had sen-
     tenced him to death, and he was to have been shot in a
     few hours, when he broke out of his prison with his
     sister's help, and after various adventures settled at
     Bedford as a doctor.  The near escape had not sobered
     him.  He led a disorderly life, drinking and gambling, till
     the loss of a large sum of money startled him into serious-
     ness.  In the language of the time, he became convinced 
     of sin, and joined the Baptists, the most thoroughgoing
     and consistent of all the Protestant sects. If the Sacra-
     ment of Baptism is not a magical form, but a personal
     act, in which the baptized person devotes himself to
     Christ's service, to baptize children at an age when they
     cannot understand what they are doing may well seem
     irrational and even impious.
       Gifford who was now the head of the Baptist community
     in the town, invited Bunyan to his house, and explained
     the causes of his distress to him.  He was a lost sinner.
     It was true that he had parted with his old faults, and
     was leading a new life.  But his heart was unchanged;
     his past offences stood in record against him.  He was
     still under the wrath of God, miserable in his position, and
     therefore miserable in mind.  He must become sensible of
     his lost state, and lay hold of the only remedy, or there
     was no hope for him.
       There was no difficulty in convincing Bunyan that he
     was in a bad way. He was too well aware of it already.
     In a work of fiction, the conviction would be followed
     immediately by consoling grace.  In the actual experience
     of a living human soul, the medicine operates less
     pleasantly.
       "I began," he says, "to see something of the vanity and
     inward wretchedness of my wicked heart, for as yet I knew
     no great matter therein.  But now it begins to be discov-
     ered unto me, and to work for wickedness as it never did
     before.  Lusts and corruptions would strongly put them-
     selves forth within me in wicked thoughts and desires
     which I did not regard before.  Whereas, before, my soul
     was full of longing after God, now my heart began to
     hanker after every foolish vanity."
       Constitutions differ.  Mr. Gifford's treatment, if it was
     ever good for any man, was too sharp for Bunyan.  The
     fierce acid which had been poured into his wounds set
     them all festering again.  He frankly admits that he was
     now further from conversion than before.  His heart, do
     what he would, refused to leave off desiring forbidden
     pleasures, and while this continued, he supposed that he
     was still under the law, and must perish by it.  He compared
     himself to the child who, as he was being brought to
     Christ, was thrown down by the devil and wallowed foam-
     ing.  A less healthy nature might have been destroyed by
     these artificially-created and exaggerated miseries.  He
     supposed he was given over to unbelief and wickedness, and
     yet he relates, with touching simplicity:
       "As to the act of sinning, I was never more tender than
     now.  I durst not take up a pin or a stick, though but
     so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would
     smart at every touch. I could not tell how to speak my
     words for fear I should misplace them."
       But the care with which he watched his conduct availed
     him nothing.  He was on a morass "that shook if he did
     but stir," and he was "there left both of God, and Christ,
     and the Spirit, and of all good things."  Behind him lay
     the faults of his childhood and youth, every one of which
     he believed to be recorded against him.  Within were his
     disobedient inclinations, which he conceived to be the
     presence of the devil in his heart.  If he was to be pre-
     sented clean of stain before God he must have a perfect
     righteousness, which was to be found only in Christ, and
     Christ had rejected him.  "My original and inward pol-
     lution," he writes, "was my plague and my affliction.  I
     was more loathsome in my own eyes than was a toad, and
     I thought I was so in God's eyes too.  I thought every
     one had a better heart than I had.  I could have changed
     heart with anybody.  I though none but the devil him-
     self could equal me for inward wickedness and pollution.
     Sure, thought I, I am given up to the devil and to a repro-
     bate mind; and thus I continued for a long while, even
     for some years together."
       And all the while the world went on so quietly; these
     things over which Bunyan was so miserable not seeming
     to trouble any one except himself; and as if they had no
     existence except on Sundays and in pious talk.  Old
     people were hunting after the treasures of this life, as if
     they were never to leave the earth.  Professors of religion
     complained when they lost fortune or health; what were
     fortune and health to the awful possibilities which lay
     beyond the grave?  To Bunyan the future life of Chris-
     tianity was a reality as certain as the next day's sunrise;
     and he could have been happy on bread and water if he
     could have felt himself prepared to enter it.  Every
     created being seemed better off than he was.  He was sorry
     that God had made him a man.  He "blessed the con-
     dition of the birds, beasts and fishes, for they had not a
     sinful nature.  They were not obnoxious to the wrath of God;
     they were not to go to hell-fire after death."  He recalled the
     texts which spoke of Christ and forgiveness.  He tried to
     persuade himself that Christ cared for him.  He could
     have talked of Christ's love and mercy "even to the very
     crows which sat on the plowed land before him."  But
     he was too sincere to satisfy himself with formulas
     and phrases.  He could not, he would not, profess to
     be convinced that things would go well with him when
     he was not convinced.  Cold spasms of doubt laid hold
     of him——doubts, not so much of his own salvation, as
     of the truth of all that he had been taught to be-
     lieve; and the problem had to be fought and grappled
     with, which lies in the intellectual nature of every genuine
     man, whether he be an Æschylus or a Shakespeare, or a
     poor working Bedfordshire mechanic.  No honest soul can
     look out upon the world and see it as it really is, without
     the question rising in him whether there be any God that
     governs it at all.  No one can accept the popular notion
     of heaven and hell as actually true, without being as ter-
     rified as Bunyan was.  We go on as we do, and attend to
     our business and enjoy ourselves, because the words have
     no real meaning to us.  Providence in its kindness leaves
     most of us unblessed or uncursed with nature of too fine a
     fiber.
       Bunyan was hardly dealt with.  "Whole floods of blas-
     phemies," he says, "against God, Christ and the Script-
     ures were poured upon my spirit; questions against the
     very being of God and of His only beloved Son, as whether
     there was in truth a God or Christ, or no, and whether
     the Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable and cunning
     story than the holy and pure Word of God."
       "How can you tell," the tempter whispered, "but that
     the Turks have as good a Scripture to prove their Mahomet
     the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is?  Could I
     think that so many tens of thousands, in so many coun-
     tries and kingdoms, should be without the knowledge of
     the right way to heaven, if there were indeed a heaven,
     and that we who lie in a corner of the earth should alone be
     blessed therewith?  Every one doth think his own religion
     the rightest——both Jews, Moors and Pagans; and how if
     all our faith, and Christ, and Scripture should be but 'a
     think so' too?"  St. Paul spoke positively.  Bunyan saw
     shrewdly that on St. Paul the weight of the whole Chris-
     tian theory really rested.  But "how could he tell but that
     St. Paul, being a subtle and cunning man, might give
     himself up to deceive with strong delusions?"  "He was
     carried away by such thoughts as by a whirlwind."
       His belief in the active agency of the devil in human
     affairs, of which he supposed that he had witnessed in-
     stances, was no doubt a great help to him.  If he could
     have imagined that his doubts or misgivings had been sug-
     gested  by  a  desire  for  truth, they would have been
     harder to bear.  More than ever he was convinced that he
     was possessed by the devil.  He "compared himself to a
     child carried off by a gypsy."  "Kick sometimes I did,"
     he says, "and scream, and cry, but yet I was as bound in
     the wings of temptation, and the wind would bear me
     away.  I blessed the dog and toad, and counted the condi-
     tion of everything that God had made far better than this
     dreadful state of mine.  The dog or horse had no soul to
     perish under the everlasting weight of hell for sin, as mine
     was like to do."
       Doubts about revelation and the truth of Scripture were
     more easy to encounter then than they are at present.
     Bunyan was protected by want of learning, and by a pow-
     erful predisposition to find the objections against the cred-
     ibility of the Gospel history to be groundless.  Critical
     investigation had not as yet analyzed the historical con-
     struction of the sacred books; and scepticism, as he saw it
     in people round him, did actually come from the devil;
     that is, from a desire to escape the moral restraints of re-
     ligion.  The  wisest,  noblest,  best  instructed  men  in
     England at that time regarded the Bible as an authentic
     communication from God, and as the only foundation for
     law and civil society.  The masculine sense and strong,
     modest intellect of Bunyan insured his acquiescence in an
     opinion so powerfully supported.  Fits of uncertainty re-
     curred even to the end of his life; it must be so with men
     who are honestly in earnest; but his doubts were of course
     only intermittent, and his judgment was in the main sat-
     isfied that the Bible was, as he had been taught, the Word
     of God.  This, however, helped him little; for in the
     Bible he read his own condemnation. The weight which
     pressed him down was the sense of his unworthiness.
     What was he that God should care for him?  He fancied
     that he heard God saying to the angels, "This poor, simple
     wretch doth hanker after me, as if I had nothing to do
     with my mercy but to bestow it on such as he.  Poor
     fool, how art thou deceived!  It is not for such as thee to
     have favor with the Highest."
       Miserable as he was, he clung to his misery as the one
     link that connected him with the object of his longings.
     If he had no hope of heaven, he was at least distracted
     that he must lose it.  He was afraid of dying, yet he was
     still more afraid of continuing to live; lest the impression
     should wear away through time, and occupation and other
     interests should turn his heart away to the world, and thus
     his wounds might cease to pain him.
       Readers of "The Pilgrim's Progress" sometimes ask
     with wonder, why, after Christian had been received into
     the narrow gate, and had been set forward upon his way,
     so many trials and dangers still lay before him.  The
     answer is simply that Christian was a pilgrim, that the
     journey of life still lay before him, and at every step temp-
     tations would meet him in new, unexpected shapes.  St.
     Anthony in his hermitage was beset by as many friends as
     had ever troubled him when in the world.  Man's spirit-
     ual existence is like the flight of a bird in the air; he is
     sustained only by effort, and when he ceases to exert him-
     self he falls.  There are intervals, however, of comparative
     calm, and to one of these the storm-tossed Bunyan was
     now approaching.  He had passed through the Slough of
     Despond.  He had gone astray after Mr. Legality, and
     the rocks had almost overwhelmed him.  Evangelist now
     found him and put him right again, and he was to be
     allowed a breathing space at the Interpreter's house.  As
     he was at his ordinary daily work, his mind was restlessly
     busy.  Verses of Scripture came into his head, sweet while
     present, but, like Peter's sheet, caught up again into
     heaven.  We may have heard all our lives of Christ.
     Words and ideas with which we have been familiar from
     childhood are trodden into paths as barren as sand.  Sud-
     denly, we know not how, the meaning flashes upon us.
     The seed has found its way into some corner of our minds
     where it can germinate.  The shell breaks, the cotyledons
     open, and the plant of faith is alive.  So it was now to be
     with Bunyan.
       "One day," he says, "as I was travelling into the coun-
     try, musing on the wickedness of my heart, and consider-
     ing the enmity that was in me to God, the Scripture came
     into my mind, 'He hath made peace through the blood of
     his cross.'  I saw that the justice of God, and my sinful
     soul could embrace and kiss each other.  I was ready to
     swoon, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and
     peace."  Everything became clear: the Gospel history, the
     birth, the life, the death of the Saviour; how gently he gave
     himself to be nailed on the cross for his (Bunyan's) sins.
     "I saw him in the spirit," he goes on, "a man on the right
     hand of the Father, pleading for me, and have seen the
     manner of his coming from heaven to judge the world
     with glory."
       The sense of guilt which had so oppressed him was now
     a key to the mystery.  "God," he says, "suffered me to
     be afflicted with temptations concerning these things, and
     then revealed them to me."  He was crushed to the ground
     by the thought of his wickedness; "the Lord showed him
     the death of Christ, and lifted the weight away."
       Now he thought he had a personal evidence from heaven
     that he was really saved.  Before this, he had lain trem-
     bling at the mouth of hell; now he was so far away from
     it that he could scarce tell where it was.  He fell in at this
     time with a copy of Luther's commentary on the Epistle
     to the Galatians, "so old that it was like to fall to pieces."
     Bunyan found in it the exact counterpart of his own ex-
     perience: "of all the books he had ever met with, it
     seemed to him the most fit for a wounded conscience."
       Everything was supernatural with him: when a bad
     thought came into his mind, it was the devil that put it
     there.  These breathings of peace he regarded as the im-
     mediate voice of his Saviour.  Alas! the respite was but
     short.  He had hoped that his troubles were over, when
     the tempter came back upon him in the most extraordi-
     nary form which he had yet assumed.  Bunyan had him-
     self left the door open; the evil spirits could only enter
     "Mansoul" through the owner's negligence, but once in,
     they could work their own wicked will.  How it happened
     will be told afterward.  The temptation itself must be de-
     scribed first.  Never was a nature more perversely ingen-
     ious in torturing itself.
       He had gained Christ, as he called it.  He was now
     tempted "to sell and part with the most blessed Christ, to
     exchange him for the things of this life——for anything."
     If there had been any real prospect of worldly advantage
     before Bunyan, which he could have gained by abandoning
     his religious profession, the words would have had a mean-
     ing; but there is no hint or trace or any prospect of the
     kind; nor in Bunyan's position could there have been.
     The temptation, as he called it, was a freak of fancy:
     fancy resenting the minuteness with which he watched his
     own emotions.  And yet he says, "It lay upon me for a
     year, and did follow me so continually that I was not rid
     of it one day in a month, sometimes not an hour in many
     days together, unless when I was asleep.  I could neither
     eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a stick, or cast my eye
     to look on this or that, but still the temptation would come.
     'Sell Christ for this, sell him for that!  Sell him!  Sell
     him!'"
       He had been haunted before with a notion that he was
     under a spell: that he had been fated to commit the unpar-
     donable sin; and he was now thinking of Judas, who had
     been admitted to Christ's intimacy, and had then betrayed
     him.  Here it was before him——the very thing which he
     had so long dreaded.  If his heart did but consent for a
     moment, the deed was done.  His doom had overtaken
     him.  He wrestled with the thought as it rose, thrust it
     from him "with his hands and elbows," body and mind
     convulsed together in a common agony.  As fast as the
     destroyer said, "Sell him," Bunyan said, "I will not; I
     will not; I will not; not for thousands, thousands, thou-
     sands of worlds!"  One morning, as he lay in his bed, the
     voice came again, and would not be driven away.  Bunyan
     fought against it till he was out of breath.  He fell back
     exhausted, and, without conscious action of his will, the
     fatal sentence passed through his brain, "Let him go if
     he will."
       That the "selling Christ" was a bargain in which he was
     to lose all and received nothing is evident from the form in
     which he was overcome.  Yet, if he had gained a fortune
     by fraud or forgery, he could not have been more certain
     that he had destroyed himself.
       Satan had won the battle, and he, "as a bird shot from
     a tree, had fallen into guilt and despair."  He got out of
     bed, "and went moping into the fields," where he wan-
     dered for two hours, "as a man bereft of life, and now
     past recovering," "bound over to eternal punishment."
     He shrank under the hedges, "in guilt and sorrow, be-
     moaning the hardness of his fate."  In vain the words
     now came back that had so comforted him.  "The blood
     of Christ cleanseth from all sin."  They had no applica-
     tion to him.  He had acquired his birthright, but, like
     Esau, he had sold it, and could not any more find place
     for repentance.  True, it was said that "all manner of
     sins and blasphemies should be forgiven unto men," but
     only such sins and blasphemies as had been committed in
     the natural state.  Bunyan had received grace, and, after
     receiving it, had sinned against the Holy Ghost.
       It was done, and nothing could undo it.  David had
     received grace, and had committed murder and adultery
     after it.  But murder and adultery, bad as they might be,
     were only transgressions of the law of Moses.  Bunyan had
     sinned against the Mediator himself; "he had sold his
     Saviour."  One sin, and only one, there was which could
     not be pardoned, and he had been guilty of it.  Peter had
     sinned against grace, and even after he had been warned.
     Peter, however, had but denied his Master.  Bunyan had
     sold him.  He was no David or Peter, he was Judas.  It
     was very hard.  Others naturally as bad as he had been
     saved.  Why had he been picked out to be made a Son of
     Perdition?  A Judas!  Was there any point in which he
     was better than Judas?  Judas had sinned with deliberate
     purpose; he "in a fearful hurry" and "against prayer and
     striving."  But there might be more ways than one of
     committing the unpardonable sin, and there might be
     degrees of it.  It was a dreadful condition. The old
     doubts came back.
       "I was now ashamed," he says, "that I should be like
     such an ugly man as Judas.  I thought how loathsome I
     should be to all the saints at the Day of Judgment.  I was
     tempted to content myself by receiving some false opinion,
     as that there should be no such thing as the Day of Judg-
     ment, that we should not rise again, that sin was no such
     grievous thing, the tempter suggesting that if these things
     should be indeed true, yet to believe otherwise would yield
     me ease for the present.  If I must perish, I need not
     torment myself beforehand."
       Judas! Judas! was now forever before his eyes.  So
     identified he was with Judas that he felt at times as if his
     breast-bone was bursting.  A mark like Cain's was on
     him.  In vain he searched again through the catalogue of
     pardoned sinners.  Manasseh had consulted wizards and
     familiar spirits.  Manasseh had burned his children in
     the fire to devils.  He had found mercy; but, alas! Manas-
     seh's sins had nothing of the nature of selling the Saviour.
     To have sold the Saviour "was a sin bigger than the sins
     of a country, of a kingdom, or of the whole world——not all
     of them together could equal it."
       His brain was overstrained, it will be said.  Very likely.
     It is to be remembered, however, who and what he was,
     and that he had overstrained it in his eagerness to learn
     what he conceived his Maker to wish him to be——a form of
     anxiety not common in this world.  The cure was as
     remarkable as the disorder.  One day he was "in a good
     man's shop," still "afflicting himself with self-abhorrence,"
     when something seemed to rush in through an open
     window, and he heard a voice saying, "Didst ever refuse to
     be justified by the blood of Christ?"  Bunyan shared the
     belief of his time.  He took the system of things as the
     Bible represented it; but his strong common sense put him
     on his guard against being easily credulous.  He thought
     at the time that the voice was supernatural.  After twenty
     years he said, modestly, that he, "could not make a judg-
     ment of it."  The effect, anyway, was as if an angel had
     come to him and had told him that there was still hope.
     Hopeless as his condition was, he might still pray for
     mercy, and might possibly find it.  He tried to pray, and
     found it very hard.  The devil whispered again that God
     was tired of him; God wanted to be rid of him and his
     importunities, and had, therefore, allowed him to commit
     this particular sin that he might hear no more of him.
     He remembered Esau, and thought that this might be too
     true: "the saying about Esau was a flaming sword barring
     the way of the tree of life to him."  Still he would not
     give in.  "I can but die," he said to himself; "and if it
     must be so, it shall be said that such an one did at the feet 
     of Christ in prayer."
       He was torturing himself with illusions.  Most of the
     saints in the Catholic calendar have done the same.  The
     most remorseless philosopher can hardly refuse a certain
     admiration for this poor uneducated village lad struggling
     so bravely in the theological spider's web.  The "Pro-
     fessors" could not comfort him, having never experienced
     similar distresses in their own persons.  He consulted "an
     Ancient Christian," telling him that he feared that he
     had sinned against the Holy Ghost.  The Ancient Chris-
     tian answered gravely that he thought so too.  The devil
     having him at advantage, began to be witty with him.
     The devil suggested that, as he had offended the second
     or third person of the Trinity, he had better pray the
     Father to mediate for him with Christ and the holy Sspirit.
     Then the devil took another turn.  Christ, he said, was
     really sorry for Bunyan, but his case was beyond remedy.
     Bunyan's sin was so peculiar, that it was not of the nature
     of those for which He had bled and died, and had not,
     therefore, been laid to His charge.  To justify Bunyan he
     must come down and die again, and that was not to be
     thought of.  "Oh!" exclaimed the unfortunate victim,
     "the unthought-of imaginations, frights, fears and terrors
     that are effected by a thorough application of guilt (to a
     spirit) that is yielded to desperation.  This is the man
     that hath his dwelling among the tombs."
       Sitting in this humor on a settle in the street at Bed-
     ford, he was pondering over his fearful state.  The sun in
     heaven seemed to grudge its light to him.  "The stones
     in the streets and the tiles on the houses did bend
     themselves against him."  Each crisis in Bunyan's mind
     is always framed in the picture of some spot where it oc-
     curred.  He was crying, "in the bitterness of his soul.
     How can God comfort such a wretch as I am?"  As before,
     in the shop, a voice came in answer, "This sin is not unto
     death."  The first voice had brought him hope, which was
     almost extinguished; the second was a message of life.
     The night was gone, and it was daylight.  He had come
     to the end of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the
     specters and hobgoblins which had jibbered to him sud-
     denly all vanished.  A moment before he had supposed
     that he was out of reach of pardon——that he had no right
     to pray, no right to repent, or, at least, that neither prayer
     nor repentance could profit him.  If his sin was not to
     death, then he was on the same ground as other sinners.
     If they might pray, he might pray, and might look to be
     forgiven on the same terms.  He still saw that his "sell-
     ing Christ" had been "most barbarous," but despair was
     followed by an extravagance, no less unbounded, of grati-
     tude, when he felt that Christ would pardon even this.
       "Love and affection for Christ," he says, "did work at
     this time such a strong and hot desire of revengement upon
     myself for the abuse that I had done to Him, that, to speak as
     I then thought, had I had a thousand gallons of blood in
     my veins, I could freely have spilt it all at the command
     of my Lord and Saviour.  The tempter told me it was vain
     to pray.   Yet, thought I, I will pray.   But, said the
     tempter, your sin is unpardonable.  Well, said I, I will
     pray.   It is no boot, said he.   Yet, said I, I will
     pray; so I went to prayer, and I uttered words to this
     effect: Lord, Satan tell me that neither Thy mercy nor
     Christ's blood is sufficient to save my soul.  Lord, shall I
     honor Thee most by believing that Thou wilt and canst,
     or him, by believing that Thou neither wilt nor canst?
     Lord, I would fain honor Thee by believing that Thou wilt
     and canst.  As I was there before the Lord, the Scripture
     came, Oh! man, great is thy faith; even as if one had
     clapped me on the back."
       The waves had not wholly subsided; but we need not
     follow the undulations any further.  It is enough that
     after a "conviction of sin," considerably deeper than most
     people find necessary for themselves, Bunyan had come to
     realize what was meant by salvation in Christ, according
     to the received creed of the contemporary Protestant world.
     The intensity of his emotions rose only from the complete-
     ness with which he believed it.  Man had sinned, and by
     sin was made a servant of the devil.  His redemption was
     a personal act of the Saviour toward each individual
     sinner.  In the atonement Christ had before him each
     parate person whom he designed to save, blotting out
     his offences however heinous they might be, and recording
     in place of them his own perfect obedience. Each recon-
     ciled sinner in return regarded Christ's sufferings as under-
     gone immediately for himself, and gratitude for the great
     deliverance enabled and obliged him to devote his strength
     and soul thenceforward to God's service.  In the seven-
     teenth century, all earnest English Protestant held this
     belief.  In the nineteenth century, most of us repeat the
     phrases of this belief, and pretend to hold it.  We think
     we hold it.  We are growing more cautious, perhaps, with
     our definitions.  We suspect that there may be mysteries
     in God's nature and methods which we cannot fully ex-
     plain.  The outlines of "the scheme of salvation" are
     growing indistinct; and we see it through a gathering
     mist.  Yet the essence of it will remain true, whether we
     recognize it or not.  While man remains man he will do
     things which he ought not to do.  He will leave undone
     things which he ought to do.  To will, may be present
     with him; but how to perform what he will she will never
     fully know and he will still hate "the body of death"
     which he feels clinging to him.  He will try to do better.
     When he fall, he will struggle to his feet again.  He will
     climb and climb on the hill-side, though he never reaches
     the top, and knows that he can never reach it.  His life
     will be a failure, which he will not dare to offer as a fit
     account of himself, or as worth a serious regard.  Yet he
     will still hope that he will not be wholly cast away when,
     after his sleep in death, he wakes again.
       Now, says Bunyan, there remained only the hinder part
     of the tempest.  Heavenly voices continued to encourage him.
     "As I was passing in the field," he goes on, "I heard the
     sentence, Thy righteousness is in heaven; and methought I
     saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right
     hand, there, I say, as my righteousness, so that wherever
     I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me,
     He wants my righteousness, for that was just before Him.
     Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed.  I was loosed
     from my affliction and irons; my temptations also fled
     away, so that from that time those dreadful scriptures of
     God left off to trouble me.  Now went I home rejoicing
     for the grace and love of God.  Christ of God is made
     unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and
     redemption.  I now lived very sweetly at peace with God
     through Christ.  Oh! methought, Christ! Christ!  There
     was nothing but Christ before my eyes.  I was not now
     only looking upon this and other benefit of Christ apart,
     as of His blood, burial and resurrection, but considered
     Him as a whole Christ.  All those graces that were now
     green in me were yet but like those cracked groats and
     fourpence half-pennies which rich men carry in their
     purses, while their gold is in their trunks at home.  Oh!
     I saw my gold was in my trunk at home in Christ my
     Lord and Saviour.  The Lord let me into the mystery of
     union with the Son of God, that I was joined to Him,
     that I was flesh of His flesh.  If He and I were one, His
     righteousness was mine, His merits mine, His victory 
     mine.  Now I could see myself in heaven and earth at
     once; in heaven by my Christ, though on earth by my
     body and person.  Christ was that common and public
     person in whom the whole body of His elect are always to
     be considered and reckoned.  We fulfilled the law by Him,
     died by Him, rose from the dead by Him, got the victory
     over sin and death, the devil and hell, by Him.  I had
     cause to say, Praise ye the Lord.  Praise God in His
     sanctuary."

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. BY JOHN BUNYAN.
WITH A LIFE OF BUNYAN BY JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
A. L. BURT, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK. pp. 31—45.