[Illustration: ELSTOW, BEDFORD.]
[Illustration: ELSTOW CHURCH.]
Elstow, a village about one mile south of Bedford, was Bunyan's
birthplace. The house is still pointed out, though a new front has been
put into it, and it is a very small building, suitable to the tinker's
humble estate. The village-green where he played is near by, alongside
the churchyard wall; the church, which has been little changed, stands
on the farther side of the yard, with a massive tower at the
north-western angle, looking more like a fortress than a religious
edifice. The bells are still there which Bunyan used to ring, and they
also point out "Bunyan's Pew" inside, though the regularity of his
attendance is not vouched for, as he says "absenting himself from
church" was one of his offences during the greater part of his life. He
married early and in poor circumstances, the young couple "not having so
much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt them both," though he
considered it among his mercies that he was led "to light upon a wife of
godly parentage." He says that a marked change in his mental condition
suddenly began while playing a game of "tip-cat" on Sunday afternoon on
the village-green, having listened in the morning to a sermon upon
Sabbath-breaking. His conscience smote him; he abandoned the game,
leaving his cat upon the ground, and then began his great spiritual
struggle. He joined the Baptists, and began preaching, for at length,
after many tribulations, he says, "the burden fell from off his back."
He was persecuted, and committed to Bedford jail, where he remained
(with short intervals of parole) for about twelve years. Here he wrote
what Macaulay declares to be incomparably the finest allegory in the
English language--the _Pilgrim's Progress_. He was a voluminous author,
having written some sixty tracts and books. Finally pardoned in 1672, he
became pastor of the Bedford meeting-house, and afterwards escaped
molestation; he preached in all parts of the kingdom, especially in
London, where he died at the age of sixty, having caught cold in a heavy
storm while going upon an errand of mercy in 1688. His great work will
live as long as the Anglo-Saxon race endures. "That wonderful book,"
writes Macaulay, "while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious
critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.... Every
reader knows the strait and narrow path as well as he knows a road in
which he has gone backward and forward a hundred times. This is the
highest miracle of genius, that things which are not should be as though
they were--that the imaginations of one mind should become the personal
recollections of another; and this miracle the tinker has wrought."
[Illustration: NORTH DOOR, ELSTOW CHURCH.]