JOHN BUNYAN

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, one of the few books that successive generations and whole nations read, is written, the title-page says, "in the similitude of a dream." Every man has visions and spiritual conflicts in some degree, even in the most frivolous, worldly times. Few ages, however, have been so wholly given over to religious dreams and aspirations as was the Puritan Age of the seventeenth century; and of all the earnest struggles for salvation in that time of zeal, despair, and ecstasy, few were so real as Bunyan's, few visions were so clear as his, no book expressed so forcibly as his the sincere effort of the soul. His "dream" became at once the true record and the satisfying answer for half a nation. For to Bunyan and the Puritans salvation was literally and absolutely the only concern of this world, a matter of terrible moment.

Bunyan's book, then, the record of his struggle and victory, must interest all who realize that in it they can see how the man was made. He himself, like Christian, had escaped from the specious advice of Mr. Worldly Wiseman; he had been deserted by Pliable at the Slough of Dispond; he had descended into the Valley of Humiliation and wrestled with the monster Apollyon; he had passed safely through the alluring shows of Vanity Fair; he had known just such judges as those who condemned Faithful; he had met, too, with Hopeful, through whose aid he endured the dungeon of Doubting Castle; and he had come through,

scarred and victorious, to the "pleasant land of Beulah," whence the Two Shining Ones were soon to conduct him across the River of Death to the Holy City.

John Bunyan was born in a cottage just outside of the hamlet of Elstow, in Bedfordshire, late in the year 1628. His father, Thomas Bunyan, was a tinker in very poor circumstances, and his mother, Margaret Bentley, was of as low an estate. Nothing is known of John's education, though it is supposed, since he could read and write, that he went for a time to the village school. His book learning, however, was very slight; even in later life his reading was confined almost wholly to the Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. While he was still a boy he began to help his father, whose trade he followed throughout his life.

Bunyan, in his Grace Abounding, the most autobiographical of his works, says that he was a hopeless sinner as a boy,-"filled with unrighteousness," with "but few equals both for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God," "the very ringleader in all manner of vice and ungodliness." It was hence for some time the fashion to suppose that the author of Pilgrim's Progress was a converted reprobate, a particular example of God's grace. Later biographers, however, have realized that Bunyan's condemnation of his youthful practices as unpardonable was the result of a morbid conscience. He was not the first godly person, in his "awakening," to consider himself the most miserable of sinners. At all events, "The four chief sins of which he was guilty," says Macaulay, "were dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tipcat, and reading the history of Sir Bevis of Southampton." Such, the same author

says in another place, "would have passed for virtues with Archbishop Laud."

When he was a boy of about seventeen Bunyan served as a soldier. It has been said that he was at the siege of Leicester and on the side of Parliament, but he himself says another was sent in his place, and there is only probability in favor of his having been in Cromwell's army. There is, indeed, no knowledge that he saw actual fighting. When the armies were disbanded in 1646 he returned to his father's trade at Elstow.

Besides the mere incidents of his life, there is really only one thing to tell about Bunyan - the story of his conversion and its results. His spiritual conflict, beginning when he was about twenty and lasting for about seven years, brought forth a new man; thence grew his influential ministry, his imprisonment for conscience' sake, and his great book.

The struggle seems to have begun in earnest shortly after his marriage, about 1648. He had been troubled as a boy by religious visions, "fearful dreams," he says, "apprehensions of devils and wicked spirits;" but his unremitting contest with evil really dates from his marriage. Nothing is known of his first wife except that she was a "godly person" and brought as dowry two religious books which he fell to reading. From the parish church, which he had begun to attend, he went home one Sunday with a "great burden" on him. But by afternoon he had forgotten the sermon and was off to the village green, where he led the lads of Elstow in the innocuous sport of "tip-cat" or "sly." Just as he was going to give the "cat" a second blow, however, he heard a voice from heaven asking whether "he would

leave his sins and go to heaven, or keep his sins and go to hell." This only shook him a little; he soon resolved that he was "past pardon" and that he might as well sin to his heart's content. But his heart was far from content; the leaven was at work. Rebuked by a woman for "the ungodliest fellow for swearing that she ever heard," he managed to leave off swearing, to his "great wonder." Soon he began to read the Bible in earnest.

The regeneration was not, however, of even growth. At times he relapsed into what he later considered his hopeless depravity. The Bible filled him with hopes and fears and terrible visions. Sometimes he felt the devil pulling at his back when he tried to pray. If he had faith, the Bible told him, he could work miracles. Once, when "the temptation came hot" upon him to try this promise, he was about to say to the puddles in the road," Be dry," and to the dry places, "Be ye puddles;" but he was saved by the thought that it might be better to go under the hedge and pray to God to help him. While he was praying, he saw that his failure to work miracles would not so much prove the falseness of the Bible as his lack of faith, so he did not put the promise to the test. Little by little, moreover, he found strength to renounce worldly pleasures. Chief among these for him were dancing and bell-ringing. To give up the latter was not an easy task. He first abandoned pulling the rope, but continued to stand in the doorway, where he might hear the sweet sound of the bells. But after a time the fear that these with the tower might fall on him for his sins led him to move farther away, and at last the conviction that he was trifling caused him to depart wholly.

Thus the progress continued, with the pilgrim's pas

sionate yearning for salvation, his chaotic despair and ecstasy. At times the evils of his youth haunted him; in his own eyes he was 66 more loathsome . . . . than

a toad." Once he took much comfort from Luther's Commentary on the Galatians. "Now I found, as I thought, that I loved Christ dearly. . . . I felt love to Him hot as fire." But thereupon came a voice saying, "Sell Him, sell Him, sell Him." For a time he resisted, but one morning as he lay in bed in spiritual torment he gave up. "Let Him go if He will," he said. Alas! Now all was truly lost; the Devil had won; Judas was poor Bunyan's only peer in sin.

The vividness of the man's visions, the terrible reality of his torment,—these are the striking things about his struggle. It is hard for us, for any age indeed, to understand how much the outcome mattered to him. He lived in a time when men went into battle singing hymns, when Cromwell himself wept "hysterical tears," and when commanders of the Parliamentary forces bore such names as "Captain Hew-Agag-in-pieces-before-theLord." Nothing in all Puritanism was so vitally important as this struggle of the human soul for salvation, this agony so vividly pictured in the life of Bunyan.

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At last, too, he did come, like Christian, to a land of spiritual rest. For a while the conflict had broken his health, but with new faith and hope, which gained slowly upon him, he grew strong again. The texts of the Bible now "looked not so grimly as before;" now remained only the hinder part of the tempest." About the year 1653 he was publicly baptized in the Ouse, by Mr. Gifford, pastor of a congregation in Bedford. For a few years he suffered set-backs and periods of despair, but by 1655 he had attained a spiritual calm