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 except in "The Confessions of St. Augustine," his
"Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." Bunyan's first experiences
after his introduction to Mr. Gifford and the inner circle of his
disciples were most discouraging. What he heard of God's dealings with
their souls showed him something of "the vanity and inward wretchedness
of his wicked heart," and at the same time roused all its hostility to
God's will. "It did work at that rate for wickedness as it never did
before." "The Canaanites _would_ dwell in the land." "His heart
hankered after every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every
duty, as a clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He
thought that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from
conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into his
heart, "his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the door to
keep Him out."

Yet all the while he was tormented with the most perverse scrupulosity of
conscience. "As to the act of sinning, I never was more tender than now;
I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my
conscience now was sore, and would smart at every twist. I could not now
tell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh! how
gingerly did I then go in all I did or said: I found myself in a miry