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Page 42
Coleridge says of the ``Pilgrim's Progress'' that it is the best
summary of evangelical Christianity ever produced by a writer not
miraculously inspired. Froude declares that it has for two
centuries affected the spiritual opinions of the English race in
every part of the world more powerfully than any other book,
except the Bible. ``It is,'' says Macaulay, ``perhaps the only
book about which, after the lapse of a hundred years, the
educated minority has come over to the opinion of the common
people.''
Whether or not Bunyan is, as D'Israeli has called him, the
Spenser of the people, and whether or not his work is the poetry
of Puritanism, the best evidence of the merit of the ``Pilgrim's
Progress'' appears, as Dr. Johnson has shrewdly pointed out, in
the general and continued approbation of mankind. Southey has
critically observed that to his natural style Bunyan is in some
degree beholden for his general popularity, his language being
everywhere level to the most ignorant reader and to the meanest
capacity; ``there is a homely reality about it--a nursery tale is
not more intelligible, in its manner of narration, to a child.''
Another cause of his popularity, says Southey, is that he taxes
the imagination as little as the understanding. ``The vividness
of his own, which, as history shows, sometimes could not
distinguish ideal impressions from actual ones, occasioned this.
He saw the things of which he was writing as distinctly with his
mind's eye as if they were, indeed, passing before him in a
dream.''
It is clear to me that in his youth Bunyan would have endeared
himself to me had I lived at that time, for his fancy was of that
kind and of such intensity as I delight to find in youth. ``My
sins,'' he tells us, ``did so offend the Lord that even in my
childhood He did scare and affright me with fearful dreams and
did terrify me with dreadful visions. I have been in my bed
greatly afflicted, while asleep, with apprehensions of devils and
wicked spirits, who still, as I then thought, labored to draw me
away with them, of which I could never be rid.''
It is quite likely that Bunyan overestimated his viciousness.
One of his ardent, intense temperament having once been touched
of the saving grace could hardly help recognizing in himself the
most miserable of sinners. It is related that upon one occasion
he was going somewhere disguised as a wagoner, when he was
overtaken by a constable who had a warrant for his arrest.
``Do you know that devil of a fellow Bunyan?'' asked the
constable.
``Know him?'' cried Bunyan. ''You might call him a devil indeed,
if you knew him as well as I once did!''
This was not the only time his wit served him to good purpose.
On another occasion a certain Cambridge student, who was filled
with a sense of his own importance, undertook to prove to him
what a divine thing reason was, and he capped his argument with
the declaration that reason was the chief glory of man which
distinguished him from a beast. To this Bunyan calmly made
answer: ``Sin distinguishes man from beast; is sin divine?''
Frederick Saunders observes that, like Milton in his blindness,
Bunyan in his imprisonment had his spiritual perception made all
the brighter by his exclusion from the glare of the outside
world. And of the great debt of gratitude we all owe to ``the
wicked tinker of Elstow'' Dean Stanley has spoken so truly that I
am fain to quote his words: ``We all need to be cheered by the
help of Greatheart and Standfast and Valiant-for-the-Truth, and
good old Honesty! Some of us have been in Doubting Castle, some
in the Slough of Despond. Some have experienced the temptations
of Vanity Fair; all of us have to climb the Hill of Difficulty;
all of us need to be instructed by the Interpreter in the House
Beautiful; all of us bear the same burden; all of us need the
same armor in our fight with Apollyon; all of us have to pass
through the Wicket Gate--to pass through the dark river, and for
all of us (if God so will) there wait the shining ones at the
gates of the Celestial City! Who does not love to linger over
the life story of the `immortal dreamer' as one of those
characters for whom man has done so little and God so much?''
About my favorite copy of the ``Pilgrim's Progress'' many a
pleasant reminiscence lingers, for it was one of the books my
grandmother gave my father when he left home to engage in the
great battle of life; when my father died this thick, dumpy
little volume, with its rude cuts and poorly printed pages, came
into my possession. I do not know what part this book played in
my father's life, but I can say for myself that it has brought me
solace and cheer a many times.
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