adversity, always holding the golden mean."

We may add the portrait drawn by one who had been his companion and
fellow-sufferer for many years, John Nelson: "His countenance was grave
and sedate, and did so to the life discover the inward frame of his
heart, that it was convincing to the beholders and did strike something
of awe into them that had nothing of the fear of God."

The same friend speaks thus of Bunyan's preaching: "As a minister of
Christ he was laborious in his work of preaching, diligent in his
preparation for it, and faithful in dispensing the Word, not sparing
reproof whether in the pulpit or no, yet ready to succour the tempted; a
son of consolation to the broken-hearted, yet a son of thunder to secure
and dead sinners. His memory was tenacious, it being customary with him
to commit his sermons to writing after he had preached them. A rich
anointing of the Spirit was upon him, yet this great saint was always in
his own eyes the chiefest of sinners and the least of saints."

An anecdote is told which, Southey says, "authenticates itself," that one
day when he had preached "with peculiar warmth and enlargement," one of
his hearers remarked "what a sweet sermon he had delivered." "Ay," was
Bunyan's reply, "you have no need to tell me that, for the devil
whispered it to me before I was well out of the pulpit." As an evidence
of the estimation in which Bunyan was held by the highly-educated, it is
recorded that Charles the Second expressed his surprise to Dr. Owen that
"a learned man such as he could sit and listen to an illiterate tinker."
"May it please your Majesty," Owen replied. "I would gladly give up all
my learning if I could preach like that tinker."

Although much of Bunyan's literary activity was devoted to controversy,