Eva Stern - "The Little Immigrant"

Various - "Life at High Tide"

Lilyan Stratton - "Reno"

John Buchan - "Huntingtower"

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Books: The Works of John Bunyan Volume 1

J >> John Bunyan >> The Works of John Bunyan Volume 1




Bunyan's happiness was now very great; his soul, with all its
affections, clave unto Christ: but lest spiritual pride should
exalt him beyond measure, and lest he should be scared to renounce
his Saviour, by the threat of transportation and death, his heart
was again wounded, and quickly after this his 'love was tried to
purpose.'

The tempter came in upon him with a most grievous and dreadful
temptation; it was to part with Christ, to exchange him for the
things of this life; he was perpetually tormented with the words
'sell Christ.' At length, he thought that his spirit gave way
to the temptation, and a dreadful and profound state of despair
overpowered him for the dreary space of more than two years.[109]
This is the most extraordinary part of this wonderful narrative, that
he, without apparent cause, should thus be tempted, and feel the
bitterness of a supposed parting with Christ. There was, doubtless,
a cause for every pang; his heavenly Father afflicted him for
his profit. We shall soon have to follow him through fiery trials.
Before the justices, allured by their arguments, and particularly by
the sophistry of their clerk, Mr. Cobb, and then dragged from a
beloved wife and from children to whom he was most fondly attached--all
these fiery trials might be avoided, if he would but 'sell Christ.'
A cold damp dungeon was to incarcerate his body for twelve tedious
years of the prime of his life, unless he would 'sell Christ.' His
ministering brother and friend, John Child, a Bedford man, who had
joined in recommending Bunyan's Vindication of Gospel Truths,[110]
fell under this temptation, and fearing temporal ruin and imprisonment
for life, conformed, and then fell into the most awful state of
despair, suffering such agonies of conscience, that, to get rid of
present trouble, he hurried himself into eternity. Probably Bunyan
alludes to this awful instance of fell despair in his Publican
and Pharisee: 'Sin, when appearing in its monstrous shape and hue,
frighteth all mortals out of their wits, away from God; and if he
stops them not, also out of the world.'[111] To arm Bunyan against
being overcome by a fear of the lions in the way to the house
Beautiful--against giving way, under persecution--he was visited
with terrors lest he should sell or part with Christ. During these
sad years he was not wholly sunk in despair, but had at times some
glimmerings of mercy. In comparing his supposed sin with that of
Judas, he was constrained to find a difference between a deliberate
intention to sell Christ and a sudden temptation.[112] Through
all these searchings of heart and inquiries at the Word, he became
fixed in the doctrine of the final perseverance of God's saints. 'O
what love, what care, what kindness and mercy did I now see mixing
itself with the most severe and dreadful of all God's ways to his
people; he never let them fall into sin unpardonable.' 'But these
thoughts added grief and horror to me; I thought that all things
wrought for my eternal overthrow.' So ready is the tender heart to
write bitter things against itself, and as ready is the tempter to
whisper despairing thoughts. In the midst of this distress he 'saw
a glory in walking with God,' although a dismal cloud enveloped
him.

This misery was aggravated by reading the fearful estate of Francis
Spira, who had been persuaded to return to a profession of Popery,
and died in a state of awful despair.[113] 'This book' was to his
troubled spirit like salt rubbed into a fresh wound.

Bunyan now felt his body and mind shaking and tottering under the
sense of the dreadful judgment of God; and he thought his sin--of
a momentary and unwilling consent to give up Christ--was a greater
sin than all the sins of David, Solomon, Manasseh, and even than
all the sins that had been committed by all God's redeemed ones.
Was there ever a man in the world so capable of describing the
miseries of Doubting Castle, or of the Slough of Despond, as poor
John Bunyan?

He would have run from God in utter desperation; 'but, blessed
be his grace, that Scripture, in these flying sins, would call,
as running after me, "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy
transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have
redeemed thee"' (Isa 44:22).Still he was haunted by that scripture,
'You know how that afterwards, when he would have inherited the
blessing, he found no place of repentance, though he sought it
carefully with tears.' Thus was he tossed and buffeted, involved in
cloudy darkness, with now and then a faint gleam of hope to save
him from despair. 'In all these,' he says, 'I was but as those
that justle against the rocks; more broken, scattered, and rent.
Oh! the unthought of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that
are effected by a thorough application of guilt.'[114] 'Methought
I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give
light, and as if the very stones in the street, and tiles upon the
houses, did bend themselves against me.'[115] Here we find him in
that doleful valley, where Christian was surrounded by enemies that
'cared not for his sword,' he put it up, and places his dependence
upon the more penetrating weapon, 'All Prayer.' Depending upon
this last resource, he prayed, even when in this great darkness
and distress. To whom could he go? his case was beyond the power
of men or angels. His refuge, from a fear of having committed the
unpardonable sin, was that he had never refused to be justified by
the blood of Christ, but ardently wished it; this, in the midst of
the storm, caused a temporary clam. At length, he was led to look
prayerfully upon those scriptures that had tormented him, and to
examine their scope and tendency, and then he 'found their visage
changed, for they looked not so grimly on him as before he thought
they did.'[116] Still, after such a tempest, the sea did not at
once become a calm. Like one that had been scared with fire, every
voice was fire, fire; every little touch hurt his tender conscience.[117]

All this instructive history is pictured by a few words in the
Pilgrim's Progress. At the Interpreter's house the pilgrim is shown
'a fire burning against a wall, and one standing by it, always
casting much water upon it, to quench it; yet did the fire burn
higher and hotter.'[118] As Esau beat him down, Christ raised him
again. The threatening and the promise were like glittering swords
clashing together, but the promise must prevail.

His entire relief at last was sudden, while meditating in the field
upon the words, 'Thy righteousness is in heaven.' Hence he drew the
conclusion, that his righteousness was in Christ, at God's right
hand, ever before him, secure from all the powers of sin and
Satan. Now his chains fell off; he was loosed from his affliction
and irons; his temptation fled away. His present supply of grace
he compared to the cracked groats and fourpence half-pennies,[119]
which rich men carry in their pockets, while their treasure is safe
in their trunks at home, as his was in the store-house of heaven.

This dreary night of awful conflict lasted more than two years; but
when the day-spring from on high visited him, the promises spangled
in his eyes, and he broke out into a song, 'Praise ye the Lord.
Praise God in his sanctuary: praise him in the firmament of his
power. Praise him for his mighty acts: praise him according to his
excellent greatness.'[120]

Bunyan's opinion as to the cause of this bitter suffering, was his
want of watchfulness, his not coming boldly to the throne of grace,
and that he had tempted God. The advantages he considered that
he had gained by it were, that it confirmed his knowledge of the
existence of God, so that he lost all his temptations to unbelief,
blasphemy, and hardness of heart, Doubts as to the truth of the
Word, and certainty of the world to come, were gone for ever.

He found no difficulty as to the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
'Now I saw the apostles to be the elders of the city of refuge,
those that they were to receive in, were received to life, but
those that they were to shut out, were to be slain by the avenger
of blood.' Those were to enter who, with Peter, confessed to Jesus,
'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God' (Matt 16:16).
This is simply an authority to proclaim salvation or condemnation
to those who receive or reject the Saviour. It is upon his shoulder
the key of the house is laid (Isa 22:22). Christ only has the key,
no MAN openeth or shutteth (Rev 1:18, 3:7). All that man can do,
as to binding or loosening, is to warn the hardened and to invite
the contrite.

By these trials, the promises, became more clear and invaluable
than ever. He never saw those heights and depths in grace, and
love, and mercy, as he saw them after this severe trial--'great
sins drew out great grace'; and the more terrible and fierce guilt
was, the more high and mighty did the mercy of God in Christ appear.
These are Bunyan's own reflections; but may we not add to them, that
while he was in God's school of trial, every groan, every bitter
pang of anguish, and every gleam of hope, were intended to fit him
for his future work as a preacher and writer? Weighed in the balances
of the sanctuary, there was not a jot too little, or an iota too
much. Every important subject which embarrasses the convert, was
most minutely investigated, especially faith, the sin against the
Holy Ghost, the divinity of Christ, and such essential truths. He
well knew every dirty lane, and nook, and corner of Mansoul, in
which the Diabolonians found shelter, and well he knew the frightful
sound of Diabolus' drum.[121] Well did his pastor, John Burton,
say of him, 'He hath through grace taken these three heavenly
degrees, to wit, union with Christ, the anointing of the Spirit,
and experience of the temptations of Satan, which do more fit
a man for that mighty work of preaching the gospel, than all the
university learning and degrees that can be had.'[122]

Preserved in Christ Jesus, and called--selected from his associates
in sin, he was taken into this school, and underwent the strictest
religious education. It was here alone that his rare talent could
be cultivated, to enable him, in two immortal allegories, to narrate
the internal discipline he underwent. It was here he attained
that habitual access to the throne of grace, and that insight into
the inspired volume, which filled his writings with those solemn
realities of the world to come; while it enabled him to reveal
the mysteries of communion with the Father of spirits, as he so
wondrously does in his treatise on prayer. To use the language of
Milton--'These are works that could not be composed by the invocation
of Dame Memory and her Siren daughters, but by devout prayer to that
eternal Spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge,
and send out his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his altar,
to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases, without reference
to station, birth, or education.' The tent-maker and tinker, the
fisherman and publican, and even a friar or monk,[123] became the
honoured instruments of his choice.

Throughout all Bunyan's writings, he never murmurs at his want
of education, although it is often a source of humble apology. He
honoured the learned godly as Christians, but preferred the Bible
before the library of the two universities.[124] He saw, what every
pious man must see and lament, that there is much idolatry in human
learning, and that it was frequently applied to confuse and impede
the gospel. Thus he addresses the reader of his treatise on The Law
and Grace--'If thou find this book empty of fantastical expressions,
and without light, vain, whimsical, scholar-like terms, it is because
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. But if thou do find a parcel of plain, yet sound,
true, and home sayings, attribute that to the Lord Jesus his gifts
and abilities, which he hath bestowed upon such a poor creature as
I am and have been.'[125] His maxim was--'Words easy to be understood
do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce
the air. He also that speaks to the weakest may make the learned
understand him; when he that striveth to be high, is not only
of the most part understood but of a sort, but also many times is
neither understood by them nor by himself!'[126] This is one of
Bunyan's maxims, well worthy the consideration of the most profoundly
learned writers, and also of the most eloquent preachers and public
speakers.

Bunyan was one of those pioneers who are far in advance of the age
in which they live, and the narrative of his birth and education
adds to the innumerable contradictions which the history of man
opposes to the system of Mr. Owen and the Socialists, and to every
scheme for making the offspring of the poor follow in leading-strings
the course of their parents, or for rendering them blindly submissive
to the dictates of the rich, the learned, or the influential. It
incontestably proves the gospel doctrine of individuality, and,
that native talent will rise superior to all impediments. Our
forefathers struggled for the right of private judgment in matters
of faith and worship--their descendants will insist upon it,
as essential to salvation, personally to examine every doctrine
relative to the sacred objects of religion, limited only by Holy
Writ. This must be done with rigorous impartiality, throwing aside
all the prejudices of education, and be followed by prompt obedience
to Divine truth, at any risk of offending parents, or laws, or
resisting institutions, or ceremonies which he discovers to be of
human invention. All this, as we have seen in Bunyan, was attended
with great mental sufferings, with painstaking labour, with a
simple reliance upon the Word of God, and with earnest prayer. If
man impiously dares to submit his conscience to his fellow-man,
or to any body of men called a church, what perplexity must he
experience ere he can make up his mind which to choose! Instead of
relying upon the ONE standard which God has given him in his Word;
should he build his hope upon a human system he could be certain only
that man is fallible and subject to err. How striking an instance
have we, in our day, of the result of education, when the mind does
not implicitly follow the guidance of the revealed Word of God.
Two brothers, named Newman, educated at the same school, trained in
the same university, brought up under the same religious system--all
human arts exhausted to mould their minds into strict uniformity,
yet gradually receding from the same point in opposite directions,
but in equally downward roads; one to embrace the most puerile
legends of the middle ages, the other to open infidelity. Not so
with those who follow the teachings of the Word of God, by which,
and not by any church, they are to be individually judged at the great
day: no pontiff, no priest, no minister, can intervene or mediate
for them at the bar of God. There it will be said, 'I know you, by
your prayers for Divine guidance and your submission to my revealed
will'; or, 'I know you not,' for you preferred the guidance of
frail, fallible men, to me, and to my Word--a solemn consideration,
which, as it proved a source of solid happiness and extensive
usefulness to Bunyan in his pilgrimage, so it insured to him, as
it will to all who follow his course, a solid foundation on which
to stand at the great and terrible day, and thus enable them to
live as well as die in the sure and certain hope of a triumphant
entry into the celestial city.

THE THIRD PERIOD.

BUNYAN IS BAPTIZED, AND ENTERS INTO COMMUNION WITH A CHRISTIAN
CHURCH AT BEDFORD--IS SET APART TO FILL THE DEACON'S OFFICE, AND
SENT OUT AS AN ITINERANT PREACHER IN THE NEIGHBOURING VILLAGES.

Man is naturally led to seek the society of his fellow-men.
His personal progress, and the great interests of civilization,
depend upon the nature of his friendly intercourse and his proper
associations. So is it with the Christian, but in a much higher
degree. Not only does he require companions with whom he can enjoy
Christian communion--of sufferings and of pleasures--in seasons of
depressing trials, and in holy elevations--but with whom he may also
form plans to spread the genial influence of Christianity, which
has blessed and so boundlessly enriched his own soul. Christian
fellowship and communion has received the broad seal of heaven.
'The Lord hearkened,' when they that feared him spake often to one
another, 'and a book of remembrance was written before him for them
that feared the Lord' (Mal 3:16).

Bunyan possessed a soul with faculties capable of the highest
enjoyment of the communion of saints in church order. His ideas of
mutual forbearance--that 'in lowliness of mind should each esteem
others better than themselves'--he enforces with very peculiar
power, and, at the same time, with delicate sensibility. After the
pilgrims had been washed by Innocence in the Interpreter's bath,
he sealed them, which 'greatly added to their beauty,' and then
arrayed them in white raiment of fine linen; and 'when the women
were thus adorned, they seemed to be a terror one to the other, for
that they could not see that glory each one on herself which they
could see in each other. Now, therefore, they began to esteem
each other better than themselves.'[127] 'The Interpreter led them
into his garden, where was great variety of flowers. Then said he,
Behold, the flowers are diverse in stature, in quality and colour,
and smell and virtue, and some are better than some; also, where the
gardener hath set them, there they stand, and quarrel not with one
another.'[128] 'When Christians stand every one in their places,
and do their relative work, then they are like the flowers in the
garden that grow where the gardener hath planted them, and both
honour the gardener and the garden in which they are planted.'[129]
In the same treatise on Christian Behaviour, similar sentiments
are expressed in language extremely striking and beautiful. 'The
doctrine of the gospel is like the dew and the small rain that
distilleth upon the tender grass, wherewith it doth flourish and
is kept green (Deut 32:2).Christians are like the several flowers
in a garden that have upon each of them the dew of heaven, which,
being shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other's
roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers
of one another. For Christians to commune savourly of God's matters
one with another, it is as if they opened to each other's nostrils
boxes of perfume.'[130] Similar peaceful, heavenly principles, flow
through Bunyan's Discourse of the Building, &c., of the House of
God and its inmates;[131] and blessed would it be if in all our
churches every believer was baptized into such motives of forbearance
and brotherly love. These sentiments do honour to the head and heart
of the prince of allegorists, and should be presented in letters
of gold to every candidate for church fellowship. A young man
entertaining such opinions as these, however rude his former conduct,
being born again to spiritual enjoyments, would become a treasure
to the Christian society with which he might be connected.

In ordinary cases, the minister or people who have been useful to
a young convert, lead him in his first choice of Christian associates;
but here we have no ordinary man. Bunyan, in all things pertaining
to religion, followed no human authority, but submitted himself to
the guidance of the inspired volume. Possessing a humble hope of
salvation, he would read with deep interest that 'the Lord added
to the church such as should be saved.' The question which has so
much puzzled the learned, as to a church or the church, would be
solved without difficulty by one who was as learned in the Scriptures
as he was ignorant of the subtle distinctions and niceties of the
schools. He found that there was one church at Jerusalem (Acts
8:1), another at Corinth (1 Cor 1:2), seven in Asia (Rev 1:4),
and others distributed over the world; that 'the visible church of
Christ is a (or every) congregation of faithful men.'[132] He well
knew that uniformity is a fool's paradise; that though man was
made in the image of God; it derogates not from the beauty of that
image that no two men are alike. The stars show forth God's handy
work, yet 'one star different from another star in glory' (1 Cor
15:41). Uniformity is opposed to every law of nature, for no two
leaves upon a majestic tree are alike. Who but an idiot or a maniac
would attempt to reduce the mental powers of all men to uniformity?
Every church may have its own order of public worship while the
Scriptures form the standard of truth and morals. Where differences
of opinion occur, as they most certainly will, as to the observance
of days or abstinence from meats--whether to stand, or sit, or
kneel, in prayer--whether to stand while listening to some pages
of the inspired volume, and to sit while others are publicly
read--whether to call Jude a saint, and refuse the title to Isaiah--are
questions which should bring into active exercise all the graces of
Christian charity; and, in obedience to the apostolic injunction,
they must agree to differ. 'Let every man be fully persuaded in
his own mind' (Rom 14:5). Human arts have been exhausted to prevent
that mental exercise or self-persuasion which is essential to a
Christian profession. The great object of Satan has ever been to
foster indifference, that deadly lethargy, by leading man to any
source of information rather than prayerful researches into the
Bible. Bunyan's severe discipline in Christ's school would lead
him to form a judgment for himself; he was surrounded by a host
of sects, and, with such a Bible-loving man, it is an interesting
inquiry what party he would join.

He lived in times of extraordinary excitement. England was in a
transition state. A long chain of events brought on a crisis which
involved the kingdom in tribulation. It was the struggle between
the unbridled despotism of Epsicopacy, and the sturdy liberty of
Puritanism. For although the immediate cause of the civil wars was
gross misgovernment--arbitrary taxation without the intervention
of Parliament, monopolies and patents, to the ruin of trade; in
fact, every abuse of the royal power--still, without the additional
spur of religious persecution, the spirit of the people would never
have proved invincible and overpowering. The efforts of Archbishop
Laud, aided by the queen and her popish confessor, Panzani, to
subjugate Britain to the galling yoke of Rome, signally failed,
involving in the ruin the life of the king and his archbishop, and
all the desolating calamities of intestine wars, strangely called
'civil.' In this strife many of the clergy and most of the bishops
took a very active part, aiding and abetting the king's party in their
war against the parliament--and they thus brought upon themselves
great pains and penalties. The people became suddenly released
from mental bondage; and if the man who had been born blind, when
he first received the blessing of sight, 'saw men as trees walking,'
we cannot be surprised that religious speculations were indulged in,
some of which proved to be crude and wild, requiring much vigorous
persuasive pruning before they produced good fruit. Bunyan was
surrounded by all these parties; for although the rights of conscience
were not recognized--the Papists and Episcopalians, the Baptists
and Unitarians, with the Jews, being proscribed--yet the hand of
persecution was comparatively light. Had Bunyan chosen to associate
with the Episcopalians, he would not have passed through those
severe sufferings on which are founded his lasting honours. The
Presbyterians and Independents received the patronage of the state
under the Commonwealth, and the great mass of the clergy conformed to
the directory, many of them reciting the prayers they had formerly
read; while a considerable number, whose conscience could not
submit to the system then enforced by law, did, to their honour,
resign their livings, and suffer the privations and odium of being
Dissenters. Among these were necessarily included the bishops.[133]

Of all sects that of the Baptists had been the most bitterly
written against and persecuted. Even their first cousins, the
Quakers, attacked them in language that would, in our peaceful days,
be considered outrageous. 'The Baptists used to meet in garrets,
cheese-lofts, coal-holes, and such like mice walks,'--'theses
tumultuous, blood-thirsty, covenant-breaking, government-destroying
Anabaptists.'[134] The offence that called forth these epithets
was, that in addressing Charles II on his restoration, they stated
that "they were no abettors of the Quakers." Had royal authority
possessed the slightest influence over Bunyan's religious opinions,
the question as to his joining the Baptists would have been settled
without investigation. Among other infatuations of Charles I, had
been his hatred of any sect that professed the right and duty of
man to think for himself in choosing his way to heaven. In 1639
he published his 'Declaration concerning the tumults in Scotland,'
when violence was resorted to against the introduction of the Common
Prayer in which he denounced voluntary obedience because it was not
of constraint, and called it 'damnable'; he calls the principles
of the Anabaptists, in not submitting their consciences to human
laws, 'furious frenzies,' and 'madness'; all Protestants are 'to
detest and persecute them'; 'these Anabaptists raged most in their
madness'; 'the scandal of their frenzies'; 'we are amazed at, and
aggrieved at their horrible impudence'; 'we do abhor and detest
them all as rebellious and treasonable.'[135] This whole volume
is amusingly assuming. The king claims his subjects as personal
chattels, with whose bodies and minds he had a right to do as he
pleased. Bunyan owed no spiritual submission to man, 'whose breath
is in his nostrils'; and risking all hazards, he became one of the
denounced and despised sect of Baptists. To use the language of his
pilgrim, he passed the lions, braving all the dangers of an open
profession of faith in Christ, and entered the house called Beautiful,
which 'was built by the Lord of the hill, on purpose to entertain
such pilgrims in.'[136] He first gains permission of the watchman,
or minister, and then of the inmates, or church members. This
interesting event is said to have taken place about the year
1653.[137] Mr. Doe, in The Struggler, thus refers to it, Bunyan
'took all advantages to ripen his understanding in religion, and
so he lit on the dissenting congregation of Christians at Bedford,
and was, upon confession of faith, baptized about the year 1653,'[138]
when he was in the twenty-fifth year of his age. No minutes of the
proceedings of this church, prior to the death of Mr. Gifford in
1656,[139] are extant, or they would identify the exact period when
Bunyan's baptism and admission to the church took place. The spot
where he was baptized is a creek by the river Ouse, at the end
of Duck Mill Lane. It is a natural baptistery, a proper width and
depth of water constantly fresh; pleasantly situated; sheltered
from the public highway near the High Street. The Lord's Supper was
celebrated in a large room in which the disciples met, the worship
consecrating the place.[140]