'And when I have done the exercise, it hath gone to my heart,
to think the Word should now fall as rain on stony places; still
wishing from my heart, O! that they who have heard me speak this
day, did but see as I do, what sin, death, hell, and the curse
of God is; and also what the grace, and love, and mercy of God
is, through Christ, to men in such a case as they are who are yet
estranged from him.

'For I have been in my preaching, especially when I have been
engaged in the doctrine of life by Christ, without works, as if an
angel of God had stood by at my back to encourage me.'

Such feelings are not limited to Bunyan, but are most anxiously
felt by all our pious ministers. How fervently ought their hearers
to unite in approaches to the mercy-seat, that the Divine blessing
may make the Word fruitful.

In those days it was not an uncommon thing for the hearers, at the
close of the sermon, to put questions to the preacher, sometimes
to elicit truth, or to express a cordial union of sentiments, or
to contradict what the minister had said. Upon one occasion, Mr.
Bunyan, after his sermon, had a singular dispute with a scholar.
It is narrated by Mr. C. Doe, who was a personal friend and great
admirer of our author, and who probably heard it from his own mouth,
and will be found in the Struggler, inserted vol. iii., p. 767.

It is the common taunt of the scorner, and sometimes a stone of
stumbling to the inquirer, that, while the Christian believes in
the intensity of the Saviour's sufferings, and that God was made
flesh that he might offer himself as an atonement to redeem mankind,