fear of being overheard; no informers prowling round. The world was
shut out; and, in communion with heaven, they could forget their
sorrows, and have a rich foretaste of the inconceivable glory of
the celestial city. It was under such circumstances that Bunyan
preached one of his most remarkable sermons, afterwards published
under the title of The Holy City or the New Jerusalem, 1665.
'Upon a certain first-day, being together with my brethren in
our prison-chamber, they expected that, according to our custom,
something should be spoken out of the Word for our mutual edification.
I felt myself, it being my turn to speak, so empty, spiritless, and
barren, that I thought I should not have been able to speak among
them so much as five words of truth with life and evidence. At
last I cast mine eye upon this prophecy, when, after considering
awhile, methought I perceived something of that jasper in whose light
you find this holy city descended; wherefore, having got some dim
glimmering thereof, and finding a desire to see farther thereinto,
I with a few groans did carry my meditations to the Lord Jesus for
a blessing, which he did forthwith grant, and helping me to set
before my brethren, we did all eat, and were well refreshed; and
behold, also, that while I was in the distributing of it, it so
increased in my hand, that of the fragments that we left, after we
had well dined, I gathered up this basketful. Wherefore, setting
myself to a more narrow search, through frequent prayer, what first
with doing and then with undoing, and after that with doing again,
I thus did finish it.'[251] To this singular event the religious
public are indebted for one of Bunyan's ablest treatises, full
of the striking sparkles of his extraordinary imagination. It was
a subject peculiarly adapted to display his powers--the advent of
New Jerusalem, her impregnable walls and gates of precious stones,
golden streets, water of life, temple, and the redeemed from all