JOHN BUNYAN
by J. C. Philpot
John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" is known wherever the
English language is spoken. No, it has become known beyond those limits, by
means of translation into most of the European, and into some Oriental
tongues. A great critic and historian has said that the seventeenth century,
so prolific in writers, produced but two thoroughly original works, which
would be handed down to posterity; and it was noteworthy that both these
were produced by the pens of Dissenters—Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and
Milton's "Paradise Lost."
Bunyan himself, we believe, was not aware of his own
peculiar genius. Owing nothing to education, his powerful intellect grew
like a wild tree, unpruned and unnailed to university wall, but it made up
in strength for what it might lack in symmetry. He possessed by nature
three rare gifts, which education might have refined, but could not have
imparted, and possibly might have weakened—a most vivid imagination,—a
singular power of dramatic representation,—and a most expressive style and
language. The first and last are self-evident; the second may require a few
words of explanation. Bunyan possessed, then, one of the rarest faculties of
the human mind—the power of so throwing himself into the very character
which he was drawing that he makes him speak exactly as that person would
have spoken had he actually existed.
A Puritan in principle and practice, he justly abhorred
the theater; and yet, without knowing it, he possessed in the highest degree
that very talent in which consists the perfection of that species of
writing. By means of this peculiar talent, his men and women are to us as
substantial realities, as thoroughly living, breathing characters as if they
had actually existed. Christian, Pliable and Obstinate, Faithful and
Hopeful, with matronly, prudent Christiana, and modest, maidenlike, timorous
Mercy—we know them all as if we had lived next door to them. This perhaps is
his most striking faculty, and has made the "Pilgrim's Progress" a
spiritual drama. What life and animation has this gift cast over it!
Look, as a sample, at Obstinate's short and characteristic sentences. "Tush!
away with your book. Will you go back with us or no?" "What, more fools
still!" Compare these sharp, short, iron sentences with Pliable's soft,
wax-like, ductile words, "And do you think that the words of your book are
certainly true?" How his pliable disposition is shown by this soft, drawling
sentence to turn and wind itself round Christian's belief! But what a
peculiar gift was this to strike off with a few words two characters which
have imprinted themselves on the minds of hundreds of thousands! But look
also at his vivid, powerful, picturesque imagination. How image after
image comes forth with unflagging interest and boundless variety! What force
and power in his pictures! The Slough of Despond, and the Wicket Gate, and
the Hill of Difficulty, and the Castle of Giant Despair, the Valley of the
Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, Faithful's trial, and the close of all—the
passage of the Dark River—why does the mere mention of these scenes recall
them at once so distinctly to mind?
Because they are drawn by a master's hand, giving form
and body to scenes pictured in his imagination as living realities. His hand
but executed what his eye saw; and thus his vivid imagination has engraved
them more deeply on our memory than many scenes which we have seen with our
bodily eyes. Is any book so well remembered? Has any made so vivid an
impression? And all without the least effort on the part of the writer.
The third striking feature is the plain, clear, strong,
noble, good old Saxon English in which it is written, a style so admirably
suited to the great mass of readers, and at the same time possessing, from
its purity and simplicity, a peculiar charm for the most refined English
ear.
"But," suggests a reader, "you have merely noticed the
genius of Bunyan! What was that? It was only nature. There was no
grace in that. Why do you not speak of his grace and experience, and the
teaching of the Spirit in his soul?" But, my good friend, don't you see how
the Lord bestowed this genius on a poor illiterate tinker for a special
purpose? Did not grace sanctify his natural genius, and direct it to the
glory of God and the good of his people? And don't you perceive how this
peculiar genius, of which you think so lightly, was absolutely necessary to
produce the "Pilgrim's Progress," a work which will live when our heads are
laid low? Bunyan was not striving after effect, beyond the best of all
effects—being made a blessing to the church of God. He was not aiming at a
dramatic representation of character, which a playwright might well envy. He
saw Christian with his mind's eye in the Slough of Despond. His own feet had
been fast held there. He saw and heard him in the dungeons of Giant Despair.
He had lain there himself, and the iron had entered into his soul. He did
not sit down as a play-writer to produce a drama, of which every character
and scene were thoroughly fictitious. He had himself passed through all the
scenes, and was, under the name of Christian, the leading character, the
hero of the piece. The successive scenes were all deeply imbedded in his
memory, and they came forth from his mind and pen as the deepest and most
solemn realities.
He therefore, under an allegory, described what he
himself had seen, and where he himself had been, as a voyager in the Arctic
regions might depict the frozen seas and piercing climate where the iceberg
dwells in lonely grandeur; or as a tropical traveler might retrace the
bright skies and lovely isles where the sun walks in its meridian glory.
Thus Bunyan is himself reflected from every page of the "Pilgrim's
Progress." He is the pilgrim who progresses from the City of Destruction to
the heavenly Jerusalem. It is, in fact, his own experience so far modified
as not to be exclusive. He did not, like some, set up his own experience as
a standard from which there must not be the slightest deviation. Mercy, who
hardly knows why or wherefore she set out, except to accompany Christiana,
is drawn as a vessel of mercy as much as Christian, who spends his nights in
sighs and tears. But still he has drawn with vigorous hand a certain
definite path, in tracing which the highest genius and the greatest grace
combined to produce a work blessed beyond measure to the church of God, and
yet so animated with natural talent as to be handed down to an earthly
immortality. Who shall say the hand of God was not here? Who but he raised
the immortal tinker to this distinction? The same hand which took David from
the sheep-cotes to feed his people Israel raised Bunyan from the tinker's
barrow to feed the church of God; and the same power which gave David
strength and skill to sling the stone put into Bunyan's hand a pen which has
done far more execution.
But besides these extraordinary endowments of genius and
grace, Bunyan's experience was in itself peculiarly
calculated to produce a work like the "Pilgrim's Progress." Were we to
characterize this experience in one short sentence we should say it was the
abiding power of eternal things resting on his soul. He did not only
believe, he saw. The word of God did not merely speak to him; it entered
into his inmost soul. Hell, with its sulphurous flames, Heaven, with its
glorious abodes, were to him more distinct realities than the earth on which
he trod; for the latter was but temporal, while the former were eternal; the
one but a passing shadow, the other an enduring reality. So when the law
sent its curses into his inmost conscience, he saw more clearly its
lightnings, and heard more distinctly its thunders, than his outward eyes
ever saw the vivid flash or his natural ears ever heard the pealing thunders
of a passing storm. The dark clouds of the natural sky soon rolled away, and
ceased to peal forth their terrors, but the Law knew no intermission for
time or eternity. Thus, too, when Christ was revealed to him, he saw him by
the eye of faith more distinctly than he ever saw any literal object by the
eye of sense; for the natural sun itself, the brightest of all objects,
could but fill his eye, but the Sun of Righteousness filled his very soul.
When he talked with God, he talked to him more really, truly, and intimately
than he could ever talk with an earthly friend, for to God he could unbosom
all his heart, which he could not do to any human companion. His spiritual
sorrows far outweighed all his temporal griefs, and his spiritual joys far
surpassed all his earthly delights. The one were measured by time, the other
by eternity; man was but the subject of one, God the object of the other.
The experience of the power of eternal things made Bunyan such a mighty
preacher.
"For I have been in my preaching, especially when I have
been engaged in the doctrine of life by Christ, without works, as if an
angel of God had stood at my back to encourage me. Oh! it has been with such
power and heavenly evidence upon my own soul, while I have been laboring to
unfold it, to demonstrate it, and to fasten it upon the consciences of
others, that I could not be contented with saying, I believe, and am sure;
methought I was more than sure (if it be lawful to express myself) that
those things which then I asserted were true."
His was no cut-and-dried ministry, but the outpouring of
his whole heart; and as God had blessed him with remarkable powers of
expression, he sent arrow after arrow from his full quiver, lodging them in
the hearer's conscience up to the very feather. He was not what men commonly
call eloquent, and yet was so in the highest sense of the term, for his
words were words of fire. The most manly fervor was combined with the
greatest simplicity; language which a child could understand came forth from
his lips, but a giant wielded the words. Blow after blow, thrust after
thrust came from his vigorous hand. The subject was simple, the manner of
handling it was simple; but the simplicity was that of the life-guardsman's
sword, of which the hilt is not gilded nor blade filigreed. Ornament would
be foreign to the massive strength of either. Bunyan will make himself
understood. He uses many words, but not a cloud of idle epithets. He thus
addresses at the same time the understanding and the conscience, and reaches
the latter through the former. The point of the sword enters the
understanding; one home-thrust carries the blade deep into the conscience.
This is the perfection of preaching—clear thoughts and words which pass at
once into the understanding, and home-thrusts which reach the very soul. How
many preachers and writers fail here! Confused ideas, cloudy, long,
entangled sentences, which require the utmost stretch of attention to
understand, perplex alike speaker and hearer. "What is the man driving at?
Poor fellow! he hardly knows himself what he means;" and similar thoughts
rise up almost involuntarily within. Others again speak and write with
tolerable clearness, but their words are like Jonathan's arrows. None hit
the mark. The arrow is beyond the lad, and the conscience is no more touched
than the great stone Ezel, behind which David hid himself.
Bunyan was a most prolific writer. His mind teemed with
divine thoughts. His heart was ever bubbling up with good matter, and this
made his tongue the pen of a ready writer. Besides the "Pilgrim's Progress"
and "Grace Abounding," his two best works, for in them his whole heart lay,
his "Holy War," "The Two Covenants," his little "Treatise on Prayer," his
"Broken Heart the Best Sacrifice," and others which we need not name, are
deeply impregnated with Bunyan's peculiar power and spirit. There is some
powerful writing in the three treatises contained in the little volume
before us.
That he is in places somewhat legal, and speaks too much
of the "offers" of the gospel, we freely admit. This was the prevailing
theology of the day, from which scarcely any writer of that period was free.
But he sometimes employs the word "offers" where we should rather use the
term "promises" or "invitations;" these said "offers" being not so much
offers of grace to dead sinners as promises of mercy to God's living family
who feel they are sinners.
But we are unwilling to dwell on his blemishes. The Lord,
whose servant he was, honored him in life, was with him in death, and his
name will be dear to the church of God while there is a remnant on the
earth.