ies which lay beyond the grave? To
Bunyan the future life of Christianity was a reality as certain as the
next day's sunrise; and he could have been happy on bread and water if
he could have felt himself prepared to enter it. Every created being
seemed better off than he was. He was sorry that God had made him a
man. He 'blessed the condition of the birds, beasts, and fishes, for
they had not a sinful nature. They were not obnoxious to the wrath of
God. They were not to go to hell-fire after death.' He recalled the
texts which spoke of Christ and forgiveness. He tried to persuade
himself that Christ cared for him. He could have talked of Christ's
love and mercy 'even to the very crows which sate on the ploughed land
before him.' But he was too sincere to satisfy himself with formulas
and phrases. He could not, he would not, profess to be convinced that
things would go well with him when he was not convinced. Cold spasms
of doubt laid hold of him--doubts, not so much of his own salvation,
as of the truth of all that he had been taught to believe; and the
problem had to be fought and grappled with, which lies in the
intellectual nature of every genuine man, whether he be an Aeschylus or
a Shakespeare, or a poor working Bedfordshire mechanic. No honest soul
can look out upon the world and see it as it really is, without the
question rising in him whether there be any God that governs it at
all. No one can accept the popular notion of heaven and hell as
actually true, without being as terrified as Bunyan was. We go on as
we do, and attend to our business and enjoy ourselves, because the
words have no real meaning to us. Providence in its kindness leaves
most of us unblessed or uncursed with natures of too fine a fibre.

Bunyan was hardly dealt with. 'Whole floods of blasphemies,' he says,
'against God, Christ, and the Scriptures were poured upon my spirit;
questions against the very being of God and of his only beloved Son,
as whether there was in truth a God or Christ, or no, and whether the
Holy Scriptures were not rather a fable and cunning story than the
holy and pure Word of God.'

'How can you tell,' the tempter whispered, 'but that the Turks have as
good a Scripture to prove their Mahomet the Saviour, as we have to
prove our Jesus is? Could I think that so many tens of thousands in so
many countries and kingdoms should be without the knowledge of the
right way to heaven, if there were indeed a heaven, and that we wh