Sometimes a promise from the Bible would bring him the greatest joy. "I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God," he writes, "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." In these days of alternate grief and joy, Bunyan came upon an old copy of Luther's "Commentary on the Galatians;" "so old, that it was ready to fall piece from piece if I did but turn it over.... I found my conditions as largely and profoundly handled, in his experience, as if his book had been written out of my heart. I do prefer this book of Martin Luther (excepting the Bible) before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience." This book was also most effective in the experience of John Wesley. "I went," Wesley wrote, "very unwillingly, to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Galatians. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins." Finally, "the peace of God which passeth understanding" came into Bunyan's heart. As he was walking in the field, he seemed to hear the sentence, "Thy righteousness is in heaven;" "and methought I saw," he says, "with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand, there I say, as my righteousness, so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. Now went I home rejoicing for the grace and love of God." During these years of anxiety, Bunyan worked hard with his hands, feeling, as did his honest father, that it was one of the first of duties to be "very careful to maintain his family." He had been moderately successful at his trade, as a contemporary biographer writes, that "God had increased his stores so that he lived in great credit among his neighbors." In the year 1653, when he was twenty-five,--the year in which Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England,--he became a member of Mr. Gifford's church. He probably removed to Bedford from Elstow, two years later, and was made a deacon in the church. About this time his lovely wife, to whom he owed so much, died, leaving four children, one of them, his idolized blind daughter, Mary, born in 1650. His beloved friend and pastor, Mr. Gifford, died in September of the same year as his wife. The members of the church, realizing that the uneducated tinker was gifted in speech, and believing in his earnestness, asked him "to speak a word of exhortation unto them." At first, modest and shrinking as he was, "it did much dash and abash his spirit," but being entreated, he spoke twice, "but with much weakness and infirmity."