No solid peace can enter the soul except that which is brought by the Comforter. It is not the word read and heard, but the word revealed by the Spirit, which is saving and assuring. There is undoubtedly a divine operation on the mind wherever any special impression is produced by the truths of God; and whether that impression should be made with audible and visible manifestations accompanying it—as on the day of Pentecost—or should be so vivid as to convert a mental perception into a bodily sensation, as we are disposed to think was the case with some of the remarkable sights and heavenly voices which good men have recorded, is really of little moment. In Bunyan’s case, so warm was his imagination, that every clear perception was sure to be instantaneously sounding in his ear, or standing out a bright vision before his admiring eyes. This feature of his mental conformation has been noticed already; but this may be the proper place to allude to it again. After the short breathing time we just noticed, Bunyan began to sink in the deep waters again. It was in vain that he asked the prayers of God’s people, and equally in vain that he imparted his grief to those who had passed through the same conflicts with the devil. One “ancient Christian,” to whom he stated his fear that he had committed the sin for which there is no forgiveness, thought so too. “Thus was I always sinking, whatever I did think or do. So one day I walked to a neighbouring town, and sat down upon a settle in the street, and fell into a very deep panic about the most fearful state my sin had brought me to; and after long musing, I lifted up my head; but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give light; and as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the houses, did bend themselves against me: methought that they all combined together to banish me out of the world; I was abhorred of them, and unfit to dwell among them, or be partaker of their benefits, because I had sinned against the Saviour. Then breaking out in the bitterness of my soul, I said to my soul, with a grievous sigh, ‘How can God comfort such a wretch as I am?’ I had no sooner said it, but this returned upon me, as an echo doth answer a voice, ‘This sin is not unto death.’ At which I was as if raised out of the grave, and cried out again, ‘Lord, how couldst thou find out such a word as this?’ for I was filled with admiration at the fitness and at the unexpectedness of the sentence. The fitness of the word; the rightness of the timing of it; the power and sweetness and light and glory that came with it also, were marvellous to me to find. I was now for the time out of doubt as to that about which I was so much in doubt before. I seemed now to stand upon the same ground with other sinners, and to have as good right to the word and prayer as any of them.”