Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/104

 66 ARTISTS AND AUTHORS JOHN BUNYAN By John Greenleaf Whittieb (i 628- i 688) " Wouldst see A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee ? ' w ho has not read " Pilgrim's Prog- ress?" Who has not, in child- hood, followed the wandering Christian on his way to the Celestial City ? Who has not laid at night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the walls of dark- ness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the Archers, the Hill of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants, Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair, the sunny Delectable Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and last fallen asleep, to dream over the strange story, to hear the sweet welcom- ings of the sisters at the House Beauti- ful, and the song of birds from the win- dow of that " upper chamber which opened toward the sunrising?" And who, look- ing back to the green spots in his childish experiences, does not bless the good Tinker of Elstow ? And who. that has reperused the story of the Pilgrim at a maturer age, and felt the plummet of its truth sounding in the deep places of the soul, has not reason to bless the author for some timely warning or grateful encouragement ? Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste and feeling who does not with Cowper, " Even in transitory life's late day. Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road And guides the Progress of the soul to God ! " We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple but wonderful piece of autobiography entitled " Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," from the pen of the author of " Pilgrim's Progress." It is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim ; " truth stranger than fiction ;" the painful upward struggling of a spirit from the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high, pure air of Hope and Faith.- More earnest words ^g
 * jjS the wonderful glory beyond it ; and at