He comes into men's hearts with a warrant of pardon, complete and lasting, a full remission of guilt, and an inspiration to the love of what is right towards God and towards men that has been new life to thousands, and is to this hour the only fountain of a true and strong morality.

Regarding the sacrifice of Christ simply as an expression of the emotion which stirred so deeply the heart of God, we say, with Paul, "God commendeth His love towards us, in that while we were sinners Christ died for us." Love of men is the source and spring of the sacrifice. But viewing it as an expression of the active effort of God to save men, we say, with the same Paul, "Herein is the righteousness of God manifested, apart from the law." Calvary repeats and reinforces Sinai. God is indeed our Father, our loving Father, making for righteousness-working to it as His one grand and comprehensive end in His government of men.

This, then, is the message we hear from our Bible-from Old and New Testament alike,-God is light-active, radiant, all-penetrating, life-giving light, and in Him is no darkness at all. God is love-love of men, and love of right; love of men, though they have forsaken the right, and therefore He hath sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Behold the highest Christian life. It is an intense, passionate, soul-filling love of right, at work, always at work; speaking and bearing itself in loving, helpful deed towards sinners; pitying them; taking trouble for them; entering into covenants with them; fighting their battles, and inspiring them to fight; suffering much, even to death, for them, if need be; and always so loving and acting as to secure the extinction of wrong in men and in society, and the survival and coronation of goodness and right. This is the divine life. This is the perfected and perfecting state. This is the imitation of God. This is the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. JOHN CLIFFORD.

With a resolute will,

A MOTHER'S DEVOTION.

ON the brow of a hill,

There she watched by them still,

Reclined on a stone,

That mother dejected,

So sadly neglected,

And all unprotected,

Was watching alone.

Through the heat of the day
She was chasing away
All the wild birds of prey

From the bones of her boys.
And all through the cold night,
Till the breaking of light,
Prowling beast to affright,
Resounded her voice.

Her devotion was told-
Her devotion so bold,
That no terrors could hold

From her lonely toil.
To the king 'twas recited
How Rizpah affrighted
The birds that alighted

To seize on their spoil.

2 Samuel xxi.

Then the king gave command,
To their own native land,
By the tenderest hand,

They should all be removed.

By the royal behest,

In the grave they should rest,
In the land he possessed-
Those bodies beloved.

So she watched not in vain,
Though she watched them in pain
Till the time of the rain-

Till the summer was past.
They should all be interred,
After hope long deferred:
Glad the message she heard
To cheer her at last.
Thus they all should repose,
After numerous woes
From their numerous foes,

In the land of their birth.
Her love was rewarded,
Her zeal was applauded,
Her bravery lauded,

Aloud in the earth.

E. K. EVERETT.

HISTORICAL CAMEOS.

No. III.-Dreamer, Witness, and Worker.

THE prisoner is a tall, burly man, broad set, with ruddy complexion, sparkling eyes, and reddish brown hair. He has been apprehended on a warrant from Justice Wingate, and has just been subject to re-examination by another Justice Shallow of the period,-one Mr. Foster, of Bedford. The indictment runs against "John Bunyan, of Bedford, labourer," and he is charged with being an upholder of unlawful conventicles, and refusing to conform to the national worship of the Church of England. He might easily have escaped apprehension, for he had ample notice of the issue of the warrant. But as a servant of the Lord, he felt bound at all hazards to witness for the truth. Refusing to give any pledge for the future, the mittimus is made out, and the culprit committed to prison.

What his fate may be when he comes up for trial, may easily be guessed from the way in which the law was administered in high places. Of this we have an admirable example, in the treatment Richard Baxter received at the hands of the infamous Jeffreys, at Westminster Hall. "Yonder stands Oates in the pillory," shouted the Judge, "and if Baxter did but stand on the other side, I would say that two of the greatest rogues and scoundrels in the kingdom stood there!" And then snorting, snuffling through his nose, and squeaking, he ridiculed the prayers of the Puritans. He mimicked their manner and burlesqued their tone. With uplifted eyes and clenched hands, he snorted, "O Lord we are Thy people, Thy peculiar people, Thy dear people!" "Why, my lord," urged the counsel slyly, "some will think it's very hard measure to stop these men's mouths, and then not let them speak through their noses!"

Bunyan has left us a tract containing a racy account of his trial. It is put in a strongly dramatic form, and the dialogue is characterized by all his mother-wit and caustic humour. The bench declared that he was possessed with the spirit of delusion, and of the Devil. Justice Keelin said that he ought not to preach, and asked where he had his authority. Bunyan quoted, "As every man hath received the gift, so let him minister the same one to another." Keelin interrupted him. "Let me open that scripture to you a little," said he. "As every man hath received the gift—that is, as every man hath received a trade, so let him follow it. If any man hath received a gift of tinkering, as thou hast, let him follow his tinkering. Thy gift is in mending pots and kettles-follow it then, and let the divine follow his calling."

Judgment was pronounced without the production of a single witness. It was as follows-"You must be had back again to prison, and there lie for three months following; and at three months end, if you do not submit to go to church and leave your preaching, you must be banished the realm: and if after such a day as shall be appointed you to be gone, you shall be found in this realm, you must stretch by the neck for it, I tell you plainly." "But upon this matter," says Bunyan, "I told him I was at a point with him; for if I was out of prison to-day, I would preach the Gospel again tomorrow by the help of God. Whereupon he bid my jailor have me away, and so I was had home to prison." That prison was by no means inviting. No John Howard had as yet

gone on an errand of mercy through the dungeons. The various Nonconformist memorials show plainly enough how that, for conscience' sake, men were confined in damp, dark, and loathsome dens, into which, to-day, we would not thrust a dog. And such an one, doubtless, was the gaol at Bedford. Its character is grimly hinted at by Bunyan, when he says, "As I walked through the wilderness of this world, Í lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream." His imprisonment was but an illustration of the fact

"High walls and huge the body may confine,

And iron grates obstruct the prisoner's gaze,
And massive bolts may baffle his design,
And vigilant keepers watch his devious ways;
Yet scorns the immortal mind this base control,
No chains can bind it, and no cell enclose;
Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole,
And in a flash, from earth to heaven it goes."

It has been well said that the devil made a great mistake when he imprisoned John Bunyan. If the preacher was silenced, the dreamer became strangely eloquent. His powerful imagination, which had been so wrought upon, in the old time made familiar to us in his "Grace Abounding," was to be yet more powerfully stirred. If, under conviction, his imagination had filled him with anguish and despair, under grace it was to reveal to him the sunlit slopes of the Delectable Mountains, and fill his soul with glimpses of the glory beyond. He had been tortured by doubt and consumed with fear. He had passed through a darkness that could be felt, and had been appalled by the lurid flashes of judgment. To him, the enemy of mankind and his agents were very real. They swarmed around him, and hissed their vile temptations in his ear. He had wrestled with them, had struck at them in fierce and impotent anger. O the agony of those days, the darkness of the shadow of death! "Sell Him!" urged the fiends. "Sell Him! Sell Him! SELL HIM!" "Never! Never! Not for thousands of worlds; not for thousands!" he cried aloud. But at length, worn out with the persistency of the attack, the words, "Let Him go if He will!" passed through his mind; and then the pall of blackness fell upon his soul. He envied the crow as it flew overhead; he envied the dog as it ran along the highway. Stones underfoot and tiles on the houses were inanimate, and therefore better off than he-the doomed one. "None," says Bunyan, "know the terror of those days but myself."

But long since the clouds had rolled away. The light of Calvary had beamed upon his soul. The Sun of Righteousness had risen with healing in His wings. The shadows had dispersed. Doubts and fears had given place to joyous confidence. Henceforth all his deep experiences, all his terrible conflicts, were to contribute to the intense realism of his great life-work. His previous history was to run in the same deepening channel. His own recollections of military life, with the godly troopers of Cromwell and Fairfax, should furnish illustrations. The experience of "Holy Mr. Gifford," who in his earlier days had been a ranting, roaring, royalist major, must add to his stock of martial lore. And the Baptist pastor of Bedford, in his later years a valiant soldier of the Lord, should sit as his model for Greatheart, the pilgrim's guide. Persecution had shut him up-it should furnish leisure for

DREAMER, WITNESS, AND WORKER.

213 study, and time for thought. Prison life, it is true, had curtailed his library; but he who possesses the Bible and the Book of Martyrs, is passing rich in material for work. The very narrowness of his studies should add to their depth and intensity.

But let it not be imagined that our prisoner enjoyed a life of leisure. His family must be supported. His first wife was dead; she from whom he received his first impulses towards religion, and who brought him a marriage portion of pious books. But her place was supplied by one who was a true help-meet-a most heroic, leal-hearted woman. She cared for his children with motherly tenderness, and pleaded for him before the courts with wifely constancy. He says, "The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me, in this place, as the peeling the flesh from the bone; and that not only because I am somewhat too fond of these great mercies, but also because I had often brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from themespecially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all beside. O the thoughts of the hardships my poor blind child might go under, would break my heart in pieces! Poor child, thought I, what sorrows art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, must beg, must suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind to blow upon thee."

For the support of these dear ones, then, Bunyan wrought laboriously. No easy student life was his. The exercise of the gift of tinkering being impossible, he learned to make tagged thread laces. These were sold to the hawkers who travelled the neighbouring country; and a precarious living was thus secured for his family.

But while his hands were engaged, he ministered to the spiritual wants of his fellow-prisoners. To these he preached as opportunity offered. The prison was crowded with captives for conscience' sake, and from their ranks a little church was formed, to which he ministered with rare unction and power.

During a portion of the weary twelve years of his incarceration, some liberty beyond the precincts of "the den" was accorded to him by the kindness of the jailor. But this becoming known, his imprisonment was made more rigorous. It is said that, having on one occasion been permitted to visit some friends, Bunyan was seized with an unaccountable presentiment that he ought immediately to return to the gaol. He became restless, and could not sleep. At last he told his wife that he must return at once. He did so, and aroused the anger of the jailor for disturbing his rest. But scarcely was he quietly settled in his bed, before an officer, sent down by the prelatical party to make inquisition into the matter, knocked at the prison gates. "Are all the prisoners safe?" enquired he. "Yes," was the rejoinder. "Produce John Bunyan, then; I would see him." The officer was satisfied, and departed; whereupon the jailor informed his prisoner that he could go in and out when he chose, for he knew, better than he could tell him, when to return.

His time in prison was incessantly occupied. Preaching and praying, reading and writing, thinking and working, the twelve years at length wore away. Elected pastor of the Baptist church at Bedford, he came forth to yet more exhausting labours. A ready and forcible speaker,

powerful at once in his rude eloquence and his intense sympathy for the sorrows of men, he drew crowds wherever he went. In the den he had dreamed his dream. Now in the world he was manfully acting his life. He became in labours more abundant. Not without peril, however, for tradition affirms, that after his release, he had sometimes to meet his congregation disguised as a waggoner, with a cart whip on his shoulder. He made an annual journey to London. There he was listened to with unmingled pleasure by men so distinguished as the great John Owen. One day at court the king twitted Owen for going to hear an illiterate tinker prate. "Please your majesty," said the scholar, "if I could possess the tinker's ability for preaching, I would gladly surrender all my learning." And the common people bore testimony to his power. Upon one occasion they crowded around him as he descended from the pulpit. They gave him unstinted praise for preaching "so glorious a sermon." "Yes, my friends," said Bunyan drily, "the devil told me as much, before I left the pulpit!"

A thorough Baptist, Bunyan was yet large-hearted and charitable. None could determine from his Pilgrim's Progress to what sect he belonged. There is no trace of Baptism in it. It has been wittily remarked, indeed, that "if he had dipped his pilgrim, he would have stopped his progress." Be that as it may, he was a staunch upholder of Christian union, and declared that he would resist certain practices, which in his opinion tended to the division of Christians, “until the moss grew on his eyebrows!"

Of his great work, we need not here speak. It takes its place in the boy's estimation, along with Robinson Crusoe and the Arabian Nights. It is treasured by the Christian the wide world over. To the scholar it is a well of English undefiled. It has softened the rugged criticism of Samuel Johnson; it has drawn forth the enthusiastic praise of Thomas Babington Macaulay. Editions, sumptuously bound and illustrated, are found on the tables of the rich. Copies, thumbed and dog-eared, are found on the shelves of the poor. Next to the Bible, it is the universal book.

Witness, dreamer, and worker, all his parts were played well. An indefatigable preacher, he was also a voluminous author. He was engaged in preparing a collected edition of his writings for the press, when stricken by his last illness. He fell gloriously. Always an active philanthropist, he had, when weakened in body, undertaken a long journey in rainy weather, in order to reconcile an erring son to his father. Successful in his mission, he returned to London shaking in the gripe of an aguish fever. At the house of a friend, on Snow Hill, he breathed his last on the 31st of August, 1688, in the sixtieth year of his age, and the thirty-second of his ministry. Full of joyous confidence, his last words were of hope and comfort to others. His pilgrimage was accomplished. For him, surely, as he crossed the river, the bells of the Celestial City would ring for joy. Its gates would be flung wide open. Midst dazzling splendours, escorted by crowned harpers, whiterobed and glad, he would have abundant entrance into the place of his glorious imaginings-the city of joy and song!

For "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, AND THEIR WORKS DO FOLLOW THEM!" W. H. ALLEN.