gate of it. How many of you will get half as far?

Now (what think you?), was it not a very bold thing in John Bunyan, whose
own descent was of such a low and inconsiderable generation, his father's
house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the
families in the land--was it not almost too bold in such a clown to take
such a gentleman-scholar as Saul of Tarsus, the future Apostle of the
Lord, and put him into the _Pilgrim's Progress_, and there go on to
describe him as a very brisk lad and nickname him with the nickname of
Ignorance? For, in knowledge of all kinds to be called knowledge,
Gamaliel's gold medallist could have bought the unlettered tinker of
Elstow in one end of the market and sold him in the other. And nobody
knew that better than Bunyan did. And yet such a lion was he for the
truth, such a disciple of Luther was he, and such a defender and preacher
of the one doctrine of a standing or falling church, that he fills page
after page with the crass ignorance of the otherwise most learned of all
the New Testament men. Bunyan does not accuse the rising hope of the
Pharisees of school or of synagogue ignorance. That young Hebrew Rabbi
knew every jot and tittle of the law of Moses, and all the accumulated
traditions of the fathers to boot. But Bunyan has Paul himself with him
when he accuses and convicts Saul of an absolutely brutish ignorance of
his own heart and hidden nature. That so very brisk lad was always
boasting in himself of the day on which he was circumcised, and of the
old stock of which he had come; of his tribe, of his zeal, of his
blamelessness, and of the profit he had made of his educational and
ecclesiastical opportunities. Whereas Bunyan is fain to say of himself
in his _Grace Abounding_ that he is "not able to boast of noble blood or
of a high-born state according to the flesh. Though, all things
considered, I magnify the Heavenly Majesty for that by this door He
brought me into this world to partake of the grace and life that is in