uppermost, and the loud execration at once bewrays young Badman. You
have only to remember that it is Sabbath evening, and you witness a
scene often enacted on Elstow green two hundred years ago.

The strong depraving element in Bunyan's character was UNGODLINESS.
He walked according to the course of this world, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind; and conscious of his own
rebellion, he said unto God, "Depart from me, for I desire not the
knowledge of thy ways." The only restraining influence of which he
then felt the power, was terror. His days were often gloomy through
forebodings of the wrath to come; and his nights were scared with
visions, which the boisterous diversions and adventures of his
waking-day could not always dispel. He would dream that the last day
had come, and that the quaking earth was opening its mouth to let him
down to hell; or he would find himself in the grasp of fiends, who
were dragging him powerless away. And musing over these terrors of
the night, yet feeling that he could not abandon his sins, in his
despair of heaven his anxious fancy would suggest to him all sorts of
strange desires. He would wish that there had been no hell at all;
or that, if he must needs go thither, he might be a devil, "supposing
they were only tormentors, and I would rather be a tormentor than
tormented myself."

These were the fears of his childhood. As he grew older, he grew
harder. He experienced some remarkable providences, but they neither
startled nor melted him. He once fell into the sea, and another time
out of a boat into Bedford river, and either time had a narrow escape
from drowning. One day in the field with a companion, an adder
glided across their path. Bunyan's ready switch stunned it in a
moment; but with characteristic daring, he forced open the creature's