gether could equal it.'

His brain was overstrained, it will be said. Very likely. It is to be
remembered, however, who and what he was, and that he had overstrained
it in his eagerness to learn what he conceived his Maker to wish him
to be--a form of anxiety not common in this world. The cure was as
remarkable as the disorder. One day he was 'in a good man's shop,'
still 'afflicting himself with self-abhorrence,' when something seemed
to rush in through an open window, and he heard a voice saying, 'Didst
ever refuse to be justified by the blood of Christ?' Bunyan shared the
belief of his time. He took the system of things as the Bible
represented it; but his strong common sense put him on his guard
against being easily credulous. He thought at the time that the voice
was supernatural. After twenty years he said modestly that he 'could
not make a judgment of it.' The effect, any way, was as if an angel
had come to him and had told him that there was still hope. Hapless as
his condition was, he might still pray for mercy, and might possibly
find it. He tried to pray, and found it very hard. The devil whispered
again that God was tired of him; God wanted to be rid of him and his
importunities, and had, therefore, allowed him to commit this
particular sin that he might hear no more of him. He remembered Esau,
and thought that this might be too true: 'the saying about Esau was a
flaming sword barring the way of the tree of life to him.' Still he
would not give in. 'I can but die,' he said to himself, 'and if it
must be so, it shall be said that such an one died at the feet of
Christ in prayer.'

He was torturing himself with illusions. Most of the saints in the
Catholic Calendar have done the same. The most remorseless philosopher
can hardly refuse a certain admiration for this poor uneducated
village lad struggling so bravely in the theological spider's web. The
'Professors' could not comfort him, having never experienced similar
distresses in their own persons. He consulted 'an Antient Christian,'
telling him that he feared that he had sinned against the Holy Ghost,
The Antient Christian answered gravely that he thought so too. The
devil having him at advantage, began to be witty with him. The devil
suggested that as he had offended the second or third Person of the
Trinity, he had better pray the Father to mediate for him with Christ
and the Holy Spirit. Then the devil took another turn. Christ, he
said, was really sor