greatly troubled, though at the same time
encouraged in his endeavours after the blessedness he longed for so
earnestly but could not yet attain to, by "a dream or vision" which
presented itself to him, whether in his waking or sleeping hours he does
not tell us. He fancied he saw his four Bedford friends refreshing
themselves on the sunny side of a high mountain while he was shivering
with dark and cold on the other side, parted from them by a high wall
with only one small gap in it, and that not found but after long
searching, and so strait and narrow withal that it needed long and
desperate efforts to force his way through. At last he succeeded.
"Then," he says, "I was exceeding glad, and went and sat down in the
midst of them, and so was comforted with the light and heat of their
sun."

But this sunshine shone but in illusion, and soon gave place to the old
sad questioning, which filled his soul with darkness. Was he already
called, or should he be called some day? He would give worlds to know.
Who could assure him? At last some words of the prophet Joel (chap. iii,
21) encouraged him to hope that if not converted already, the time might
come when he should be converted to Christ. Despair began to give way to
hopefulness.

At this crisis Bunyan took the step which he would have been wise if he
had taken long before. He sought the sympathy and counsel of others. He
began to speak his mind to the poor people in Bedford whose words of
religious experiences had first revealed to him his true condition. By
them he was introduced to their pastor, "the godly Mr. Gifford," who
invited him to his house and gave him spiritual counsel. He began to
attend the meetings of his disciples.

The teaching he received here was but ill-suited for one of Bunyan's
morbid sensitiveness. For it was based upon a constant introspection and
a scrupulous weighing of each word and action, with a torturing suspicion
of its motive, which made a man's ever-varying spiritual feelings the
standard of his state before God, instead of leading him off from self to
the Saviour. It is not, therefore, at all surprising that a considerable
period intervened before, in the language of his school, "he found
peace." This period, which seems to have embraced two or three years,
was marked by that tremendous inward struggle which he has described, "as
with a pen of fire," in that marvellous piece of religious autobiography,
without a counterpart