ys, ringing bells to rouse the
neighborhood, and swearing. When he repented, his vivid imagination
made him think that he had committed the unpardonable sin. In the
terror that he felt at the prospect of the loss of his soul, he passed
through much of the experience that enabled him to write the
_Pilgrim's Progress_.

Bunyan became a preacher of God's word. Under trees, in barns, on the
village green, wherever people resorted, he told them the story of
salvation. Within six months after the Restoration, he was arrested
for preaching without Episcopal sanction. The officers took him away
from his little blind daughter. The roisterers of the Restoration
thought a brazier was too coarse to have feelings; yet Bunyan dropped
tears on the paper when he wrote of "the many hardships, miseries, and
wants that my poor family were like to meet with, should I be taken
from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer to my heart
than all besides. Oh, the thoughts of the hardship my poor blind one
might undergo, would break my heart to pieces." In spite of his
dependent family and the natural right of the freedom of speech,
Bunyan was thrust into Bedford jail and kept a prisoner for nearly
twelve years. Had it not been for his imprisonment in this "squalid
den," of which he speaks in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, we should
probably be without that famous work, a part of which, at least, was
written in the jail.

In 1672, as a step toward restoring the Catholic religion, Charles II.
suspended all penal statutes against the dissenting clergy; Bunyan was
thereupon released from jail.

[Illustration: BEDFORD BRIDGE, SHOWING GATES AND JAIL. _From an old
print_.]

After his release, he settled down to his life's work of spreading the
Gospel by both pen and tongue. When he visited London to preach, it
was not uncommon for twelve hundred persons to come to hear him at
seven o'clock in the morning of a week day in winter.

The immediate cause of his death was a cold caught by riding in the
rain, on his way to try to reconcile a father and son. In 1688 Bunyan
died as he uttered these words, "Take me, for I come to Thee."

His Work.--Bunyan achieved the distinction of writing the greatest
of all allegories, the _Pilgrim's Progress_. This is the story of
Christian's journey through this life, the story of meeting Mr.
Worldly Wiseman, of the straight gate and the narrow path, of the
Delectable Mountains of Youth, of the valley of Hum