ELIZABETH BUNYAN, page. A rose -bush, a sand -glass, and a spider with whom he had formed an acquaintance at the iron- barred window, served to cheer many otherwise lonely hours. He would sometimes preach to the other prisoners. " When I visited him in prison," says Charles Doe, his earliest biographer, "therewere about sixty Dissenters besides himself, and two emi- nent Dissentingministers, by which means the prison was very much crowded ; yet in the midst of all that hum which so many new- comers occasioned, I have heard Mr. Bunyan both preach and pray with that mighty Spirit of faith and plerophory of Divine assistance which has made me stand and wonder." John Bunyan, however, was not fated to become a religious martyr ; for he found a very warm friend in the jailor, who liked and admired him, and who, knowing the character of the man, occasionally ven- tured to allow him, during the first year of his confinement, to privately attend meetings of the Baptist congregation at Bedford. Elizabeth, conse- quently, had her husband frequently at home. Going abroad at pleasure, visiting the numerous assemblies of his sect-being even chosen pastor of the Anabaptist congregation in the town-meeting his rustic followers in the sequestered woodlands, or in quiet glades, where they would gather unsus- pected in silence, to listen in reverence to the Word, beneath the starry watchers of the night, winking and gleaming above them-John Bunyan never abused the confidence of his jailor. It is related of 30
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