'Now was I as one
awakened out of some troublesome sleep and dream; and listening to this
heavenly sentence, I was as if I had heard it thus expounded to
me:—"Sinner, thou thinkest, that because of thy sins and infirmities, I
cannot save thy soul; but behold my Son is by me, and upon him, I look, and not
on thee, and will deal with thee according as I am pleased with him." At
this I was greatly lightened in my mind, and made to understand, that God could
justify a sinner at any time; it was but his looking upon Christ and imputing
of his benefits to us, and the work was forthwith done.'
'Now was I got on
high, I saw myself within the arms of grace and mercy; and though I was before
afraid to think of a dying hour, yet now I cried, Let me die. Now death was
lovely and beautiful in my sight, for I saw that we shall never live indeed,
till we are gone to the other world. I saw more in those words, "Heirs of
God" (Rom 8:17) than ever I shall be able to express. "Heirs of
God," God himself is the portion of his saints.'
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 routed, and his strong bodily health triumphed 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.' 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, and by whom it
is received—would hail him as a brother. Gifted in prayer, full of sound and
wholesome counsel drew from holy writ, he must have been a peculiar blessing
to the distressed, and to all the members who stood in need of advice and
assistance. Such were the men intended by the apostles, 'men of honest report,
full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom' (Acts 6:3), whom the church was to select,
to relieve the apostles from the duties of ministration to the wants of the
afflicted members, in the discharge of which they had given offense.
While thus actively
employed, he was again visited with a severe illness, and again was subject to
a most searching and solemn investigation as to his fitness to appear before
the judgment seat of God. 'All that time the tempter did beset me strongly,
laboring to hide from me my former experience of God's goodness; setting
before me the terrors of death, and the judgment of God, insomuch that at this
time, through my fear of miscarrying forever, should I now die, I was as one
dead before death came; I thought that there was no way but to hell I
must.'
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