Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 7.djvu/107

 JOHN BUNYAN 69 a reproof which startled him. The woman of the house in front of which the wicked young tinker was standing, herself, as he remarks, " a very loose, ungodly wretch," protested that his horrible profanity made her tremble ; that he was the ungodliest fellow for swearing she had ever heard, and able to spoil all the youth of the town who came in his company. Struck by this wholly unexpected re- buke, he at once abandoned the practice of swearing ; although previously he tells us that " he had never known how to speak, unless he put an oath before and another behind." His account of his entering upon the solemn duties of a preacher of the gos- pel is at once curious and instructive. He deals honestly with himself, exposing all his various moods, weaknesses, doubts, and temptations. ' " I preached," he says, " what I felt ; for the terrors of the law and the guilt of transgression lay heavy on my conscience. I have been as one sent to them from the dead. 1 went, myself in chains, to preach to them in chains, and carried that fire in my conscience which I persuaded them to beware of." At times, when he stood up to preach, blasphemies and evil doubts rushed into his mind, and he felt a strong desire to utter them aloud to his congregation ; and at other seasons, when he was about to apply to the sinner some searching and fearful text of scripture, he was tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it condemned himself also ; but, withstanding the suggestion of the tempter, to use his own simile, he bowed him- self, like Samson, to condemn sin wherever he found it, though he brought guilt and condemnation upon himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philis- tines than to deny the truth. Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself to the operation of the penal laws by holding conventicles and preaching, he was deeply afflicted at the thought of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment. Nothing can be more touching than his simple and earnest words on this point. They show how warm and deep were his human affections, and what a tender and loving heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of duty. " I found myself a man compassed with infirmities ; the parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling the flesh from the bones ; and also it brought to my mind the many hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family was like to meet with, should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all beside. Oh, the thoughts of the hardships I thought my poor blind one might go under would break my heart to pieces. Poor child ! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world ! thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, -old, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee. But yet, thought I, I must venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. Oh ! I saw I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the heads of his wife and children ; yet I thought on those ' two milch kine that were to carry the ark of God into an- other country, and to leave their calves behind them.'