at the bar. I heard it also proclaimed, "Gather together the tares,
the chaff, and stubble, and cast them into the burning lake"; and
with that the bottomless pit opened just whereabout I stood, out
of the mouth of which there came, in an abundant manner, smoke and
coals of fire, with hideous noises. It was also said, "Gather my
wheat into the garner"; and with that I saw many catched up and
carried away into the clouds, but I was left behind. I also sought
to hide myself, but I could not, for the man that sat upon the
cloud still kept his eye upon me; my sins also came into my mind,
and my conscience did accuse me on every side. Upon that I awaked
from my sleep.'

No laboured composition could have produced such a dream as this.
It flows in such dream-like order as would lead us to infer, that
the author who narrates it had, when a boy, heard the twenty-fifth
chapter of Matthew read at church, and the solemn impression
following him at night assisted in producing a dream which stands,
and perhaps will ever stand, unrivalled.

Awful as must have been these impressions upon his imagination, they
were soon thrown off, and the mad youth rushed on in his desperate
career of vice and folly. Is he then left to fill up the measure
of his iniquities? No, the Lord has a great work for him to do.
HIS hand is not shortened that he cannot save. Bunyan has to be
prepared for his work; and if terrors will not stop him, manifested
mercies in judgments are to be tried.

'God did not utterly leave me, but followed me still, not now with
convictions, but judgments; yet such as were mixed with mercy. For
once I fell into a creek of the sea, and hardly escaped drowning.