last, it continued for a year. In perusing his own recital of these
terrible conflicts, the first relief to our tortured sympathy is in
the recollection that it is all over now, and that the sufferer,
escaped from his great tribulation, is long ago before the throne.
But in the calmer, because remoter, contemplation of this fiery
trial, it is easy to see "the end of the Lord." When He permitted
Satan to tempt his servant Job, it was not for Job's sake merely, nor
for the sake of the blessed contrast which surprised his latter days,
that he allowed such thick-coming woes to gather round the patriarch;
but it was to provide in his parallel experience a storehouse of
encouragement and hope for the future children of sorrow. And when
the Lord permitted the adversary so violently to assail our worthy,
and when he caused so many of his own waves and billows to pass over
him, it was not merely for the sake of Bunyan; it was for the sake of
Bunyan's readers down to the end of time. By selecting this strong
spirit as the subject of these trials, the Lord provided, in his
intense feelings and vivid realizations, a normal type--a glaring
instance of those experiences which, in their fainter modifications,
are common to most Christians; and, through his graphic pen, secured
a guidebook for Zion's pilgrims in ages yet to come. In the
temptations we are now called to record, there is something so
peculiar, that we do not know if Christian biography supplies any
exact counterpart; but the time and manner of its occurrence have
many and painful parallels. It was after he had entered into "rest"-
-when he had received joyful assurance of his admission into God's
family, and was desiring to depart and be with Christ--it was then
that this assault was made on his constancy, and it was a fiercer
assault than any. If we do not greatly err, it is not uncommon for
believers to be visited after conversion with temptations from which
they were exempt in the days of their ignorance; as well as