THE SPIRIT OF PRAYER This treatise was written in 1663, while Bunyan was a prisoner in Bedford jail. He here explains the cause of his long imprisonment, and that of thousands more in those unhappy times. It is well to remember that Bunyan was the first sufferer for conscience’ sake under Charles II. J. N.

B. There are few petitions more comprehensive and important than this, Thy kingdom come. It embraces the progress and effectual power of the gospel in all the world — the fulfillment of a thousand prophecies — the consummation of all the holy hopes awakened in human bosoms in all ages, by the word of God. J.N.B. Only the year before this was written, in consequence of the Act of Uniformity (1662), nearly two thousand of the best ministers in England had been silenced. Their only crime was a conscientious refusal to subscribe (ex animo ) their “assent and consent to all and every thing contained in the Book of Common-Prayer.” Now, be it remembered, that this Book contains not only Forms of Prayer, but the Offices of Baptism, Confirmation, Burial, and Ordination, which involve doctrines obnoxious to the consciences of a great part of Protestant Christendom to this day, even of those who have no objection to a liturgy. So objectionable were they then, that according to the careful computation of Jeremiah White, no less than sixty thousand persons in England alone, (not to mention Scotland,) chose to suffer all the penalties of the law rather than comply with them. No wonder that the soul of Bunyan was stirred within him at an imposition of human authority, which not only silenced a godly ministry, but crowded the common jails of England with myriads of her worthiest citizens, whose only crime “had this extent, no more.” His remonstrance is the appeal of outraged humanity, the solemn cry of martyrdom! “I am sorry to say,” says Defoe, in speaking of the death of the celebrated Baptist, Thomas Delaune, author of the “Plea for Non-Conformists,” “he is one of near eight thousand Protestant Dissenters, that perished in prison in the days of that merciful prince King Charles II.” — J. N. B.

UNSEARCHABLE RICHES OF CHRIST Cain signifies possession, and implies the gladness of gratified hope; Abel, on the contrary, signifies vanity, or the grief of disappointment.