relation concerning herself, and the robbing of her mistress.'

To his cruel imprisonment the world is indebted for the most
surprising narrative of a new birth that has ever appeared. It was
there that he was led to write the Grace Abounding to the Chief
of Sinners. He displays in the preface his deep interest in the
spiritual welfare of those who had been born under his ministry.
He rejoices in their happiness, even while he was 'sticking between
the teeth of the lions in the wilderness. I now again, as before
from the top of shenir and Hermon, so now from the lions' dens,
from "the mountains of the leopards," do look yet after you all,
greatly longing to see your safe arrival into the desired haven.'[254]
How natural it was that, while narrating his own experience, he
should be led to write a guide to pilgrims through time to eternity,
and that it should be dated from 'the den!'


'And thus it was: I writing of the way
And race of saints, in this our gospel-day,
Fell suddenly into an allegory
About their journey, and the way to glory.'[255]


Any one possessing powers of imagination, to whom the adventures
of Christian are familiar, would, on reading the Grace Abounding,
be continually struck with the likeness there drawn of the pilgrim--the
more he contemplates the two pictures of Christian experience, so
much the more striking is their similarity. The one is a narrative
of facts, the other contains the same facts allegorized. Thus, by
an irresistible impulse from heaven upon the mind of a prisoner for