ant Despair's fits came on him,
and the giant "lost the use of his hand." Texts of Scripture would give
him a "sweet glance," and flood his soul with comfort. But these
intervals of happiness were but short-lived. They were but "hints,
touches, and short visits," sweet when present, but "like Peter's sheet,
suddenly caught up again into heaven." But, though transient, they
helped the burdened Pilgrim onward. So vivid was the impression
sometimes made, that years after he could specify the place where these
beams of sunlight fell on him--"sitting in a neighbour's
house,"--"travelling into the country,"--as he was "going home from
sermon." And the joy was real while it lasted. The words of the
preacher's text, "Behold, thou art fair, my love," kindling his spirit,
he felt his "heart filled with comfort and hope." "Now I could believe
that my sins would be forgiven." He was almost beside himself with
ecstasy. "I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I
thought I could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon
the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood
me." "Surely," he cried with gladness, "I will not forget this forty
years hence." "But, alas! within less than forty days I began to
question all again." It was the Valley of the Shadow of Death which
Bunyan, like his own Pilgrim, was travelling through. But, as in his
allegory, "by and by the day broke," and "the Lord did more fully and
graciously discover Himself unto him." "One day," he writes, "as I was
musing on the wickedness and blasphemy of my heart, that scripture came
into my mind, 'He hath made peace by the Blood of His Cross.' By which I
was made to see, both again and again and again that day, that God and my
soul were friends by this blood: Yea, I saw the justice of God and my
sinful soul could embrace and kiss each other. This was a good day to
me. I hope I shall not forget it." At another time the "glory and joy"
of a passage in the Hebrews (ii. 14-15) were "so weighty" that "I was
once or twice ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble, but
with solid joy and peace." "But, oh! now how was my soul led on from
truth to truth by God; now had I evidence of my salvation from heaven,
with many golden seals thereon all banging in my sight, and I would long
that the last day were come, or that I were fourscore years old, that I
might die quickly that my soul might be at rest."

At t