f every unadvised
christian." His experiences, like those of every public speaker,
especially the most eloquent, were very varied, even in the course of the
same sermon. Sometimes, he tells us, he would begin "with much
clearness, evidence, and liberty of speech," but, before he had done, he
found himself "so straitened in his speech before the people," that he
"scarce knew or remembered what he had been about," and felt "as if his
head had been in a bag all the time of the exercise." He feared that he
would not be able to "speak sense to the hearers," or he would be "seized
with such faintness and strengthlessness that his legs were hardly able
to carry him to his place of preaching." Old temptations too came back.
Blasphemous thoughts formed themselves into words, which he had hard work
to keep himself from uttering from the pulpit. Or the tempter tried to
silence him by telling him that what he was going to say would condemn
himself, and he would go "full of guilt and terror even to the pulpit
door." "'What,' the devil would say, 'will you preach this? Of this
your own soul is guilty. Preach not of it at all, or if you do, yet so
mince it as to make way for your own escape.'" All, however, was in
vain. Necessity was laid upon him. "Woe," he cried, "is me, if I preach
not the gospel." His heart was "so wrapped up in the glory of this
excellent work, that he counted himself more blessed and honoured of God
than if he had made him emperor of the Christian world." Bunyan was no
preacher of vague generalities. He knew that sermons miss their mark if
they hit no one. Self-application is their object. "Wherefore," he
says, "I laboured so to speak the word, as that the sin and person guilty
might be particularized by it." And what he preached he knew and felt to
be true. It was not what he read in books, but what he had himself
experienced. Like Dante he had been in hell himself, and could speak as
one who knew its terrors, and could tell also of the blessedness of
deliverance by the person and work of Christ. And this consciousness
gave him confidence and courage in declaring his message. It was "as if
an angel of God had stood at my back." "Oh it hath been with such power
and heavenly evidence upon my own soul while I have been labouring to
fasten it upon the conscience of others, that I could not be contented
with saying, 'I believe and am sure.' Methought I was more than sure, if
it be lawful so to e