ng somewhere
disguised as a wagoner, when he was overtaken by a constable who had a
warrant for his arrest.

"Do you know that devil of a fellow Bunyan?" asked the constable.

"Know him?" cried Bunyan. "You might call him a devil indeed, if you
knew him as well as I once did!"

This was not the only time his wit served him to good purpose. On
another occasion a certain Cambridge student, who was filled with a
sense of his own importance, undertook to prove to him what a divine
thing reason was, and he capped his argument with the declaration that
reason was the chief glory of man which distinguished him from a beast.
To this Bunyan calmly made answer: "Sin distinguishes man from beast;
is sin divine?"

Frederick Saunders observes that, like Milton in his blindness, Bunyan
in his imprisonment had his spiritual perception made all the brighter
by his exclusion from the glare of the outside world. And of the great
debt of gratitude we all owe to "the wicked tinker of Elstow" Dean
Stanley has spoken so truly that I am fain to quote his words: "We all
need to be cheered by the help of Greatheart and Standfast and
Valiant-for-the-Truth, and good old Honesty! Some of us have been in
Doubting Castle, some in the Slough of Despond. Some have experienced
the temptations of Vanity Fair; all of us have to climb the Hill of
Difficulty; all of us need to be instructed by the Interpreter in the
House Beautiful; all of us bear the same burden; all of us need the
same armor in our fight with Apollyon; all of us have to pass through
the Wicket Gate--to pass through the dark river, and for all of us (if
God so will) there wait the shining ones at the gates of the Celestial
City! Who does not love to linger over the life story of the 'immortal
dreamer' as one of those characters for whom man has done so little and
God so much?"

About my favorite copy of the "Pilgrim's Progress" many a pleasant
reminiscence lingers, for it was one of the books my grandmother gave
my father when he left home to engage in the great battle of life; when
my father died this thick, dumpy little volume, with its rude cuts and
poorly printed pages, came into my possession. I do not know what part
this book played in my father's life, but I can say for myself that it
has brought me solace and cheer a many times.

The only occasion upon which I felt bitterly toward Dr. O'Rell was when
that personage observed in my hearing one day that Bunyan was a
d