husbands and wives, parents and children, masters and servants, by which
those who profess a true faith are bound to show forth its reality and
power; the "Holy City," an exposition of the vision in the closing
chapters of the Book of Revelation, brilliant with picturesque
description and rich in suggestive thought, which, he tells us, had its
origin in a sermon preached by him to his brethren in bonds in their
prison chamber; and a work on the "Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal
Judgment." On these works we may not linger. There is not one of them
which is not marked by vigour of thought, clearness of language, accuracy
of arrangement, and deep spiritual experience. Nor is there one which
does not here and there exhibit specimens of Bunyan's picturesque
imaginative power, and his command of forcible and racy language. Each
will reward perusal. His work on "Prayer" is couched in the most exalted
strain, and is evidently the production of one who by long and agonizing
experience had learnt the true nature of prayer, as a pouring out of the
soul to God, and a wrestling with Him until the blessing, delayed not
denied, is granted. It is, however, unhappily deformed by much ignorant
reviling of the Book of Common Prayer. He denounces it as "taken out of
the papistical mass-book, the scraps and fragments of some popes, some
friars, and I know not what;" and ridicules the order of service it
propounds to the worshippers. "They have the matter and the manner of
their prayer at their fingers' ends; they set such a prayer for such a
day, and that twenty years before it comes: one for Christmas, another
for Easter, and six days after that. They have also bounded how many
syllables must be said in every one of them at their public exercises.
For each saint's day also they have them ready for the generations yet
unborn to say. They can tell you also when you shall kneel, when you
shall stand, when you should abide in your seats, when you should go up
into the chancel, and what you should do when you come there. All which
the apostles came short of, as not being able to compose so profound a