The first minister whose words were truly blessed of God for our awakening and conversion has always a place of his own in our hearts.  We all have some minister, some revivalist, some faithful friend, or some good book in a warm place in our heart.  It may be a great city preacher; it may be a humble American or Irish revivalist; it may be The Pilgrim’s Progress, or The Cardiphonia, or the Serious Call—­whoever or whatever it was that first arrested and awakened and turned us into the way of life, they all our days stand in a place by themselves in our grateful heart.  And John Gifford has been immortalised by John Bunyan, both in his Grace Abounding and in his Pilgrim’s Progress.  In his Grace Abounding, as we have just seen, and in The Pilgrim, Gifford has his portrait painted in holy oil on the wall of the Interpreter’s house, and again in eloquent pen and ink in the person of Evangelist.

John Gifford had himself made a narrow escape out of the City of Destruction, and John Bunyan had, by Gifford’s assistance, made the same escape also.  The scene, therefore, both within that city and outside the gate of it, was so fixed in Bunyan’s mind and memory that no part of his memorable book is more memorably put than just its opening page.  Bunyan himself is the man in rags, and Gifford is the evangelist who comes to console and to conduct him.  Bunyan’s portraits are all taken from the life.  Brilliant and well-furnished as Bunyan’s imagination was, Bedford was still better furnished with all kinds of men and women, and with all kinds of saints and sinners.  And thus, instead of drawing upon his imagination in writing his books, Bunyan drew from life.  And thus it is that we see first John Gifford, and then John Bunyan himself at the gate of the city; and then, over the page, Gifford becomes the evangelist who is sent by the four poor women to speak to the awakened tinker.

‘Wherefore dost thou so cry?’ asks Evangelist.  ‘Because,’ replied the man, ‘I am condemned to die.’  ’But why are you so unwilling to die, since this life is so full of evils?’ And I suppose we must all hear Evangelist putting the same pungent question to ourselves every day, at whatever point of the celestial journey we at present are.  Yes; why are we all so unwilling to die?  Why do we number our days to put off our death to the last possible period?  Why do we so refuse to think of the only thing we are sure soon to come to?  We are absolutely sure of nothing else in the future but death.  We may not see to-morrow, but we shall certainly see the day of our death.  And yet we have all our plans laid for to-morrow, and only one here and one there has any plan laid for the day of his death.  And can it be for the same reason that made the man in rags unwilling to die?  Is it because of the burden on our back?  Is it because we are not fit to go to judgment?  And yet the trumpet may sound