release would therefore seem to have anticipated the formal issue of his
pardon by four months. Bunyan was now half way through his forty-fourth
year. Sixteen years still remained to him before his career of
indefatigable service in the Master's work was brought to a close. Of
these sixteen years, as has already been remarked, we have only a very
general knowledge. Details are entirely wanting; nor is there any known
source from which they can be recovered. If he kept any diary it has not
been preserved. If he wrote letters--and one who was looked up to by so
large a circle of disciples as a spiritual father and guide, and whose
pen was so ready of exercise, cannot fail to have written many--not one
has come down to us. The pages of the church books during his pastorate
are also provokingly barren of record, and little that they contain is in
Bunyan's handwriting. As Dr. Brown has said, "he seems to have been too
busy to keep any records of his busy life." Nor can we fill up the blank
from external authorities. The references to Bunyan in contemporary
biographies are far fewer than we might have expected; certainly far
fewer than we could have desired. But the little that is recorded is
eminently characteristic. We see him constantly engaged in the great
work to which he felt God had called him, and for which, "with much
content through grace," he had suffered twelve years' incarceration. In
addition to the regular discharge of his pastoral duties to his own
congregation, he took a general oversight of the villages far and near
which had been the scene of his earlier ministry, preaching whenever
opportunity offered, and, ever unsparing of his own personal labour,
making long journeys into distant parts of the country for the
furtherance of the gospel. We find him preaching at Leicester in the
year of his release. Reading also is mentioned as receiving occasional
visits from him, and that not without peril after the revival of
persecution; while the congregations in London had the benefit of his
exhortations at stated intervals. Almost the first thing Bunyan did,