SHORTER NOTICES
THROUGHOUT this year the Bunyan Meeting at Bedford is celebrating its tercentenary. What is now a united Baptist and Congregational institution was founded in 1650 by a group of Independents, among whom was John Gifford, an ex-Royalist officer and former Mayor of Bedford, who became its first minister. Bunyan himself became minister on his release from prison in 1672, and so remained until his death in 1688. Mr. Tibbutt gives a detailed and well-documented account of the growth and activities of the meeting. To its present premises °Ailed in 1849, and later improved and extended, others have since been added in neighbouring villages. Few religious com- munities can have adhered more closely to the spirit and intention of their founders, and it is pleasant to read in these pages the very many names of devout and simple people who have served the Bunyan Meeting. Macaulay observed : " It is a significant . fact that till a recent period all the numerous editions of the Pilgrim's Progress were evidently meant for the cottage and the servants' hall." The " educated minority " was a hundred years in discovering the merits of Bunyan, but the course of the Bunyan Meeting seems not to have been disturbed by his latter-day fame.
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