st or might have never known the
secret of his powers. He was born to be the Poet-apostle of the
English middle classes, imperfectly educated like himself; and, being
one of themselves, he had the key of their thoughts and feelings in
his own heart. Like nine out of ten of his countrymen, he came into
the world with no fortune but his industry. He had to work with his
hands for his bread, and to advance by the side of his neighbours
along the road of common business. His knowledge was scanty, though of
rare quality. He knew his Bible probably by heart. He had studied
history in Foxe's 'Martyrs,' but nowhere else that we can trace. The
rest of his mental furniture was gathered at first hand from his
conscience, his life, and his occupations. Thus every idea which he
received falling into a soil naturally fertile, sprouted up fresh,
vigorous, and original. He confessed to have felt--(as a man of his
powers could hardly have failed to feel)--continued doubts about the
Bible and the reality of the Divine government. It has been well said
that when we look into the world to find the image of God, it is as if
we were to stand before a looking-glass expecting to see ourselves
reflected there, and to see nothing. Education scarcely improves our
perception in this respect; and wider information, wider acquaintance
with the thoughts of other men in other ages and countries, might as
easily have increased his difficulties as have assisted him in
overcoming them. He was not a man who could have contented himself
with compromises and half-convictions. No force could have subdued him
into a decent Anglican divine--a 'Mr. Two Tongues, parson of the
parish.' He was passionate and thorough-going. The authority of
conscience presented itself to him only in the shape of religious
obligation. Religion once shaken into a 'perhaps,' would have had no
existence to him; and it is easy to conceive a university-bred Bunyan,
an intellectual meteor, flaring uselessly across the sky and
disappearing in smoke and nothingness.

Powerful temperaments are necessarily intense. Bunyan, born a tinker,
had heard right and wrong preached to him in the name of the Christian
creed. He concluded after a struggle that Christianity was true, and
on that conviction he built himself up into what he was. It might have
been the same perhaps with Burns had he been born a century before.
Given Christianity as an unquestionably true account of the situation
and future