Bedford was dealt with in its turn. Under James"s policy of courting the Puritans, the leading Dissenters were the first persons to be approached.
Two are specially named, a Mr. Margetts, formerly Judge-Advocate-General of the Army under General Monk, and John Bunyan. It is no matter of surprise that Bunyan, who had been so severe a sufferer under the old penal statutes, should desire their abrogation, and express his readiness to "steer his friends and followers" to support candidates who would pledge themselves to vote for their repeal. But no further would he go.
The Bedford Corporation was "regulated," which means that nearly the whole of its members were removed and others subst.i.tuted by royal order.
Of these new members some six or seven were leading persons of Bunyan"s congregation. But, with all his ardent desire for religious liberty, Bunyan was too keen-witted not to see through James"s policy, and too honest to give it any direct insidious support. "In vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." He clearly saw that it was not for any love of the Dissenters that they were so suddenly delivered from their persecutions, and placed on a kind of equality with the Church. The king"s object was the establishment of Popery. To this the Church was the chief obstacle. That must be undermined and subverted first. That done, all other religious denominations would follow. All that the Nonconformists would gain by yielding, was the favour Polyphemus promised Ulysses, to be devoured last. Zealous as he was for the "liberty of prophesying," even that might be purchased at too high a price. The boon offered by the king was "good in itself," but not "so intended." So, as his biographer describes, when the regulators came, "he expressed his zeal with some weariness as perceiving the bad consequences that would ensue, and laboured with his congregation" to prevent their being imposed on by the fair promises of those who were at heart the bitterest enemies of the cause they professed to advocate. The newly-modelled corporation of Bedford seems like the other corporations through the country, to have proved as unmanageable as the old. As Macaulay says, "The sectaries who had declared in favour of the Indulgence had become generally ashamed of their error, and were desirous to make atonement." Not knowing the man they had to deal with, the "regulators" are said to have endeavoured to buy Bunyan"s support by the offer of some place under government. The bribe was indignantly rejected. Bunyan even refused to see the government agent who offered it,--"he would, by no means come to him, but sent his excuse." Behind the treacherous sunshine he saw a black cloud, ready to break. The Ninevites" remedy he felt was now called for. So he gathered his congregation together and appointed a day of fasting and prayer to avert the danger that, under a specious pretext, again menaced their civil and religious liberties. A true, st.u.r.dy Englishman, Bunyan, with Baxter and Howe, "refused an indulgence which could only be purchased by the violent overthrow of the law."
Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution. Four months after he had witnessed the delirious joy which hailed the acquittal of the seven bishops, the Pilgrim"s earthly Progress ended, and he was bidden to cross the dark river which has no bridge. The summons came to him in the very midst of his religious activity, both as a preacher and as a writer. His pen had never been more busy than when he was bidden to lay it down finally. Early in 1688, after a two years" silence, attributable perhaps to the political troubles of the times, his "Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or a Help to Despairing Souls," one of the best known and most powerfully characteristic of his works, had issued from the press, and had been followed by four others between March and August, the month of his death.
These books were, "The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate;" a poetical composition ent.i.tled "The Building, Nature, and Excellency of the House of G.o.d," a discourse on the const.i.tution and government of the Christian Church; the "Water of Life," and "Solomon"s Temple Spiritualized." At the time of his death he was occupied in seeing through the press a sixth book, "The Acceptable Sacrifice," which was published after his funeral.
In addition to these, Bunyan left behind him no fewer than fourteen works in ma.n.u.script, written at this time, as the fruit of his fertile imagination and untiring pen. Ten of these were given to the world soon after Bunyan"s death, by one of Bunyan"s most devoted followers, Charles Doe, the combmaker of London Bridge (who naively tells us how one day between the stairhead and the middle of the stairs, he resolved that the best work he could do for G.o.d was to get Bunyan"s books printed and sell them--adding, "I have sold about 3,000"), and others, a few years later, including one of the raciest of his compositions, "The Heavenly Footman,"
bought by Doe of Bunyan"s eldest son, and, he says, "put into the World in Print Word for Word as it came from him to Me."
At the time that death surprised him, Bunyan had gained no small celebrity in London as a popular preacher, and approached the nearest to a position of worldly honour. Though we must probably reject the idea that he ever filled the office of Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Shorter, the fact that he is styled "his Lordship"s teacher"
proves that there was some relation more than that of simple friendship between the chief magistrate and the Bedford minister. But the society of the great was never congenial to him. If they were G.o.dly as well as great, he would not shrink from intercourse, with those of a rank above his own, but his heart was with his own humble folk at Bedford. Worldly advancement he rejected for his family as well as for himself. A London merchant, it is said, offered to take his son Joseph into his house of business without the customary premium. But the offer was declined with what we may consider an overstrained independence. "G.o.d," he said, "did not send me to advance my family but to preach the gospel." "An instance of other-worldliness," writes Dr. Brown, "perhaps more consistent with the honour of the father than with the prosperity of the son."
Bunyan"s end was in keeping with his life. He had ever sought to be a peacemaker and to reconcile differences, and thus had "hindered many mishaps and saved many families from ruin." His last effort of the kind caused his death. The father of a young man in whom he took an interest, had resolved, on some offence, real or supposed, to disinherit his son.
The young man sought Bunyan"s mediation. Anxious to heal the breach, Bunyan mounted his horse and took the long journey to the father"s house at Reading--the scene, as we have noticed, of his occasional ministrations--where he pleaded the offender"s cause so effectually as to obtain a promise of forgiveness. Bunyan returned homewards through London, where he was appointed to preach at Mr. Gamman"s meeting-house near Whitechapel. His forty miles" ride to London was through heavy driving rain. He was weary and drenched to the skin when he reached the house of his "very loving friend," John Strudwick, grocer and chandler, at the sign of the Star, Holborn Bridge, at the foot of Snow Hill, and deacon of the Nonconformist meeting in Red Cross Street. A few months before Bunyan had suffered from the sweating sickness. The exposure caused a return of the malady, and though well enough to fulfil his pulpit engagement on Sunday, the 19th of August, on the following Tuesday dangerous symptoms declared themselves, and in ten days the disease proved fatal. He died within two months of completing his sixtieth year, on the 31st of August, 1688, just a month before the publication of the Declaration of the Prince of Orange opened a new era of civil and religious liberty, and between two and three months before the Prince"s landing in Torbay. He was buried in Mr. Strudwick"s newly-purchased vault, in what Southey has termed the Campo Santo of Nonconformists, the burial-ground in Finsbury, taking its name of Bunhill or Bonehill Field, from a vast ma.s.s of human remains removed to it from the charnel house of St. Paul"s Cathedral in 1549. At a later period it served as a place of interment for those who died in the Great Plague of 1665. The day after Bunyan"s funeral, his powerful friend, Sir John Shorter, the Lord Mayor, had a fatal fall from his horse in Smithfield, and "followed him across the river."
By his first wife, whose Christian name is nowhere recorded, Bunyan had four children--two sons and two daughters; and by his second wife, the heroic Elizabeth, one son and one daughter. All of these survived him except his eldest daughter Mary, his tenderly-loved blind child, who died before him. His wife only survived him for a brief period, "following her faithful pilgrim from this world to the other whither he was gone before her" either in 1691 or 1692. Forgetful of the "deed of gift," or ignorant of its bearing, Bunyan"s widow took out letters of administration of her late husband"s estate, which appears from the Register Book to have amounted to no more than, 42 pounds 19s. On this, and the proceeds of his books, she supported herself till she rejoined him.
Bunyan"s character and person are thus described by Charles Doe: "He appeared in countenance to be of a stern and rough temper. But in his conversation he was mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much discourse in company, unless some urgent occasion required it. Observing never to boast of himself or his parts, but rather to seem low in his own eyes and submit himself to the judgment of others. Abhorring lying and swearing, being just, in all that lay in his power, to his word. Not seeming to revenge injuries; loving to reconcile differences and make friendship with all. He had a sharp, quick eye, with an excellent discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit. He was tall of stature, strong-boned, though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes, wearing his hair on his upper lip after the old British fashion. His hair reddish, but in his later days time had sprinkled it with grey. His nose well set, but not declining or bending.
His mouth moderately large, his forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest. Not puffed up in prosperity, nor shaken in adversity, always holding the golden mean."
We may add the portrait drawn by one who had been his companion and fellow-sufferer for many years, John Nelson: "His countenance was grave and sedate, and did so to the life discover the inward frame of his heart, that it was convincing to the beholders and did strike something of awe into them that had nothing of the fear of G.o.d."
The same friend speaks thus of Bunyan"s preaching: "As a minister of Christ he was laborious in his work of preaching, diligent in his preparation for it, and faithful in dispensing the Word, not sparing reproof whether in the pulpit or no, yet ready to succour the tempted; a son of consolation to the broken-hearted, yet a son of thunder to secure and dead sinners. His memory was tenacious, it being customary with him to commit his sermons to writing after he had preached them. A rich anointing of the Spirit was upon him, yet this great saint was always in his own eyes the chiefest of sinners and the least of saints."
An anecdote is told which, Southey says, "authenticates itself," that one day when he had preached "with peculiar warmth and enlargement," one of his hearers remarked "what a sweet sermon he had delivered." "Ay," was Bunyan"s reply, "you have no need to tell me that, for the devil whispered it to me before I was well out of the pulpit." As an evidence of the estimation in which Bunyan was held by the highly-educated, it is recorded that Charles the Second expressed his surprise to Dr. Owen that "a learned man such as he could sit and listen to an illiterate tinker."
"May it please your Majesty," Owen replied. "I would gladly give up all my learning if I could preach like that tinker."
Although much of Bunyan"s literary activity was devoted to controversy, he had none of the narrowness or bitter spirit of a controversialist. It is true that his zeal for what he deemed to be truth led him into vehemence of language in dealing with those whom he regarded as its perverters. But this intensity of speech was coupled with the utmost charity of spirit towards those who differed from him. Few ever had less of the sectarian temper which lays greater stress on the infinitely small points on which all true Christians differ than on the infinitely great truths on which they are agreed. Bunyan inherited from his spiritual father, John Gifford, a truly catholic spirit. External differences he regarded as insignificant where he found real Christian faith and love.
"I would be," he writes, "as I hope I am, a Christian. But for those factious t.i.tles of Anabaptist, Independent, Presbyterian, and the like, I conclude that they come neither from Jerusalem nor from Antioch, but from h.e.l.l or from Babylon." "He was," writes one of his early biographers, "a true lover of all that love our Lord Jesus, and did often bewail the different and distinguishing appellations that are among the G.o.dly, saying he did believe a time would come when they should be all buried."
The only persons he scrupled to hold communion with were those whose lives were openly immoral. "Divisions about non-essentials," he said, "were to churches what wars were to countries. Those who talked most about religion cared least for it; and controversies about doubtful things and things of little moment, ate up all zeal for things which were practical and indisputable." His last sermon breathed the same catholic spirit, free from the trammels of narrow sectarianism. "If you are the children of G.o.d live together lovingly. If the world quarrel with you it is no matter; but it is sad if you quarrel together. If this be among you it is a sign of ill-breeding. Dost thou see a soul that has the image of G.o.d in him? Love him, love him. Say, "This man and I must go to heaven one day." Serve one another. Do good for one another. If any wrong you pray to G.o.d to right you, and love the brotherhood." The closing words of this his final testimony are such as deserve to be written in letters of gold as the sum of all true Christian teaching: "Be ye holy in all manner of conversation: Consider that the holy G.o.d is your Father, and let this oblige you to live like the children of G.o.d, that you may look your Father in the face with comfort another day." "There is," writes Dean Stanley, "no compromise in his words, no faltering in his convictions; but his love and admiration are reserved on the whole for that which all good men love, and his detestation on the whole is reserved for that which all good men detest." By the catholic spirit which breathes through his writings, especially through "The Pilgrim"s Progress," the tinker of Elstow "has become the teacher not of any particular sect, but of the Universal Church."
CHAPTER IX.
We have, in this concluding chapter, to take a review of Bunyan"s merits as a writer, with especial reference to the works on which his fame mainly rests, and, above all, to that which has given him his chief t.i.tle to be included in a series of Great Writers, "The Pilgrim"s Progress."
Bunyan, as we have seen, was a very copious author. His works, as collected by the late industrious Mr. Offor, fill three bulky quarto volumes, each of nearly eight hundred double-columned pages in small type. And this copiousness of production is combined with a general excellence in the matter produced. While few of his books approach the high standard of "The Pilgrim"s Progress" or "Holy War," none, it may be truly said, sink very far below that standard. It may indeed be affirmed that it was impossible for Bunyan to write badly. His genius was a native genius. As soon as he began to write at all, he wrote well.
Without any training, is he says, in the school of Aristotle or Plato, or any study of the great masters of literature, at one bound he leapt to a high level of thought and composition. His earliest book, "Some Gospel Truths Opened," "thrown off," writes Dr. Brown, "at a heat," displays the same ease of style and directness of speech and absence of stilted phraseology which he maintained to the end. The great charm which pervades all Bunyan"s writings is their naturalness. You never feel that he is writing for effect, still less to perform an uncongenial piece of task-work. He writes because he had something to say which was worth saying, a message to deliver on which the highest interests of others were at stake, which demanded nothing more than a straightforward earnestness and plainness of speech, such as coming from the heart might best reach the hearts of others. He wrote as he spoke, because a necessity was laid upon him which he dared not evade. As he says in a pa.s.sage quoted in a former chapter, he might have stepped into a much higher style, and have employed more literary ornament. But to attempt this would be, to one of his intense earnestness, to degrade his calling.
He dared not do it. Like the great Apostle, "his speech and preaching was not with enticing words of man"s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and in power." G.o.d had not played with him, and he dared not play with others. His errand was much too serious, and their need and danger too urgent to waste time in tricking out his words with human skill. And it is just this which, with all their rudeness, their occasional bad grammar, and homely colloquialisms, gives to Bunyan"s writings a power of riveting the attention and stirring the affections which few writers have attained to. The pent-up fire glows in every line, and kindles the hearts of his readers. "Beautiful images, vivid expressions, forcible arguments all aglow with pa.s.sion, tender pleadings, solemn warnings, make those who read him all eye, all ear, all soul." This native vigour is attributable, in no small degree, to the manner in which for the most part Bunyan"s works came into being. He did not set himself to compose theological treatises upon stated subjects, but after he had preached with satisfaction to himself and acceptance with his audience, he usually wrote out the substance of his discourse from memory, with the enlargements and additions it might seem to require. And thus his religious works have all the glow and fervour of the unwritten utterances of a practised orator, united with the orderliness and precision of a theologian, and are no less admirable for the excellence of their arrangement than for their evangelical spirit and scriptural doctrine.
Originally meant to be heard, they lose somewhat by being read. But few can read them without being delighted with the opulence of his imagination and impressed with the solemn earnestness of his convictions.
Like the subject of the portrait described by him in the House of the Interpreter, he stands "like one who pleads with men, the law of truth written upon his lips, the world behind his back, and a crown of gold above his head."
These characteristics, which distinguish Bunyan as a writer from most of his Puritan contemporaries, are most conspicuous in the works by which he is chiefly known, "The Pilgrim"s Progress," the "Holy War," the "Grace Abounding," and we may add, though from the repulsiveness of the subject the book is now scarcely read at all, the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman."
One great charm of these works, especially of "The Pilgrim"s Progress,"
lies in the pure Saxon English in which they are written, which render them models of the English speech, plain but never vulgar, homely but never coa.r.s.e, and still less unclean, full of imagery but never obscure, always intelligible, always forcible, going straight to the point in the fewest and simplest words; "powerful and picturesque," writes Hallam, "from concise simplicity." Bunyan"s style is recommended by Lord Macaulay as an invaluable study to every person who wishes to gain a wide command over his mother tongue. Its vocabulary is the vocabulary of the common people. "There is not," he truly says, "in "The Pilgrim"s Progress" a single expression, if we except a few technical terms of theology, that would puzzle the rudest peasant." We may, look through whole pages, and not find a word of more than two syllables. Nor is the source of this pellucid clearness and imaginative power far to seek.
Bunyan was essentially a man of one book, and that book the very best, not only for its spiritual teaching but for the purity of its style, the English Bible. "In no book," writes Mr. J. R. Green, "do we see more clearly than in "The Pilgrim"s Progress" the new imaginative force which had been given to the common life of Englishmen by their study of the Bible. Bunyan"s English is the simplest and homeliest English that has ever been used by any great English writer, but it is the English of the Bible. His images are the images of prophet and evangelist. So completely had the Bible become Bunyan"s life that one feels its phrases as the natural expression of his thoughts. He had lived in the Bible till its words became his own."
All who have undertaken to take an estimate of Bunyan"s literary genius call special attention to the richness of his imaginative power. Few writers indeed have possessed this power in so high a degree. In nothing, perhaps, is its vividness more displayed than in the reality of its impersonations. The _dramatis persons_ are not shadowy abstractions, moving far above us in a mystical world, or lay figures ticketed with certain names, but solid men and women of our own flesh and blood, living in our own everyday world, and of like pa.s.sions with ourselves. Many of them we know familiarly; there is hardly one we should be surprised to meet any day. This lifelike power of characterization belongs in the highest degree to "The Pilgrim"s Progress." It is hardly inferior in "The Holy War," though with some exceptions the people of "Mansoul" have failed to engrave themselves on the popular memory as the characters of the earlier allegory have done. The secret of this graphic power, which gives "The Pilgrim"s Progress" its universal popularity, is that Bunyan describes men and women of his own day, such as he had known and seen them. They are not fancy pictures, but literal portraits. Though the features may be exaggerated, and the colours laid on with an unsparing brush, the outlines of his bold personifications are truthfully drawn from his own experience. He had had to do with every one of them. He could have given a personal name to most of them, and we could do the same to many. We are not unacquainted with Mr Byends of the town of Fair Speech, who "always has the luck to jump in his judgment with the way of the times, and to get thereby," who is zealous for Religion "when he goes in his silver slippers," and "loves to walk with him in the streets when the sun shines and the people applaud him." All his kindred and surroundings are only too familiar to us--his wife, that very virtuous woman my Lady Feigning"s daughter, my Lord Fair-speech, my Lord Time-server, Mr. Facingbothways, Mr. Anything, and the Parson of the Parish, his mother"s own brother by the father"s side, Mr. Twotongues.
Nor is his schoolmaster, one Mr. Gripeman, of the market town of Lovegain, in the county of Coveting, a stranger to us. Obstinate, with his dogged determination and stubborn common-sense, and Pliable with his shallow impressionableness, are among our acquaintances. We have, before now, come across "the brisk lad Ignorance from the town of Conceit," and have made acquaintance with Mercy"s would-be suitor, Mr. Brisk, "a man of some breeding and that pretended to religion, but who stuck very close to the world." The man Temporary who lived in a town two miles off from Honesty, and next door to Mr. Turnback; Formalist and Hypocrisy, who were "from the land of Vainglory, and were going for praise to Mount Sion"; Simple, Sloth, and Presumption, "fast asleep by the roadside with fetters on their heels," and their companions, Shortwind, Noheart, Lingerafterl.u.s.t, and Sleepyhead, we know them all. "The young woman whose name was Dull" taxes our patience every day. Where is the town which does not contain Mrs. Timorous and her coterie of gossips, Mrs.
Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Lightmind, and Mrs. Knownothing, "all as merry as the maids," with that pretty fellow Mr. Lechery at the house of Madam Wanton, that "admirably well-bred gentlewoman"? Where shall we find more lifelike portraits than those of Madam Bubble, a "tall, comely dame, somewhat of a swarthy complexion, speaking very smoothly with a smile at the end of each sentence, wearing a great purse by her side, with her hand often in it, fingering her money as if that was her chief delight;" of poor Feeblemind of the town of Uncertain, with his "whitely look, the cast in his eye, and his trembling speech;" of Littlefaith, as "white as a clout," neither able to fight nor fly when the thieves from Dead Man"s Lane were on him; of Ready-to-halt, at first coming along on his crutches, and then when Giant Despair had been slain and Doubting Castle demolished, taking Despondency"s daughter Much-afraid by the hand and dancing with her in the road? "True, he could not dance without one crutch in his hand, but I promise you he footed it well. Also the girl was to be commanded, for she answered the musick handsomely." In Bunyan"s pictures there is never a superfluous detail. Every stroke tells, and helps to the completeness of the portraiture.
The same reality characterizes the descriptive part of "The Pilgrim"s Progress." As his characters are such as he must meet with every day in his native town, so also the scenery and surroundings of his allegory are part of his own everyday life, and reproduce what he had been brought up amidst in his native county, or had noticed in his tinker"s wanderings.
"Born and bred," writes Kingsley, "in the monotonous Midland, he had no natural images beyond the pastures and brooks, the town and country houses, he saw about him." The Slough of Despond, with its treacherous quagmire in the midst of the plain, into which a wayfarer might heedlessly fall, with its stepping-stones half drowned in mire; Byepathmeadow, promising so fair, with its stile and footpath on the other side of the fence; the pleasant river fringed with meadows, green all the year long and overshadowed with trees; the thicket all overgrown with briars and thorns, where one tumbled over a bush, another stuck fast in the dirt, some lost their shoes in the mire, and others were fastened from behind with the brambles; the high wall by the roadside over which the fruit trees shot their boughs and tempted the boys with their unripe plums; the arbour with its settle tempting the footsore traveller to drowsiness; the refreshing spring at the bottom of Hill Difficulty; all are evidently drawn from his own experience. Bunyan, in his long tramps, had seen them all. He had known what it was to be in danger of falling into a pit and being dashed to pieces with Vain Confidence, of being drowned in the flooded meadows with Christian and Hopeful; of sinking in deep water when swimming over a river, going down and rising up half dead, and needing all his companion"s strength and skill to keep his head above the stream. Vanity Fair is evidently drawn from the life. The great yearly fair of Stourbridge, close to Cambridge, which Bunyan had probably often visited in his tinker days, with its streets of booths filled with "wares of all kinds from all countries," its "shows, jugglings, cheats games, plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and that of every kind," its "great one of the fair," its court of justice and power of judgment, furnished him with the materials for his picture.
Scenes like these he draws with sharp defined outlines. When he had to describe what he only knew by hearsay, his pictures are shadowy and cold.
Never having been very far from home, he had had no experience of the higher types of beauty and grandeur in nature, and his pen moves in fetters when he attempts to describe them. When his pilgrims come to the Hill Difficulty and the Delectable Mountains, the difference is at once seen. All his n.o.bler imagery is drawn from Scripture. As Hallam has remarked, "There is scarcely a circ.u.mstance or metaphor in the Old Testament which does not find a place bodily and literally in "The Pilgrim"s Progress," and this has made his imagination appear more creative than it really is."
It would but weary the reader to follow the details of a narrative which is so universally known. Who needs to be told that in the pilgrimage here described is represented in allegorical dress the course of a human soul convinced of sin, struggling onwards to salvation through the trials and temptations that beset its path to its eternal home? The book is so completely wrought into the mind and memory, that most of us can at once recall the incidents which chequer the pilgrim"s way, and realize their meaning; the Slough of Despond, in which the man convinced of his guilt and fleeing from the wrath to come, in his agonizing self-consciousness is in danger of being swallowed up in despair; the Wicket Gate, by which he enters on the strait and narrow way of holiness; the Interpreter"s House, with his visions and acted parables; the Wayside Cross, at the sight of which the burden of guilt falls from the pilgrim"s back, and he is clothed with change of raiment; the Hill Difficulty, which stands right in his way, and which he must surmount, not circ.u.mvent; the lions which he has to pa.s.s, not knowing that they are chained; the Palace Beautiful, where he is admitted to the communion of the faithful, and sits down to meat with them; the Valley of Humiliation, the scene of his desperate but victorious encounter with Apollyon; the Valley of the Shadow of Death, with its evil sights and doleful sounds, where one of the wicked ones whispers into his ear thoughts of blasphemy which he cannot distinguish from the suggestions of his own mind; the cave at the valley"s mouth, in which, Giant Pagan having been dead this many a day, his brother, Giant Pope, now sits alone, grinning at pilgrims as they pa.s.s by, and biting his nails because he cannot get at them; Vanity Fair, the picture of the world, as St. John describes it, hating the light that puts to shame its own self-chosen darkness, and putting it out if it can, where the Pilgrim"s fellow, Faithful, seals his testimony with his death, and the Pilgrim himself barely escapes; the "delicate plain" called Ease, and the little hill, Lucre, where Demas stood "gentlemanlike," to invite the pa.s.sersby to come and dig in his silver mine; Byepath Meadow, into which the Pilgrim and his newly-found companion stray, and are made prisoners by Giant Despair and shut up in the dungeons of Doubting Castle, and break out of prison by the help of the Key of Promise; the Delectable Mountains in Immanuel"s Land, with their friendly shepherds and the cheering prospect of the far-off heavenly city; the Enchanted Land, with its temptations to spiritual drowsiness at the very end of the journey; the Land of Beulah, the ante-chamber of the city to which they were bound; and, last stage of all, the deep dark river, without a bridge, which had to be crossed before the city was entered; the entrance into its heavenly gates, the pilgrim"s joyous reception with all the bells in the city ringing again for joy; the Dreamer"s glimpse of its glories through the opened portals--is not every stage of the journey, every scene of the pilgrimage, indelibly printed on our memories, for our warning, our instruction, our encouragement in the race we, as much as they, have each one to run? Have we not all, again and again, shared the Dreamer"s feelings--"After that they shut up the Gates; which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them," and prayed, G.o.d helping us, that our "dangerous journey"--ever the most dangerous when we see its dangers the least--might end in our "safe arrival at the desired country"?
"The Pilgrim"s Progress" exhibits Bunyan in the character by which he would have most desired to be remembered, as one of the most influential of Christian preachers. Hallam, however, claims for him another distinction which would have greatly startled and probably shocked him, as the father of our English novelists. As an allegorist Bunyan had many predecessors, not a few of whom, dating from early times, had taken the natural allegory of the pilgrimage of human life as the basis of their works. But as a novelist he had no one to show him the way. Bunyan was the first to break ground in a field which has since then been so overabundantly worked that the soil has almost lost its productiveness; while few novels written purely with the object of entertainment have ever proved so universally entertaining. Intensely religious as it is in purpose, "The Pilgrim"s Progress" may be safely styled the first English novel. "The claim to be the father of English romance," writes Dr.
Allon, "which has been sometimes preferred for Defoe, really pertains to Bunyan. Defoe may claim the parentage of a species, but Bunyan is the creator of the genus." As the parent of fict.i.tious biography it is that Bunyan has charmed the world. On its vivid interest as a story, its universal interest and lasting vitality rest. "Other allegorises,"
writes Lord Macaulay, "have shown great ingenuity, but no other allegorist has ever been able to touch the heart, and to make its abstractions objects of terror, of pity, and of love." Whatever its deficiencies, literary and religious, may be; if we find incongruities in the narrative, and are not insensible to some grave theological deficiencies; if we are unable without qualification to accept Coleridge"s dictum that it is "incomparably the best "Summa Theologiae Evangelicae" ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired;" even if, with Hallam, we consider its "excellencies great indeed, but not of the highest order," and deem it "a little over-praised," the fact of its universal popularity with readers of all cla.s.ses and of all orders of intellect remains, and gives this book a unique distinction. "I have,"
says Dr. Arnold, when reading it after a long interval, "always been struck by its piety. I am now struck equally or even more by its profound wisdom. It seems to be a complete reflexion of Scripture." And to turn to a critic of very different character, Dean Swift: "I have been better entertained and more improved," writes that cynical pessimist, "by a few pages of this book than by a long discourse on the will and intellect." The favourite of our childhood, as "the most perfect and complex of fairy tales, so human and intelligible," read, as Hallam says, "at an age when the spiritual meaning is either little perceived or little regarded," the "Pilgrim"s Progress" becomes the chosen companion of our later years, perused with ever fresh appreciation of its teaching, and enjoyment of its native genius; "the interpreter of life to all who are perplexed with its problems, and the practical guide and solace of all who need counsel and sympathy."
The secret of this universal acceptableness of "The Pilgrim"s Progress"
lies in the breadth of its religious sympathies. Rigid Puritan as Bunyan was, no book is more completely free from sectarian narrowness. Its reach is as wide as Christianity itself, and it takes hold of every human heart because it is so intensely human. No apology is needed for presenting Mr. Froude"s eloquent panegyric: "The Pilgrim, though in Puritan dress, is a genuine man. His experience is so truly human experience that Christians of every persuasion can identify themselves with him; and even those who regard Christianity itself as but a natural outgrowth of the conscience and intellect, and yet desire to live n.o.bly and make the best of themselves, can recognize familiar footprints in every step of Christian"s journey. Thus "The Pilgrim"s Progress" is a book which when once read can never be forgotten. We too, every one of us, are pilgrims on the same road; and images and ill.u.s.trations come back to us from so faithful an itinerary, as we encounter similar trials, and learn for ourselves the accuracy with which Bunyan has described them.
Time cannot impair its interest, or intellectual progress make it cease to be true to experience." Dr. Brown"s appreciative words may be added: "With deepest pathos it enters into the stern battle so real to all of us, into those heart-experiences which make up, for all, the discipline of life. It is this especially which has given to it the mighty hold which it has always had upon the toiling poor, and made it the one book above all books well-thumbed and torn to tatters among them. And it is this which makes it one of the first books translated by the missionary who seeks to give true thoughts of G.o.d and life to heathen men."
The Second Part of "The Pilgrim"s Progress" partakes of the character of almost all continuations. It is, in Mr. Froude"s words, "only a feeble reverberation of the first part, which has given it a popularity it would have hardly attained by its own merits. Christiana and her children are tolerated for the pilgrim"s sake to whom they belong." Bunyan seems not to have been insensible of this himself, when in his metrical preface he thus introduces his new work:
"Go now my little book to every place Where my first Pilgrim has but shown his face.
Call at their door; if any say "Who"s there?"
Then answer thus, "Christiana is here."
If they bid thee come in, then enter thou With all thy boys. And then, as thou know"st how, Tell who they are, also from whence they came; Perhaps they"ll know them by their looks or name."
But although the Second Part must be p.r.o.nounced inferior, on the whole, to the first, it is a work of striking individuality and graphic power, such as Bunyan alone could have written. Everywhere we find strokes of his peculiar genius, and though in a smaller measure than the first, it has added not a few portraits to Bunyan"s spiritual picture gallery we should be sorry to miss, and supplied us with racy sayings which stick to the memory. The sweet maid Mercy affords a lovely picture of gentle feminine piety, well contrasted with the more vigorous but still thoroughly womanly character of Christiana. Great-Heart is too much of an abstraction: a preacher in the uncongenial disguise of a knightly champion of distressed females and the slayer of giants. But the other new characters have generally a vivid personality. Who can forget Old Honesty, the dull good man with no mental gifts but of dogged sincerity, who though coming from the Town of Stupidity, four degrees beyond the City of Destruction, was "known for a c.o.c.k of the right kind," because he said the truth and stuck to it; or his companion, Mr. Fearing, that most troublesome of pilgrims, stumbling at every straw, lying roaring at the Slough of Despond above a month together, standing shaking and shrinking at the Wicket Gate, but making no stick at the Lions, and at last getting over the river not much above wetshod; or Mr. Valiant for Truth, the native of Darkland, standing with his sword drawn and his face all b.l.o.o.d.y from his three hours" fight with Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatick; Mr. Standfast, blushing to be found on his knees in the Enchanted Ground, one who loved to hear his Lord spoken of, and coveted to set his foot wherever he saw the print of his shoe; Mr. Feeblemind, the sickly, melancholy pilgrim, at whose door death did usually knock once a day, betaking himself to a pilgrim"s life because he was never well at home, resolved to run when he could, and go when he could not run, and creep when he could not go, an enemy to laughter and to gay attire, bringing up the rear of the company with Mr. Readytohalt hobbling along on his crutches; Giant Despair"s prisoners, Mr. Despondency, whom he had all but starved to death--and Mistress Much-afraid his daughter, who went through the river singing, though none could understand what she said? Each of these characters has a distinct individuality which lifts them from shadowy abstractions into living men and women. But with all its excellencies, and they are many, the general inferiority of the history of Christiana and her children"s pilgrimage to that of her husband"s must be acknowledged. The story is less skilfully constructed; the interest is sometimes allowed to flag; the dialogues that interrupt the narrative are in places dry and wearisome--too much of sermons in disguise. There is also a want of keeping between the two parts of the allegory. The Wicket Gate of the First Part has become a considerable building with a summer parlour in the Second; the shepherds" tents on the Delectable Mountains have risen into a palace, with a dining-room, and a looking- gla.s.s, and a store of jewels; while Vanity Fair has lost its former bad character, and has become a respectable country town, where Christiana and her family, seeming altogether to forget their pilgrimage, settled down comfortably, enjoy the society of the good people of the place, and the sons marry and have children. These same children also cause the reader no little perplexity, when he finds them in the course of the supposed journey transformed from sweet babes who are terrified with the Mastiffs barking at the Wicket Gate, who catch at the boughs for the unripe plums and cry at having to climb the hill; whose faces are stroked by the Interpreter; who are catechised and called "good boys" by Prudence; who sup on bread crumbled into basins of milk, and are put to bed by Mercy--into strong young men, able to go out and fight with a giant, and lend a hand to the pulling down of Doubting Castle, and becoming husbands and fathers. We cannot but feel the want of _vraisemblance_ which brings the whole company of pilgrims to the banks of the dark river at one time, and sends them over in succession, following one another rapidly through the Golden Gate of the City. The four boys with their wives and children, it is true, stay behind awhile, but there is an evident incongruity in their doing so when the allegory has brought them all to what stands for the close of their earthly pilgrimage. Bunyan"s mistake was in gratifying his inventive genius and making his band of pilgrims so large. He could get them together and make them travel in company without any sacrifice of dramatic truth, which, however, he was forced to disregard when the time came for their dismissal. The exquisite pathos of the description of the pa.s.sage of the river by Christian and Hopeful blinds us to what may be almost termed the impossibility of two persons pa.s.sing through the final struggle together, and dying at the same moment, but this charm is wanting in the prosaic picture of the company of fellow-travellers coming down to the water"s edge, and waiting till the postman blows his horn and bids them cross.
Much as the Second Part contains of what is admirable, and what no one but Bunyan could have written, we feel after reading it that, in Mr.
Froude"s words, the rough simplicity is gone, and has been replaced by a tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish. "Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious fairyland where the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair ladies and love-matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill with the sternness of the mortal conflict between the soul and sin." With the acknowledged shortcomings of the Second Part of "The Pilgrim"s Progress," we may be well content that Bunyan never carried out the idea hinted at in the closing words of his allegory: "Shall it be my lot to go that way again, I may give those that desire it an account of what I am here silent about; in the meantime I bid my reader--Adieu."
Bunyan"s second great allegorical work, "The Holy War," need not detain us long. Being an attempt, and in the nature of things an unsuccessful attempt, to clothe what writers on divinity call "the plan of salvation"
in a figurative dress, the narrative, with all its vividness of description in parts, its clearly drawn characters with their picturesque nomenclature, and the stirring vicissitudes of the drama, is necessarily wanting in the personal interest which attaches to an individual man, like Christian, and those who are linked with or follow his career. In fact, the tremendous realities of the spiritual history of the human race are entirely unfit for allegorical treatment as a whole. Sin, its origin, its consequences, its remedy, and the apparent failure of that remedy though administered by Almighty hands, must remain a mystery for all time. The attempts made by Bunyan, and by one of much higher intellectual power and greater poetic gifts than Bunyan--John Milton--to bring that mystery within the grasp of the finite intellect, only render it more perplexing. The proverbial line tells us that--
"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
Bunyan and Milton were as far as possible from being "fools"; but when both these great writers, on the one hand, carry us up into the Council Chamber of Heaven and introduce us to the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, debating, consulting, planning, and resolving, like a sovereign and his ministers when a revolted province has to be brought back to its allegiance; and, on the other hand, take us down to the infernal regions, and makes us privy to the plots and counterplots of the rebel leaders and hearers of their speeches, we cannot but feel that, in spite of the magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their essential mysteries. In point of individual personal interest, "The Holy War" contrasts badly with "The Pilgrim"s Progress." The narrative moves in a more shadowy region. We may admire the workmanship; but the same undefined sense of unreality pursues us through Milton"s n.o.ble epic, the outcome of a divinely-fired genius, and Bunyan"s humble narrative, drawing its scenes and circ.u.mstances, and to some extent its _dramatis personae_, from the writer"s own surroundings in the town and corporation of Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the great Parliamentary War. The catastrophe also is eminently unsatisfactory. When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been looking for all along. But the conclusion of "The Holy War" is too much like the closing chapter of "Ra.s.selas"--"a conclusion in which nothing is concluded." After all the endless vicissitudes of the conflict, and the final and glorious victory of Emmanuel and his forces, and the execution of the ringleaders of the mutiny, the issue still remains doubtful. The town of Mansoul is left open to fresh attacks. Diabolus is still at large. Carnal Sense breaks prison and continues to lurk in the town.
Unbelief, that "nimble Jack," slips away, and can never be laid hold of.
These, therefore, and some few others of the more subtle of the Diabolonians, continue to make their home in Mansoul, and will do so until Mansoul ceases to dwell in the kingdom of Universe. It is true they turn chicken-hearted after the other leaders of their party have been taken and executed, and keep themselves quiet and close, lurking in dens and holes lest they should be snapped up by Emmanuel"s men. If Unbelief or any of his crew venture to show themselves in the streets, the whole town is up in arms against them; the very children raise a hue and cry against them and seek to stone them. But all in vain. Mansoul, it is true, enjoys some good degree of peace and quiet. Her Prince takes up his residence in her borders. Her captains and soldiers do their duties. She minds her trade with the heavenly land afar off; also she is busy in her manufacture. But with the remnants of the Diabolonians still within her walls, ready to show their heads on the least relaxation of strict watchfulness, keeping up constant communication with Diabolus and the other lords of the pit, and prepared to open the gates to them when opportunity offers, this peace can not be lasting. The old battle will have to be fought over again, only to end in the same undecisive result.
And so it must be to the end. If untrue to art, Bunyan is true to fact.
Whether we regard Mansoul as the soul of a single individual or as the whole human race, no final victory can be looked for so long as it abides in "the country of Universe." The flesh will l.u.s.t against the spirit, the regenerated man will be in danger of being brought into captivity to the law of sin and death unless he keeps up his watchfulness and maintains the struggle to the end.
And it is here, that, for purposes of art, not for purposes of truth, the real failing of "The Holy War" lies. The drama of Mansoul is incomplete, and whether individually or collectively, must remain incomplete till man puts on a new nature, and the victory, once for all gained on Calvary, is consummated, in the fulness of time, at the rest.i.tution of all things.
There is no uncertainty what the end will be. Evil must be put down, and good must triumph at last. But the end is not yet, and it seems as far off as ever. The army of Doubters, under their several captains, Election Doubters, Vocation Doubters, Salvation Doubters, Grace Doubters, with their general the great Lord Incredulity at their head, reinforced by many fresh regiments under novel standards, unknown and unthought of in Bunyan"s days, taking the place of those whose power is past, is ever making new attacks upon poor Mansoul, and terrifying feeble souls with their threatenings. Whichever way we look there is much to puzzle, much to grieve over, much that to our present limited view is entirely inexplicable. But the mind that accepts the loving will and wisdom of G.o.d as the law of the Universe, can rest in the calm a.s.surance that all, however mysteriously, is fulfilling His eternal designs, and that though He seems to permit "His work to be spoilt, His power defied, and even His victories when won made useless," it is but seeming,--that the triumph of evil is but temporary, and that these apparent failures and contradictions, are slowly but surely working out and helping forward
"The one unseen divine event To which the whole creation moves."
"The mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation leaves unsolved are made tolerable by Hope." To adopt Bunyan"s figurative language in the closing paragraph of his allegory, the day is certainly coming when the famous town of Mansoul shall be taken down and transported "every stick and stone" to Emmanuel"s land, and there set up for the Father"s habitation in such strength and glory as it never saw before. No Diabolonian shall be able to creep into its streets, burrow in its walls, or be seen in its borders. No evil tidings shall trouble its inhabitants, nor sound of Diabolian drum be heard there. Sorrow and grief shall be ended, and life, always sweet, always new, shall last longer than they could even desire it, even all the days of eternity.
Meanwhile let those who have such a glorious hope set before them keep clean and white the liveries their Lord has given them, and wash often in the open fountain. Let them believe in His love, live upon His word; watch, fight, and pray, and hold fast till He come.