him at his death, in 1655, the character of a “wise, tolerant, and truly Christian man.”  The conversation of the poor women who were destined to exercise so momentous an influence on Bunyan’s spiritual life, evidenced how thoroughly they had drunk in their pastor’s teaching.  Bunyan himself was at this time a “brisk talker in the matters of religion,” such as he drew from the life in his own Talkative.  But the words of these poor women were entirely beyond him.  They opened a new and blessed land to which he was a complete stranger.  “They spoke of their own wretchedness of heart, of their unbelief, of their miserable state by nature, of the new birth, and the work of God in their souls, and how the Lord refreshed them, and supported them against the temptations of the Devil by His words and promises.”  But what seems to have struck Bunyan the most forcibly was the happiness which their religion shed in the hearts of these poor women.  Religion up to this time had been to him a system of rules and restrictions.  Heaven was to be won by doing certain things and not doing certain other things.  Of religion as a Divine life kindled in the soul, and flooding it with a joy which creates a heaven on earth, he had no conception.  Joy in believing was a new thing to him.  “They spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world,” a veritable “El Dorado,” stored with the true riches.  Bunyan, as he says, after he had listened awhile and wondered at their words, left them and went about his work again.  But their words went with him.  He could not get rid of them.  He saw that though he thought himself a godly man, and his neighbours thought so too, he wanted the true tokens of godliness.  He was convinced that godliness was the only true happiness, and he could not rest till he had attained it.  So he made it his business to be going again and again into the company of these good women.  He could not stay away, and the more he talked with them the more uneasy he became—­“the more I questioned my own condition.”  The salvation of his soul became all in all to him.  His mind “lay fixed on eternity like a horse-leech at the vein.”  The Bible became precious to him.  He read it with new eyes, “as I never did before.”  “I was indeed then never out of the Bible, either by reading or meditation.”  The Epistles of St. Paul, which before he “could not away with,” were now “sweet and pleasant” to him.  He was still “crying out to God that he might know the truth and the way to Heaven and glory.”  Having no one to guide him in his study of the most difficult of all books, it is no wonder that he misinterpreted and misapplied its words in a manner which went far to unsettle his brain.  He read that without faith he could not be saved, and though he did not clearly know what faith was, it became a question of supreme anxiety