darted in upon him “three times together,” and he was “as though he had seen the Lord Jesus look down through the tiles upon him,” and was sent mourning but rejoicing home.  But it was still with him like an April sky.  At one time bright sunshine, at another lowering clouds.  The terrible words about Esau “returned on him as before,” and plunged him in darkness, and then again some good words, “as it seemed writ in great letters,” brought back the light of day.  But the sunshine began to last longer than before, and the clouds were less heavy.  The “visage” of the threatening texts was changed; “they looked not on him so grimly as before;” “that about Esau’s birthright began to wax weak and withdraw and vanish.”  “Now remained only the hinder part of the tempest.  The thunder was gone; only a few drops fell on him now and then.”

The long-expected deliverance was at hand.  As he was walking in the fields, still with some fears in his heart, the sentence fell upon his soul, “Thy righteousness is in heaven.”  He looked up and “saw with the eyes of his soul our Saviour at God’s right hand.”  “There, I say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me, ‘He wants my righteousness,’ for that was just before Him.  Now did the chains fall off from my legs.  I was loosed from my affliction and irons.  My temptations also fled away, so that from that time those dreadful Scriptures left off to trouble me.  Oh methought Christ, Christ, there was nothing but Christ that was before mine eyes.  I could look from myself to Him, and should reckon that all those graces of God that now were green upon me, were yet but like those crack-groats, and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, while their gold is in their trunks at home.  Oh, I saw my gold was in my trunk at home.  In Christ my Lord and Saviour.  Further the Lord did lead me into the mystery of union with the Son of God.  His righteousness was mine, His merits mine, His victory also mine.  Now I could see myself in heaven and earth at once; in heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my Righteousness and Life, though on earth by my body or person.  These blessed considerations were made to spangle in mine eyes.  Christ was my all; all my Wisdom, all my Righteousness, all my Sanctification, and all my Redemption.”

CHAPTER III.

The Pilgrim, having now floundered through the Slough of Despond, passed through the Wicket Gate, climbed the Hill Difficulty, and got safe by the Lions, entered the Palace Beautiful, and was “had in to the family.”  In plain words, Bunyan united himself to the little Christian brotherhood at Bedford, of which the former loose-living royalist major, Mr. Gifford, was the pastor, and was formally admitted into their society.  In Gifford we recognize the prototype of the Evangelist of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” while the Prudence, Piety, and Charity