in autobiography.  The veil which hides the thoughts of one man from another is withdrawn, and the reader is placed in the closest communion with the mind of the writer.  In “Grace Abounding” is easily detected the secret of Bunyan’s success in allegory.  “My sins did so offend the Lord, that even in my childhood He did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions.  I have been in my bed greatly afflicted, while asleep, with apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits, who still, as I then thought, labored to draw me away with them, of which I could never be rid.  I was afflicted with thoughts of the Day of Judgment, night and day, trembling at the thoughts of the fearful torments of hell fire.”  One Sunday, “as I was in the midst of a game at cat, and having struck it one blow from the hole, just as I was about to strike it the second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, ’Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to Heaven, or have thy sins and go to Hell?’ At this I was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore leaving my cat on the ground, and looking up to Heaven, saw, as with the eyes of my understanding, Jesus Christ looking down upon me very hotly displeased with me, and severely threatening me with some grievous punishment for my ungodly practices. * * * I cannot express with what longing I cried to Christ to call me.  I saw such glory in a converted state that I could not be contented without a share therein.  Had I had a whole world it had all gone ten thousand times over for this, that my soul might have been in a converted state.”  After Bunyan’s conversion he says of his conscience:  “As to the act of sinning, I was never more tender than now.  I durst not take up a pin or a stick, though but so big as a straw, for my conscience now was sore, and would smart at every touch.  I could not tell how to speak my words for fear I should misplace them.”

A man so sensitive to supernatural impressions could realize them as completely as the actual experiences of his daily life.  Such, in fact, they were.  With a conscience so tender, and a longing so intense for what he considered a condition of grace, Bunyan described the journey of Christian with the minuteness and fidelity of one who had trod the same path.  The sketch of the pilgrim, which opens the work, stamps Christian at once an individual.

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream.  I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back.  I looked, and saw him open the Book, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying “what shall I do?”

The same impression of reality pervades the whole