And now my soul is filled with cheer
For the march of a bright and happy New Year.
As years roll on, whether sun doth shine
Or clouds overcast, I will never repine;
For I know, when the race of time is run,
I shall enter a realm of Eternal Sun.
* * * * *
XXXIV.
JOHN BUNYAN
(BORN 1628--DIED 1688.)
FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT.
John Bunyan, the most popular religious writer in the English language,
was born at Elstow, about a mile from Bedford, in the year 1628. He may
be said to have been born a tinker. The tinkers then formed a hereditary
caste, which was held in no high estimation. They were generally
vagrants and pilferers, and were often confounded with the gypsies,
whom, in truth, they nearly resembled. Bunyan's father was more
respectable than most of the tribe. He had a fixed residence, and was
able to send his son to a village school, where reading and writing were
taught.
The years of John's boyhood were those during which the Puritan spirit
was in the highest vigor all over England; and nowhere had that spirit
more influence than in Bedfordshire. It is not wonderful, therefore,
that a lad to whom nature had given a powerful imagination, and
sensibility which amounted to a disease, should have been early haunted
by religious terrors. Before he was ten, his sports were interrupted by
fits of remorse and despair; and his sleep was disturbed by dreams of
fiends trying to fly away with him.
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