JOHN BUNYAN AND HIS CHRISTIAN PILGRIM.

WE presume there can scarcely be found an Englishman who has not heard of JOHN BUNYAN, the famous old tinker, who was sent to Bedford gaol, for twelve long years, for preaching Christ's gospel in a private house.

Bunyan was the son of a poor man who lived in the little village of Elstow, near Bedford. When a youth, he was a rough, roystering, rollicking fellow, like most other young men in little villages in those dark days. Whatever he did he did thoroughly; and so he was thoroughly wicked. But he was Sometimes he was dreadfully frightened with thoughts of his great sins, and of death, judgment, and an eternal hell. He became seriously concerned; but he was a long time before he found peace for his troubled soul; the waves of doubt and fear tossing him about sadly.

not easy.

When he became, through the great grace of God, a christian man, like Saul of Tarsus, he was as zealous to do good as he had been to do evil. He began to preach, and his really earnest manner drew many to hear him. But these were the days of the Stuart Kings of England, when dissenters were persecuted with rigour by the ruling powers.

As we have said, he was sent to Bedford prison for preaching. That prison stood on the old bridge, and was a wretched place. There this noble-minded Englishman was confined for all those years, for telling his poor neighbours the good news of salvation by Jesus Christ. He had a wife and a little blind daughter; and this dear child used to come to his prison to bring away the tag laces her father had made. But whilst in that prison he had many thoughts about the christian life; and somehow or other he managed to write them down, and they were printed as a book, and called "The Pilgrim's Progress." Such a book as no rich bishop ever wrote-the best book in the world except the Bible—a book that charms the young and cheers the aged-a book that has passed through more editions, and has been translated into more languages, than perhaps any book in the world-a book that will be a favourite with all nations to the end of time. And this book was written in a gaol by a poor tinker, a maker of tag laces, a village baptist preacher, who had read few books but his Bible.

But Bunyan got his liberty at last; and again he went about preaching, and crowds flocked to hear him. Finding time, he

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JOHN BUNYAN AND HIS CHRISTIAN PILGRIM.

now wrote many more books. They were all on religious subjects, and some of them, like the " Pilgrim" and "Holy War," were allegories. He also wrote a history of his own life, and all he had gone through, and called it, “Grace abounding to the Chief of Siuners." All his writings have lately been republished, and they make three large volumes. When preaching, he was sometimes awfully terrific, and described the pit of perdition as if he had been in it, and come back again to tell his terrified hearers of its horrors. No one could hear him without serious emotions.

But that for which Bunyan is most admired, is his power of describing various characters, and giving them appropriate names. A writer in the United States says:

"Among character-painters, Bunyan deserves a place in the highest rank. In the wonderful tinker's hands they become living men. To all who read the Pilgrim's Progress, old and young, learned and unlearned, the multitude of characters that throng its pages are actual persons. We take but a short walk with Mr. Ignorance, who came out of the town of conceit, but we see enough of him to know that he is the perfect counterpart of a dozen good-for-nothing fellows in our own neighbourhood. Mr. Byends and My Lord Timeserver, we have often seen in legislative halls; and sometimes, if we mistake not, have beheld their smooth faces, and heard their fair speeches, in the assemblies of the church. Mr Talkative has 'pestered' us a thousand times. Mr. Selfwill has long been a thorn in our flesh; and we never meet a faint-hearted brother with his head bowed down like a bulrush, without thinking of poor Mr. Fearing, who lay moaning so long beside the Slough of Despond, and who went down with trembling steps at last into the deep river. The places described by Bunyan are as familiar to us as the places among which we spent our childhood-and among all the living terrors of the nursery, there were none for whom we felt a more unaffected horror than for old Giant Grim, or that other monster with the crab-tree cudgel, whose whole court-yard was paved with the skulls of illfated pilgrims.

The hero of the allegory is not only finely pourtrayed, but is himself a portraiture of the highest style of manhood. We know of no hero among all the creations of fiction who is equal to Christian. Bunyan's mind seems to have been fully equal to the conception of the truly great man. In Christian, the hand of a Bible-taught master has drawn every thing that is brave, and honest, and true; every thing that is genial and

JOHN BUNYAN AND HIS CHRISTIAN PILGRIM.

simple; every thing that is lovely and of good report. He fights like a lion in the Valley of Humiliation; he sings like a lark in the Chamber of Peace; when he be holds the miseries of captives, he gushes out with tears;' ror does he restrain a wholesome natural laugh at the expense of brave Mr. Talkative, who came out of Prating Row.

In narrating the personal adventures of his hero; Bunyan ever kept before his mind his own marvellous experience. The long road over which he brings his Pilgrim is the same path in which the Lord had led him on—a path full of difficulties and dangers, of dark valleys and pitfalls; but a path on which God's sunshine, sometimes fell, besides which living fountains of water gushed forth, and at the end of which rose the city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. The City of Destruction, in the mind of Bunyan, was connected with his own early life in the village of Elstow, among a crew of abandoned profligates, who united the license of the higher ranks to the ignorance and vulgarity of their own. From such scenes and companionships, the voice of the Spirit had called him forth with a loud and terrible warning. He had been mocked, he had been threatened, but the voice had waxed louder and louder. Onward he had gone, driven by the most agonising pains and fears, until he fell into that miry 'Slough' where the sins, and doubts, and terrors of the convicted sinner had all settled; and here he had lain for a long time bemoaning his doleful state. Then had come an interval of joy and triumph. But this was of short duration. For he soon encountered the deceiver, who sent him to the law for relief; and while he was labouring to establish a righteousness of his own, he had seen the anger of God to glow, and the flashes of fire had burst forth from the Sinai above him. While he was in this painful state, a good 'Evangelist,' in the shape of the minister of Bedford, had come to him, and with many rebukes, mingled with pity, had set him once more upon the right path. Long was the road over which he had gone before he reached the wicket-gate, and many and sharp were the arrows which Beelz bub had poured in upon his harrassed soul. Even after he had entered upon the narrow path, his journey had been painful and protracted before he arrived at the gladsome spot where the burden fell from his shoulders; and, while the tears coursed down his cheeks, he had heard a voice whisper sweetly to him, ' Peace be thy soul!" Then, like Christian, he had leaped for joy, and went singing on his way.

POETRY.

Thrice-blessed Dreamer! thou hast lain for now nearly two hundred years in Bunhill Fields, but no lapse of years can destroy the spell which thou holdest over the strongest minds ! Thy audience grows with the advance of time. In a country which thou knewest only as a trifling colony, thy immortal allegory lies on the tables of ten thousand drawing-rooms, arrayed in crimson and in gold, and lives too in the inner heart of all God's people."

So writes this American: and though he says a good deal in praise of our famous countryman, he does not say a word too much.

Reader! have you ever read John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress? If your whisper is-"No," then we would ask you, whatever have you been doing since you have been in the world? But never mind; get hold of it as soon as you canit may be had for a trifle now-and do not leave the world without having one of the richest treats you ever enjoyed. This, we dare promise you, if you read it. Only begin to read it, and you cannot leave off. And it may be you will find it, if you have not yet set out on the journey to the Celestial City, one of the best guides you can consult next to the Word of God. You will, then, if you follow on in the good way to the end, bless the memory of honest JOHN BUNYAN