John Bunyan, son of Thomas Bunnionn Junior and Margaret Bentley, was
born 1628, in the quaint old village of Elstow, one mile southwest of
Bedford, near the spot where, three hundred years before, his ancestor
William Boynon resided. His father was a poor tinker or "braseyer," and
his mother's lineage is unknown. He says,--"I never went to school to
Aristotle or Plato, but was brought up at my father's house in a very
mean condition, among a company of poor countrymen."
He learned to read and write "according to the rate of other poor men's
children"; but soon lost "almost utterly" the little he had learned.
Shortly after his mother's death, when he was about seventeen years of
age, he served as a soldier for several months, probably in the
Parliamentary army. Not long afterward he married a woman as poor as
himself, by whose gentle influence he was gradually led into the way of
those severe spiritual conflicts and "painful exercises of mind" from
which he finally came forth, at great cost, victorious. These religious
experiences, vividly described in his 'Grace Abounding,' traceable in
the course of his chief Pilgrim, and frequently referred to in his
discourses, have been too literally interpreted by some, and too much
explained away as unreal by others; but present no special difficulty to
those who will but consider Bunyan's own explanations.
From boyhood he had lived a roving and non-religious life, although
possessing no little tenderness of conscience. He was neither
intemperate nor dishonest; he was not a law-breaker; he explicitly and
indignantly declares:--"If all the fornicators and adulterers in England
were hanged by the neck till they be dead, John Bunyan would still be
alive and well!" The particular sins of which he was guilty, so far as
he specifies them, were profane swearing, from which he suddenly ceased
at a woman's reproof, and certain sports, innocent enough in themselves,
which the prevailing Puritan rigor severely condemned. What, then, of
that vague and exceeding sinfulness of which he so bitterly accuses and
repents himself? It was that vision of sin, however disproportionate,
which a deeply wounded and graciously healed spirit often has, in
looking back upon the past from that theological standpoint whence all
want of conformity to the perfect law of God seems heinous and
dreadful.
"A sinner may be comparatively a little sinner, and sensibly a
great one. There are two sorts of greatness in sin: greatness by
reason of number; greatness by reason of the horrible nature of
sin. In the last sense, he that has but one sin, if such an one
could be found, may in his own eyes find himself the biggest
sinner in the world."
"Visions of God break the heart, because, by the sight the soul
then has of His perfections, it sees its own infinite and
unspeakable disproportion."
"The best saints are most sensible of their sins, and most apt
to make mountains of their molehills."
Such sentences from Bunyan's own writings--and many like them might be
quoted--shed more light upon the much-debated question of his
"wickedness" than all that his biographers have written.
In John Gifford, pastor of a little Free Church in Bedford, Bunyan found
a wise friend, and in 1653 he joined that church. He soon discovered his
gifts among the brethren, and in due time was appointed to the office of
a gospel minister, in which he labored with indefatigable industry and
zeal, and with ever-increasing fame and success, until his death. His
hard personal fortunes between the Restoration of 1660 and the
Declaration of Indulgence of 1672, including his imprisonment for twelve
years in Bedford Gaol; his subsequent imprisonment in 1675-6, when the
first part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' was probably written; and the
arduous engagements of his later and comparatively peaceful years,--must
be sought in biographies, the latest and perhaps the best of which is
that by Rev. John Brown, minister of the Bunyan Church at Bedford. The
statute under which Bunyan suffered is the 35th Eliz., Cap. 1,
re-enacted with rigor in the 16th Charles II., Cap. 4, 1662; and the
spirit of it appears in the indictment preferred against him:--"that he
hath devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to Church to hear
Divine service, and is a common upholder of several unlawful meetings
and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good
subjects of this Kingdom," etc., etc.
The story of Bunyan's life up to the time of his imprisonment, and
particularly that of his arrests and examinations before the justices,
and also the account of his experiences in prison, should be read in his
own most graphic narrative, in the 'Grace Abounding,' which is one of
the most precious portions of all autobiographic literature. Bunyan was
born and bred, he lived and labored, among the common people, with whom
his sympathies were strong and tender, and by whom he was regarded with
the utmost veneration and affection. He understood them, and they him.
For nearly a century they were almost the only readers of his published
writings. They came to call him Bishop Bunyan. His native genius, his
great human-heartedness and loving-kindness, his burning zeal and
indomitable courage, his racy humor and kindling imagination, all
vitalized by the spiritual force which came upon him through the
encompassing atmosphere of devout Puritanism, were consecrated to the
welfare of his fellow-men. His personal friend, Mr. Doe, describes him
as "tall in stature, strong-boned, of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes,
nose well set, mouth moderately large, forehead something high, and his
habit always plain and modest." His portrait, painted in 1685, shows a
vigorous, kindly face, with mustachios and imperial, and abundance of
hair falling in long wavy masses about the neck and shoulders,--more
Cavalier-like than Roundhead.
[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN.]
Bunyan was a voluminous writer, and his works, many of them posthumous,
are said to equal in number the sixty years of his life. But even the
devout and sympathetic critic is compelled to acknowledge the justice of
that verdict of time which has consigned most of them to a virtual
oblivion. The controversial tracts possess no elements of enduring
interest. The doctrinal and spiritual discourses are elaborations of a
system of religious thought which long ago "had its day and ceased to
be." Yet they contain pithy sentences, homely and pat illustrations, and
many a paragraph, rugged or tender, in which one recognizes the stamp of
his genius, and an intimation of his remarkable power as a preacher. The
best of these discourses, 'The Jerusalem Sinner Saved,' 'Come and
Welcome to Jesus Christ,' and 'Light for Them that Sit in Darkness,'
while they sparkle here and there with things unique and precious to the
Bunyan-curious student, would seem dull and tedious to the general
though devout reader. In many a passage we feel, to use his phrase, his
"heart-pulling power," no less than the force and felicity of his most
original images and analogies; but these passages are little oases in a
dry and thirsty land. The 'Life and Death of Mr. Badman' vividly
presents certain aspects of English provincial life in that day; but
they are repulsive, and the entire work is marred by flat moralizings
and coarse, often incredible stories.
The 'Holy War,' which Macaulay said would have been our greatest
religious allegory if the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had not been written, has
ceased to be much read. The conception of the conquest of the human soul
by the irresistible operation of divine force is so foreign to modern
thought and faith that Bunyan's similitude no longer seems a
verisimilitude. The pages abound with quaint, humorous, and lifelike
touches;--as where Diabolus stations at Ear-Gate a guard of deaf men
under old Mr. Prejudice, and Unbelief is described as "a nimble jack
whom they could never lay hold of";--but as compared with the 'Pilgrim's
Progress' the allegory is artificial, its elaboration of analogies is
ponderous and tedious, and its characters lack solidity and reality.
All these works, however, exhibit a remarkable command of the mother
tongue, a shrewd common-sense and mother wit, a fervid spiritual life,
and a wonderful knowledge of the English Bible. They may be likened to
more or less submerged wrecks kept from sinking into utter neglect by
the bond of authorship which connects them with the one incomparable
work which floats, unimpaired by time, on the sea of universal
appreciation and favor. Bunyan's unique and secure position in English
literature was gained by the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' the first part of
which was published in 1678, and the second in 1685.
The broader, freer conception of the pilgrimage--as old in literature as
the ninetieth Psalm, apt and fond, as innumerable books show, from De
Guileville's 'Le Pelerinage de l'Homme' in the fourteenth century to
Patrick's 'Parable' three hundred years later--took sudden possession of
Bunyan's imagination while he was in prison, and kindled all his finest
powers. Then he undertook, poet-wise, to work out this conception,
capable of such diversity of illustration, in a form of literature that
has ever been especially congenial to the human mind. Unguided save by
his own consecrated genius, unaided by other books than his English
Bible and Fox's 'Book of Martyrs,' he proceeded with a simplicity of
purpose and felicity of expression, and with a fidelity to nature and
life, which gave to his unconsciously artistic story the charm of
perfect artlessness as well as the semblance of reality. When Bunyan's
lack of learning and culture are considered, and also the comparative
dryness of his controversial and didactic writings, this efflorescence
of a vital spirit of beauty and of an essentially poetic genius in him
seems quite inexplicable. The author's rhymed 'Apology for His Book,'
which usually prefaces the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' contains many
significant hints as to the way in which he was led to
"Make truth spangle, and its rays to shine."
He had no thought of producing a work of literary excellence; but on the
other hand he had not, in writing this book, his customary purpose of
spiritual edification. Indeed, he put his multiplying thoughts and
fancies aside, lest they should interfere with a more _serious_ and
_important_ book which he had in hand!
"I only thought to make
I knew not what: nor did I undertake
Thereby to please my neighbor; no, not I:
I did it mine own self to gratify.
. . . . . . .
Thus I set pen to paper with delight,
And quickly had my thoughts in black and white."
The words are exceedingly suggestive. In writing so aimlessly--"I knew
not what"--to gratify himself by permitting the allegory into which
he had suddenly fallen to take possession of him and carry him
whithersoever it would, while he wrote out with delight his teeming
fancies, was not Bunyan for the first time exercising his genius in a
freedom from all theological and other restraint, and so in a surpassing
range and power? The dreamer and poet supplanted the preacher and
teacher. He yielded to the simple impulse of his genius, gave his
imagination full sweep, and so, as never before or elsewhere, soared and
sang in what seemed to many of his Puritan friends a questionable
freedom and profane inspiration. And yet his song, or story, was not a
creation of mere fancy,--
"It came from my own heart, so to my head,
And thence into my fingers trickled;"--
and therefore, we add, it finds its way to the heart of mankind.
Hence the spontaneity of the allegory, its ease and freedom of movement,
its unlabored development, its natural and vital enfolding of that old
pilgrim idea of human life which had so often bloomed in the literature
of all climes and ages, but whose consummate flower appeared in the book
of this inspired Puritan tinker-preacher. Hence also the dramatic unity
and methodic perfectness of the story. Its byways all lead to its
highway; its episodes are as vitally related to the main theme as are
the ramifications of a tree to its central stem. The great diversities
of experience in the true pilgrims are dominated by one supreme motive.
As for the others, they appear incidentally to complete the scenes, and
make the world and its life manifold and real. The Pilgrim is a most
substantial person, and once well on the way, the characters he meets,
the difficulties he encounters, the succor he receives, the scenes in
which he mingles, are all, however surprising, most natural. The names,
and one might almost say the forms and faces, of Pliable, Obstinate,
Faithful, Hopeful, Talkative, Mercy, Great-heart, old Honest,
Valiant-for-truth, Feeble-mind, Ready-to-halt, Miss Much-afraid, and
many another, are familiar to us all. Indeed, the pilgrimage is our
own--in many of its phases at least,--and we have met the people whom
Bunyan saw in his dream, and are ourselves they whom he describes. When
Dean Stanley began his course of lectures on Ecclesiastical History at
Oxford, his opening words were those of the passage where the Pilgrim is
taken to the House Beautiful to see "the rarities and histories of that
place, both ancient and modern"; and at the end of the same course,
wishing to sketch the prospects of Christendom, he quoted the words in
which, on leaving the House Beautiful, Christian was shown the distant
view of the Delectable Mountains.
But for one glance at Pope and Pagan, there is almost nothing to
indicate the writer's ecclesiastical standing. But for here and there a
marking of time in prosaic passages which have nothing to do with the
story, there is nothing to mar the catholicity of its spirit. Romanists
and Protestants, Anglicans and Puritans, Calvinists and Arminians,--all
communions and sects have edited and circulated it. It is the completest
triumph of truth by fiction in all literature. More than any other human
book, it is "a religious bond to the whole of English Christendom." The
second part is perhaps inferior to the first, but is richer in incident,
and some of its characters--Mercy, old Honest, Valiant-for-truth, and
Great-heart, for instance--are exquisitely conceived and presented. Here
again the reader will do well to carefully peruse the author's rhymed
introduction:--
"What Christian left locked up, and went his way,
Sweet Christiana opens with her key."
"Go then, my little Book," he says, "and tell young damsels of Mercy,
and old men of plain-hearted old Honest. Tell people of Master Fearing,
who was a good man, though much down in spirit. Tell them of
Feeble-mind, and Ready-to-halt, and Master Despondency and his daughter,
who 'softly went but sure.'
"When thou hast told the world of all these things,
Then turn about, my Book, and touch these strings,
Which, if but touched, will such a music make,
They'll make a cripple dance, a giant quake."
This second part introduces some new scenes, as well as characters and
experiences, but with the same broad sympathy and humor; and there are
closing descriptions not excelled in power and pathos by anything in the
earlier pilgrimage.