works which he there projected or composed. Some of these were controversial; but one of them was his own life, under the title, "Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners," and another was the "PILGRIM'S PROGRESS."

In 1672 he obtained his liberty, and his friends immediately built for him a large meeting-house, where he continued to preach with little interruption till his death. Once a year he visited London, and was there so popular, that twelve hundred people would gather together at seven in the morning of a winter's working-day to hear him. Amongst the admiring listeners, Dr Owen was frequently found; and once when Charles the Second asked how a learned man like him could sit down to hear a tinker prate, the great theologian is said to have answered," May it please your Majesty, could I possess the tinker's abilities for preaching, I would most gladly relinquish all my learning." But popular as he was, he was not fond of praise. One day after he had concluded an impressive discourse, his friends pressed round to thank him for his "sweet sermon." Aye," he bluntly answered, "you need not remind me of that; for the devil told me as much before I left the pulpit."

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He had numbered sixty years, and written as many books, when he was released from his abundant labours. A young gentleman, his neighbour, had fallen under his father's displeasure, and was much concerned at his father's estrangement as well as at the prospect of being disinherited. He begged Mr Bunyan's friendly interposition to propitiate his father, and prepare the way for his return to parental favour and affection. The kind-hearted man undertook the task, and having successfully achieved it, was returning from Reading to London on horseback, when he was thoroughly drenched with excessive rains. He arrived cold and wet at the house of Mr Strudwick, a grocer on Snow Hill. Here he was seized with fits of shivering, which passed off in violent fever, and after ten days' sickness, on the 31st of August 1688, his pilgrimage ended, and he went in by the gate into the city.

As the most appropriate introduction to the following selections from the practical writings of Bunyan, we would close this rapid history of the MAN, with a few remarks on the THEOLOGIAN and the AUTHOR.

I. Bunyan's theological merits we rank very high. No one can turn over his pages without noticing the abundance of his Scriptural quotations; and these quotations no one can examine without perceiving how minutely he had studied, and how deeply he had pondered, the word of God. But it is possible to be very textual, and yet by no means very scriptural. A man may have an exact acquaintance with the literal Bible, and yet entirely miss the great Bible message. He may possess a dexterous command of detached passages and insulated sentences, and yet be entirely ignorant of that peculiar scheme which forms the great gospel revelation. But this was Bunyan's peculiar excellence. He was even better acquainted with the Gospel as the scheme of God, than he was familiar with the Bible-text; and the consequence is, that though he is sometimes irrelevant in his references, and fanciful in interpreting particular passages, his doctrine is almost always according to the analogy of faith. The doctrine of a free and instant justification by the imputed righteousness of Christ, none even of the Puritans could state with more Luther-like boldness, nor defend with an affection more worthy of Paul. In his last and best days, Coleridge wrote, “I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth, according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as the Pilgrim's Progress. It is in my conviction the best Summa Theologia Evangelicæ ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired."* Without questioning this verdict, we would include in the encomium some of his other writings, which possibly Coleridge never saw. Such as the Tracts contained in this volume. They exhibit Gospel-truths in so clear a light, and state them in such a frank and happy tone, that he who runs may read, and he who reads in earnest will rejoice. The Pilgrim is a peerless guide to those who have already passed in at the wicket-gate; but those who are still seeking peace to their trou

* Remains, vol. iii. p. 391.

bled souls, will find the best directory in "The Jerusalem Sinner Saved."

II. Invaluable as a theologian, Bunyan stands alone as a contributor to theological literature. In recent times no man has done so much to draw the world's delighted attention to the subjects of supreme solicitude. No production of a mortal pen has found so many readers as one work of his; and none has awakened so frequently the sighing behest, "Let me die the death of the righteous."

None has painted the beauty of holiness in taints more lovely, nor spoken in tones more thrilling to the heart of universal humanity. At first the favourite of the vulgar, he is now the wonder of the learned; and from the obscurity, not inglorious, of smoky cupboards and cottage chimneys, he has been escorted up to the highest places of classical renown, and duly canonized by the pontiffs of taste and literature. The man, whom Cowper praised anonymously,

"Lest so despised a name should move a sneer,'

has at last extorted emulous plaudits from a larger host of writers than ever conspired to praise a man of genius, who was also a man of God. Johnson and Franklin, Scott, Coleridge, and Southey, Byron and Montgomery, Macintosh and Macaulay, have exerted their philosophical acumen and poetic feeling to analyze his various spell, and account for his unequalled fame; and though the round-cornered copies, with their diverting woodcuts, have not disappeared from the poor man's ingle, illustrated editions blaze from the shelves of every sumptuous library, new pictures, from its exhaustless themes, light up the walls of each annual exhibition; and amidst the graceful litter of the drawing-room table, you are sure to take up designs from the Pilgrim's Progress. So universal is the ascendancy of the tinker-teacher, so world-wide the diocese of him whom Whitefield created Bishop Bunyan, that probably half the ideas which the outside-world entertains regarding experimental piety, they have, in some form or other, derived from him. One of the most popular preachers in his day, in his little treatises, as well as in his longer allegories, he preaches to countless thousands still. The cause of this unexampled popularity is a question of great practical moment.

And, first of all, Bunyan speaks to the whole of man,-to his

imagination, his intellect, his heart. He had in himself all these ingredients of full-formed humanity, and in his books he lets all of them out. French writers and preachers are apt to deal too exclusively in the one article-fancy; and though you are amused for the moment with the rocket-shower of brilliant and many-tinted ideas which fall sparkling around you, when the exhibition is ended, you are disappointed to find that the whole was momentary, and that from all the ruby and emerald rain scarcely one gem of solid thought remains.* Scottish writers and preachers are apt to indulge the argumentative cacoëthes of their country, and cramming into a tract or sermon as much hard-thinking as the Bramah-pressure of hydrostatic intellects can condense into the iron paragraphs, they leave no room for such delicate materials as fancy or feeling, illustration, imagery, or affectionate appeal ;+ whilst Irish authors and pulpit-orators are so surcharged with their own exuberant enthusiasm, that their main hope of making you think as they think, is to make you feel as they feel. The heart is their Aristotle; and if they cannot win you by a smile or melt you by a tear, they would think it labour lost to try a syllogism. Bunyan was neither French, nor Scotch, nor Irish. He embodied in his person, though greatly magnified, the average mind of England—playful, affectionate, downright. His intellectual power comes chiefly out in that homely self-commending sense-the brief business-like reasoning, which might be termed Saxon logic, and of which Swift in one century, and Cobbett in another, are obvious instances. His premises are not always true, nor his inferences always legitimate; but there is such evident absence of sophistry, and even of that refining and hair-splitting which usually beget the suspicion of sophistry-his statements are so sincere, and his conclusions so direct, the language is so perspicuous, and the appeal is made so honestly to each reader's understanding, that his popularity as a reasoner is inevitable. We need not say that the author of the Pilgrim possessed imagination; but it is important to note the service it rendered to his preaching, and the charm which it still imparts to his miscellaneous

* Pascal was an exception. D'Aubigné, so far as writing in French makes a Frenchman, is another. Their works are full of fancy, but it is the fancy which gives to truth its wings. The rocket is charged, not with coloured sparks, but burning jewels.

† Here, again, exceptions occur, and the greatest of our Scottish preachers is a contradiction to the characteristic style of his country

works. The pictorial power he possessed in a rare degree. His mental eye perceived the truth most vividly. Some minds are moving in a constant mystery. They see men like trees walking. The different doctrines of the Bible all wear dim outlines to them, jostling and jumbling; and after a perplexing morrice of bewildering hints and half discoveries, they vanish into the misty back-ground of nonentity. To Bunyan's bright and broadwaking eye all things were clear. The men walked and the trees stood still. Everything was seen in sharp relief and definite outline-a reality. And besides the pictorial, he possessed in highest perfection the illustrative faculty. Not only did his own mind perceive the truth most vividly, but he saw the very way to give others a clear perception of it also. This is the great secret of successful teaching. Like a man who has clambered his difficult way to the top of a rocky eminence, but who, once he has reached the summit, perceives an easier path, and directs his companions along its gentler slopes, and gives them a helping-hand to lift them over the final obstacles; it was by giant struggles over the debris of crumbling hopes, and through jungles of despair, and up the cliffs of apparent impossibility, that Bunyan forced his way to the pinnacle of his eventual joy; but no sooner was he standing there, than his eagle-eye detected the easier path, and he made it the business of his benevolent ministry to guide others into it. Though not the truth, an illustration is a stepping-stone towards it; an indentation in the rock which makes it easier to climb. No man had a happier knack in hewing out these notches in the cliff, and no one knew better where to place them, than this pilgrim's pioneer. Besides, he rightly judged that the value of these suggestive similies-these illustrative stepping-stones-depends very much on their breadth and frequency. But Bunyan appeals not only to the intellect and imagination, but to the hearts of men. There was no bitterness in Bunyan. He was a man of kindness and compassion. How sorry he is for Mr Badman! and how he makes you sympathize with Christian and Mr Ready-to-halt and Mr Feeble-mind, and all the other interesting companions of that eventful journey! And in his sermons how piteously he pleads with sinners for their own souls! and how impressive is the undisguised vehemency of his yearning affections! In the same sentence Bunyan has a word for the man of sense, and another for the man of fancy, and a third for the man of feeling; and by thus blending the intellec