The rest of Bunyan’s life passed peacefully and happily.  But we know few details of it, for “he seems to have been too busy to keep any records of his busy life."* We know at least that it was busy.  He was now a licensed preacher, and if the people had flocked to hear him before his imprisonment they flocked in far greater numbers now.  Even learned men came to hear him.  “I marvel,” said King Charles to one, “that a learned man such as you can sit and listen to an unlearned tinker.”

Brown.

“May it please your Majesty,” replied he, “I would gladly give up all my learning if I could preach like that tinker.”

Bunyan became the head of the Baptist Church.  Near and far he traveled, preaching and teaching, honored and beloved wherever he went.  And his word had such power, his commands had such weight, that people playfully called him Bishop Bunyan.  Yet he was “not puffed up in prosperity, nor shaken in adversity, always holding the golden mean."*

Charles Doe.

Death found Bunyan still busy, still kindly.  A young man who lived at Reading had offended his father so greatly that the father cast him off.  In his trouble the young man came to Bunyan.  He at once mounted his horse and rode off to Reading.  There he saw the angry father, and persuaded him to make peace with his repentant son.

Glad at his success, Bunyan rode on to London, where he meant to preach.  But the weather was bad, the roads were heavy with mud, he was overtaken by a storm of rain, and ere he could find shelter he was soaked to the skin.  He arrived at length at a friend’s house wet and weary and shaking with fever.  He went to bed never to rise again.  The time had come when, like Christian, he must cross the river which all must cross “where there is no bridge to go over and the river very deep.”  But Bunyan, like Christian, was held up by Hope.  He well knew the words, “When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers they shall not overflow thee.”  And so he crossed over.

And may we not believe that Bunyan, when he reached the other side, heard again, as he had once before heard in his immortal dream, “all the bells in the city ring again with joy,” and that it was said unto him, “Enter ye into the joy of our Lord”?

YEAR 9

Chapter LX DRYDEN—­THE NEW POETRY

“THE life of Dryden may be said to comprehend a history of the literature of England, and its changes, during nearly half a century.”  With these words Sir Walter Scott, himself a great writer, began his life of John Dryden.  Yet although Dryden stands for so much in the story of our literature, as a man we know little of him.  As a writer his influence on the age in which he lived was tremendous.  As a man he is more shadowy than almost any other greater writer.  We seem to know Chaucer, and Spenser, and Milton, and even Shakespeare a little, but to know Dryden in himself seems impossible.  We can only know him through his works, and through his age.  And in him we find the expression of his age.