During this time Bunyan, though a member of the Bedford congregation, continued to reside at Elstow, in the little thatched wayside tenement, with its lean-to forge at one end, already mentioned, which is still pointed out as “Bunyan’s Cottage.”  There his two children, Mary, his passionately loved blind daughter, and Elizabeth were born; the one in 1650, and the other in 1654.  It was probably in the next year, 1655, that he finally quitted his native village and took up his residence in Bedford, and became a deacon of the congregation.  About this time also he must have lost the wife to whom he owed so much.  Bunyan does not mention the event, and our only knowledge of it is from the conversation of his second wife, Elizabeth, with Sir Matthew Hale.  He sustained also an even greater loss in the death of his friend and comrade, Mr. Gifford, who died in September, 1655.  The latter was succeeded by a young man named John Burton, of very delicate health, who was taken by death from his congregation, by whom he was much beloved, in September, 1660, four months after the restoration of the Monarchy and the Church.  Burton thoroughly appreciated Bunyan’s gifts, and stood sponsor for him on the publication of his first printed work.  This was a momentous year for Bunyan, for in it Dr. Brown has shown, by a “comparison of dates,” that we may probably place the beginning of Bunyan’s ministerial life.  Bunyan was now in his twenty-seventh year, in the prime of his manly vigour, with a vivid imagination, ready speech, minute textual knowledge of the Bible, and an experience of temptation and the wiles of the evil one, such as few Christians of double his years have ever reached.  “His gifts could not long be hid.”  The beginnings of that which was to prove the great work of his life were slender enough.  As Mr. Froude says, “he was modest, humble, shrinking.”  The members of his congregation, recognizing that he had “the gift of utterance” asked him to speak “a word of exhortation” to them.  The request scared him.  The most truly gifted are usually the least conscious of their gifts.  At first it did much “dash and abash his spirit.”  But after earnest entreaty he gave way, and made one or two trials of his gift in private meetings, “though with much weakness and infirmity.”  The result proved the correctness of his brethren’s estimate.  The young tinker showed himself no common preacher.  His words came home with power to the souls of his hearers, who “protested solemnly, as in the sight of God, that they were both affected and comforted by them, and gave thanks to the Father of mercies for the grace bestowed on him.”  After this, as the brethren went out on their itinerating rounds to the villages about, they began to ask Bunyan to accompany them, and though he “durst not make use of his gift in an open way,” he would sometimes, “yet more privately still, speak a word of admonition, with which his hearers professed their souls edified.”  That he had a real