8:17), than ever I shall be able to express. "Heirs of God," God
himself is the portion of his saints.'[154]

As his mental agitation subsided into this delicious calm, his bodily
health was restored; to use his own figure, Captain Consumption,
with all his men of death, were[155] routed, and his strong bodily
health trimphed over disease; or, to use the more proper language
of an eminent Puritan, 'When overwhelmed with the deepest sorrows,
and that for many doleful months, he who is Lord of nature healed
my body, and he who is the Father of mercies and God of all grace
has proclaimed liberty to the captive, and given rest to my weary
soul.'[156] Here we have a key to the most eventful picture in
the Pilgrim's Progress--The Valley of the Shadow of Death--which
is placed in the midst of the journey. When in the prime of life,
death looked at him and withdrew for a season. It was the shadow
of death that came over his spirit.

The church at Bedford having increased, Bunyan was chosen to fill
the honourable office of a deacon. No man could have been better
fitted for that office than Bunyan was. He was honesty itself, had
suffered severe privations, so as to feel for those who were pinched
with want; he had great powers of discrimination, to distinguish
between the poverty of idleness, and that distress which arises from
circumstances over which human foresight has no control, so as to
relieve with propriety the pressure of want, without encouraging
the degrading and debasing habit of depending upon alms, instead
of labouring to provide the necessaries of life. He had no fine
clothes to be spoiled by trudging down the filthiest lanes, and
entering the meanest hovels to relieve suffering humanity. The
poor--and that is the great class to whom the gospel is preached,