BUNYAN'S SUCCESSFUL AND PRESISTENT PREACHING.
A student of Cambridge observing a multitude flock to a village church on a working day, inquired what was the cause. On being informed that "one Bunyan, a tinker," was to preach there, he gave a boy a few halfpence to hold his horse, resolved, as he said, "to hear the tinker prate." The tinker prated to such effect, that for some time the scholar wished to hear no other preacher; and, through his future life, gave proofs of the advantages he had received from the humble ministry of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress. Bunyan, with rude but irresistible zeal, preached throughout the country, and formed the greater part of the Baptist churches in Bedfordshire; until, at the Restoration, he was thrown into prison, where he remained twelve years. During his confinement he preached to all to whom he could gain access; and when liberty was offered to him on condition of promising to abstain from preaching, he constantly replied, "If you let me out to-day, I shall preach again to-morrow." Bunyan, on being liberated, became pastor of the Baptist Church at Bedford; and when the kingdom enjoyed more religious liberty, he enlarged the sphere of his usefulness by preaching every year in London, where he excited great attention. On one day's notice, such multitudes would assemble, that the places of worship could not hold them. "At a lecture at seven o'clock in the dark mornings of winter," says one of his contemporaries, "I have seen about twelve hundred; and I computed about three thousand that came to hear him on a Lord's day, so that one-half of them were obliged to return for want of room."