were forced to go, because he was stronger than they. They also had but little to say, for they knew themselves in a fault. The giant, therefore, drove them before him, and put them into his castle, into a very dark dungeon, nasty and stinking to the ness of their spirits of these two men. Here, then, they imprisonment. The grievous therefore, you are severed from Him; you have severed yourself from Him. Behold His goodness then, but yourself be no partaker of it.' 'O, thought I, what have I lost? what have I parted with? what has disinherited my poor soul. O, it is sad to be destroyed by the grace and mercy of God; to have the Lamb, the Saviour, turn Lion and destroyer, Rev. vi. 16, 17.' 'Now, also the tempter began afresh to mock my soul another way, saying 'That Christ indeed did pity my case, and was sorry for my loss; but forasmuch as I had sinned and transgressed as I had done, He could by no means help me, nor save me from what I feared; for my sin was not of the nature of theirs for whom He bled and died; neither was it counted with those that were laid to his charge when he hanged on the tree; therefore, unless He should come down from Heaven, and die anew for this sin, though indeed He did greatly pity me, yet I could have no benefit of Him.' 'These thoughts would so confound me, and imprison me, and tie me up from faith, that I knew not what to do. But O, I thought that He would come down again. O, that the work of man's redemption was yet to be done by Christ. How would I pray Him and entreat Him to count and reckon this sin amongst the rest for which he died. But this Scripture would strike me down as dead, Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more.' 'O, the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are affected by a thorough application of guilt, yielding to desperation. This is the man that hath his dwelling among the tombs with the dead.' 'One day I walked to a neighbouring town, and sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep pause, about the most fearful state mysin had brought me to; and after long musing I lifted up my head, but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give light, and as if the very stones in the streets and tiles upon the houses did bend themselves against me, because I had sinned against my Saviour.' Newton's description of the 'tempter's power' is conceived in a similar spirit. 'Loud in my ears a charge he read, L lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday night, without one bit of bread, or drop of drink, or light, or any to ask how they did: they were, therefore, here in evil case, and were far from friends and acquaintance, Ps. lxxxviii. 18. Now in this place Christian had double sorrow, because it was through his unadvised counsel that they were brought into this distress. Now, Giant Despair had a wife, and her name was Diffidence. So when he was gone to bed, he told his wife what he had done; to wit, that he had taken a couple of prisoners and cast them into his dungeon, for trespassing on his grounds. Then he asked her also what he had best to do further to them. So she asked him what they were, whence they came, and whither they were bound; and he told her. Then she counselled him that when he arose in the morning he should beat them without any mercy. So, when he arose, he getteth him a grievous crab-tree cudgel, and goes down into the dungeon to them, and there first falls to rating of them as if they were dogs, although they never gave him a On Thursday word of distaste. Then he falls upon them, Giant Despair and beats them fearfully, in such sort that they were not able to help themselves, or to turn them upon the floor. This done, he withdraws, and leaves them, there to condole their misery, and to mourn under their distress. So all that day they spent the time in nothing but sighs and bitter lamentations. The next night, she, talking with her husband further about them, and understanding they were yet alive, did advise him to counsel them to make away themselves. beats his pris oners. counsels them selves. On Friday So, when morning was come, he goes to Giant Despair them in a surly manner as before, and perto kill them- ceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them, that since they were never like to come out of that place, their only way would be forthwith to make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison: For why, said he, should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so much bitterness? But they desired him to let them go. With that he looked ugly upon them, and rushing to them, had doubtless made an end of them himself, but that he fell The giant into one of his fits (for he sometimes, in sometimes has sunshiny weather, fell into fits), and lost fits. for a time the use of his hands. Wherefore he withdrew, and left them as before, to consider what to do. Then did the prisoners consult between themselves, whether it was best to take his counsel or no; and thus they began to discourse. Chr. Brother, said Christian, what shall we do? Th life that we now live is miserable. For my part I know not whether it is best to live Christian crushed. thus, or to die out of hand. 'My soul chooseth strangling rather than life;' and the grave is more easy for me than this dungeon! Job vii. 15. Shall we te ruled by the giant? (v) Hope. Indeed, our present condition is dreadful, and (v) Christian Crushed. - As a matter of fact,' says a modern writer, there are, we apprehend, very few who have not been conscious of sudden and almost unaccountable disturbances of the intellectual atmosphere. In these momentary fluctuations, whether arising from moral or physical causes, as from nervous depression, or a fit of melancholy, or an attack of pain, or harassing anxieties, or the loss of friends, or their misfortunes or calamities, or, above all, from conscious neglect of duty, a man shall sometimes feel as if he had lost sight even of those primal truths on which he has been accustomed to gaze as on the stars of the firmament-bright, serene, and unchangeable; even such truths as the existence of God, his paternal government of the world, and the divine origin of Christianity. 'In these moods, objections which he thought had long since been dead and buried, start again into sudden existence. They do more; like the escaped genius of the Arabian Nights, who rises from the little bottle, in which he had been imprisoned, in the shape of a thin smoke, which finally assumes gigantic outlines, and towers to the skies, these fiimsy objections dilate into monstrous dimensions, and fill the whole sphere of mental vision. 'There is a momentary eclipse of that light in which the soul seemed to dwell; a momentary vibration of that judgment which we so often flattered ourselves was poised for ever. Yet this no more argues the want of habitual faith than the variations of the compass argue the severance of the connection between the magnet and the pole; or than the oscillations of the rocking stone argue that the solid mass can be heaved from its bed. A child may shake, but a giant cannot overturn it.' |