Their widowed hearts are full of holy household memories.  They remember the days when the candle of the Lord shone upon their head when they washed their steps with butter, and the rock poured them out rivers of oil.  And still, when, like Job also, they sit solitary among the ashes, the secret of the Lord is only the more secretly and intimately with them.  John Bunyan was well fitted to be Christiana’s biographer, because his own life was as full as it could hold of these same secret and special providences.  One day he was walking—­so he tells us—­in a good man’s shop, bemoaning himself of his sad and doleful state—­when a mighty rushing wind came in through the window and seemed to carry words of Scripture on its wings to Bunyan’s disconsolate soul.  He candidly tells us that he does not know, after twenty years’ reflection, what to make of that strange dispensation.  That it took place, and that it left the most blessed results behind it, he is sure; but as to how God did it, by what means, by what instruments, both the rushing wind itself and the salutation that accompanied it, he is fain to let lie till the day of judgment.  And many of ourselves have had strange dispensations too that we must leave alone, and seek no other explanation of them for the present but the blessed results of them.  We have had divine descents into our lives that we can never attempt to describe.  Interpositions as plain to us as if we had both seen and spoken with the angel who executed them.  Miraculous deliverances that throw many Old and New Testament miracles into the shade.  Providential adaptations and readjustments also, as if all things were actually and openly and without a veil being made to work together for our good.  Extrications also; nets broken, snares snapped, and such pavilions of safety and solace opened to us that we can find no psalm secret and special enough in which to utter our life-long astonishment.  Importunate prayers anticipated, postponed, denied, translated, transmuted, and then answered till our cup was too full; sweet changed to bitter, and bitter changed to sweet, so wonderfully, so graciously, and so often, that words fail us, and we can only now laugh and now weep over it all.  Poor Cowper knew something about it—­

   “God moves in a mysterious way
      His wonders to perform;
   He plants His footsteps in the sea,
      And rides upon the storm.

   “Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
      The clouds ye so much dread
   Are big with mercy, and shall break
      In blessings on your head.

   “Blind unbelief is sure to err,
      And scan his work in vain;
   God is His own interpreter,
      And He will make it plain.”