e voice which
speaks to us from these old pages seems not so much that of a denizen
of the world in which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn
confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as the
contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the first time the
Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the style is that of a man dead
to self gratification, careless of the world's opinion, and only
desirous to convey to others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the
lesson of his inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and
dangers; and to give glory to Him who had mercifully led him through
all, and enabled him, like his own Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley
of the Shallow of Death, the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the
terrors of Doubting Castle, and to reach the land of Beulah, where the
air was sweet and pleasant, and the birds sang and the flowers sprang
up around him, and the Shining Ones walked in the brightness of the
not distant heaven. In the introductory pages he says: "I could have
dipped into a style higher than this in which I have discoursed, and
could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do; but
I dared not. God did not play in tempting me; neither did I play when
I sunk, as it were, into a bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell took
hold on me; wherefore, I may not play in relating of them, but be
plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was."

This book, as well as "Pilgrim's Progress," was written in Bedford
prison, and was designed especially for the comfort and edification of
his "children, whom God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by
his ministry." In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken
from them and tied up, "sticking, as it were, between the teeth of the
lions of the wilderness," he once again, as before, from the top of
Shemer and Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain of
leopards, would look after them with fatherly care and desires for
their everlasting welfare. "If," said he, "you have sinned against
light; if you are tempted to blaspheme; if you are drowned in despair;
if you think God fights against you, or if heaven is hidden from your
eyes, remember it was so with your father. But out of all the Lord
delivered me."

He gives no dates; he affords scarcely a clew to his localities; of
the man, as he worked and ate and drank and lodged, of his neighbors
and contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the worl