The teaching he received here was but ill-suited for one of Bunyan's morbid sensitiveness. For it was based upon a constant introspection and a scrupulous weighing of each word and action, with a torturing suspicion of its motive, which made a man's ever- varying spiritual feelings the standard of his state before God, instead of leading him off from self to the Saviour. It is not, therefore, at all surprising that a considerable period intervened before, in the language of his school, "he found peace." This period, which seems to have embraced two or three years, was marked by that tremendous inward struggle which he has described, "as with a pen of fire," in that marvellous piece of religious autobiography, without a counterpart except in "The Confessions of St. Augustine," his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners." Bunyan's first experiences after his introduction to Mr. Gifford and the inner circle of his disciples were most discouraging. What he heard of God's dealings with their souls showed him something of "the vanity and inward wretchedness of his wicked heart," and at the same time roused all its hostility to God's will. "It did work at that rate for wickedness as it never did before." "The Canaanites WOULD dwell in the land." "His heart hankered after every foolish vanity, and hung back both to and in every duty, as a clog on the leg of a bird to hinder her from flying." He thought that he was growing "worse and worse," and was "further from conversion than ever before." Though he longed to let Christ into his heart, "his unbelief would, as it were, set its shoulder to the door to keep Him out."

Yet all the while he was tormented with the most perverse scrupulosity of conscience. "As to the act of sinning, I never was more tender than now; I durst not take a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every twist. I could not now tell how to speak my words, for fear I should misplace them. Oh! how gingerly did I then go in all I did or said: I found myself in a miry bog, that shook if I did but stir, and was as those left both of God, and Christ, and the Spirit, and all good things." All the misdoings of his earlier years rose up against him. There they were, and he could not rid himself of them. He thought that no one could be so bad as he was; "not even the Devil could be his equal: he was more loathsome in his own eyes than a toad." What then must God think of him? Despair seized fast hold of him. He thought he was "forsaken of God and given up to the Devil, and to a reprobate mind." Nor was this a transient fit of despondency. "Thus," he writes, "I continued a long while, even for some years together."

This is not the place minutely to pursue Bunyan's religious history through the sudden alternations of hopes and fears, the fierce temptations, the torturing illusions, the strange perversions of isolated scraps of Bible language - texts torn from their context - the harassing doubts as to the truth of Christianity, the depths of despair and the elevations of joy, which he has portrayed with his own inimitable graphic power. It is a picture of fearful fascination that he draws. "A great storm" at one time comes down upon him, "piece by piece," which "handled him twenty times worse than all he had met with before," while "floods of blasphemies were poured upon his spirit," and would "bolt out of his heart." He felt himself driven to commit the unpardonable sin and blaspheme the Holy Ghost, "whether he would or no." "No sin would serve but that." He was ready to "clap his hand under his chin," to keep his mouth shut, or to leap head-foremost "into some muckhill-hole," to prevent his uttering the fatal words. At last he persuaded himself that he had committed the sin, and a good but not overwise man, "an ancient Christian," whom he consulted on his sad case, told him he thought so too, "which was but cold comfort." He thought himself possessed by the devil, and compared himself to a child "carried off under her apron by a gipsy." "Kick sometimes I did, and also shriek and cry, but yet I was as bound in the wings of the temptation, and the wind would carry me away." He wished himself "a dog or a toad," for they "had no soul to be lost as his was like to be;" and again a hopeless callousness seemed to settle upon him. "If I would have given a thousand pounds for a tear I could not shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one." And yet he was all the while bewailing this hardness of heart, in which he thought himself singular. "This much sunk me. I thought my condition was alone; but how to get out of, or get rid of, these things I could not." Again the very ground of his faith was shaken. "Was the Bible true, or was it not rather a fable and cunning story?" All thought "their own religion true. Might not the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet Saviour as Christians had for Christ? What if all we believed in should be but 'a think-so' too?" So powerful and so real were his illusions that he had hard work to keep himself from praying to things about him, to "a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like," or even to Satan himself. He heard voices behind him crying out that Satan desired to have him, and that "so loud and plain that he would turn his head to see who was calling him;" when on his knees in prayer he fancied he felt the foul fiend pull his clothes from behind, bidding him "break off, make haste; you have prayed enough."

This "horror of great darkness" was not always upon him. Bunyan had his intervals of "sunshine-weather" when Giant Despair's fits came on him, and the giant "lost the use of his hand." Texts of Scripture would give him a "sweet glance," and flood his soul with comfort. But these intervals of happiness were but short-lived. They were but "hints, touches, and short visits," sweet when present, but "like Peter's sheet, suddenly caught up again into heaven." But, though transient, they helped the burdened Pilgrim onward. So vivid was the impression sometimes made, that years after he could specify the place where these beams of sunlight fell on him - "sitting in a neighbour's house," - "travelling into the country," - as he was "going home from sermon." And the joy was real while it lasted. The words of the preacher's text, "Behold, thou art fair, my love," kindling his spirit, he felt his "heart filled with comfort and hope." "Now I could believe that my sins would be forgiven." He was almost beside himself with ecstasy. "I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I thought I could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood me." "Surely," he cried with gladness, "I will not forget this forty years hence." "But, alas! within less than forty days I began to question all again." It was the Valley of the Shadow of Death which Bunyan, like his own Pilgrim, was travelling through. But, as in his allegory, "by and by the day broke," and "the Lord did more fully and graciously discover Himself unto him." "One day," he writes, "as I was musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, that scripture came into my mind, 'He hath made peace by the Blood of His Cross.' By which I was made to see, both again and again and again that day, that God and my soul were friends by this blood: Yea, I saw the justice of God and my sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other. This was a good day to me. I hope I shall not forget it." At another time the "glory and joy" of a passage in the Hebrews (ii. 14-15) were "so weighty" that "I was once or twice ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but with solid joy and peace." "But, oh! now how was my soul led on from truth to truth by God; now had I evidence of my salvation from heaven, with many golden seals thereon all banging in my sight, and I would long that the last day were come, or that I were fourscore years old, that I might die quickly that my soul might be at rest."