me of
ecclesiastical confusion, subsequently became rector of St. John's
Church, in Bedford, and master of the hospital attached to it. Gifford's
career had been a strange one. We hear of him first as a young major in
the king's army at the outset of the Civil War, notorious for his loose
and debauched life, taken by Fairfax at Maidstone in 1648, and condemned
to the gallows. By his sister's help he eluded his keepers' vigilance,
escaped from prison, and ultimately found his way to Bedford, where for a
time he practised as a physician, though without any change of his loose
habits. The loss of a large sum of money at gaming awoke a disgust at
his dissolute life. A few sentences of a pious book deepened the
impression. He became a converted man, and joined himself to a handful
of earnest Christians in Bedford, who becoming, in the language of the
day, "a church," he was appointed its first minister. Gifford exercised
a deep and vital though narrow influence, leaving behind him at his
death, in 1655, the character of a "wise, tolerant, and truly Christian
man." The conversation of the poor women who were destined to exercise
so momentous an influence on Bunyan's spiritual life, evidenced how
thoroughly they had drunk in their pastor's teaching. Bunyan himself was
at this time a "brisk talker in the matters of religion," such as he drew
from the life in his own Talkative. But the words of these poor women
were entirely beyond him. They opened a new and blessed land to which he
was a complete stranger. "They spoke of their own wretchedness of heart,
of their unbelief, of their miserable state by nature, of the new birth,
and the work of God in their souls, and how the Lord refreshed them, and
supported them against the temptations of the Devil by His words and
promises." But what seems to have struck Bunyan the most forcibly was
the happiness which their religion shed in the hearts of these poor
women. Religion up to this time had been to him a system of rules and
restrictions. Heaven was to be won by doing certain things and not doing
certain other things. Of religion as a Divine life kindled in the soul,
and flooding it with a joy which creates a heaven on earth, he had no
conception. Joy in believing was a new thing to him. "They spake as if
joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture
language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they
were to me as if they