Part 10

As Bunyan was in the midst of the game, "having struck the cat one blow from the hole," he says, "just as I was about to strike it a second time, a voice did suddenly dart from heaven into my soul, which said, 'Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this I was put into an exceeding maze. Wherefore, leaving my cat on the ground, I looked up to heaven, and was as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen the Lord Jesus looking down upon me, as being very hotly displeased with me."

The impression soon wore away, and Bunyan became as reckless as ever. A month went by, and "one day," he says, "as I was standing at a neighbor's shop-window, cursing and swearing, and playing the madman, after my wonted manner, there sat within the woman of the house, and heard me; who, though she was a very loose, ungodly wretch, yet protested that I swore and cursed at that most fearful rate, that she was made to tremble to hear me; and told me further, that I was the ungodliest fellow for swearing that she ever heard in all her life; and that I, by thus doing, was enough to spoil all the youth in the whole town, if they came but in my company."

Bunyan was ashamed and hung his head. "While I stood there," he says, "I wished with all my heart that I might be a little child again, that my father might teach me to speak without this wicked way of swearing; for, thought I, I am so much accustomed to it, that it is in vain for me to think of reformation; for, I thought, that could never be.... How it came to pass I know not; but I did from this time forward so leave off my swearing, that it was a great wonder to myself to observe it. And whereas, before, I knew not how to speak unless I put an oath before and another behind, to make the words have authority; now I could speak better without it, and with more pleasantness than ever I could before."

He began to read the Bible at the suggestion of a friend, and attempted to keep the commandments. He had a hard struggle in giving up his amusements. While sure that bell-ringing was a foolish use of time, he "hankered after it still," and would for some time go and see his old companions ring. He could not bring himself to give up dancing for a full year.

His neighbors began to think him very pious, and he was "proud of his godliness.... I thought," he says, "I pleased God as well as any man in England."

His self-satisfaction was soon spoiled. "Upon a day," he says, "the good providence of God called me to Bedford, to work at my calling; and in one of the streets of that town I came where there were three or four women sitting at a door in the sun, talking about the things of God. And being now willing to hear what they said, I drew near, to hear their discourse--for I was now a brisk talker of myself in the matters of religion--but I may say, I heard, but understood not; for they were far above, out of my reach.

"Their talk was about a new birth--the work of God in their hearts; as also, how they were convinced of their miserable state by nature. They talked how God had visited their souls with his love in the Lord Jesus.... Methought, they spoke as if joy did make them speak. They spoke with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me, as if I had found a new world; as if they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned among their neighbors....

"I left, but their talk and discourse went with me; also my heart would tarry with them, for I was greatly affected by their words.... Therefore, I would often make it my business to be going again and again into the company of these poor people; for I could not stay away."

The result was "a very great softness and tenderness of heart, and a desire to meditate on good things."

These poor women could not have realized the wonderful work they were doing in reforming the life of this travelling vender of pots and kettles. They were simply using every opportunity for good which came in their way, and the seed was now destined to bring forth an hundred-fold.

They followed up the interest already awakened in Bunyan's heart. They were in earnest to serve their Lord. They introduced Bunyan to their minister, the Rev. John Gifford.

This Free Church was founded in Bedford in 1650, with twelve members. "Now the principle upon which they thus entered into fellowship one with another, and upon which they did afterwards receive those that were added to their body and fellowship, was _faith in Christ and holiness in life_, without respect to this or that circumstance or opinion in outward and circumstantial things." The Rev. John Gifford is usually spoken of as a Baptist, though Dr. Brown finds no proof for or against. In Gifford's last letter to his church, written just before his death, he appeals to them not to divide the church on such matters as "baptism, laying on of hands, anointing with oil, psalms, or any externals."

Bunyan himself, in a work written in 1673, "Differences in Judgment about Water Baptism no Bar to Communion," implies that he believes in immersion, but his children were baptized in their infancy.

Mr. Gifford had been a young major in the king's army, was defeated, and with eleven others condemned to the gallows. On the night before he was to be executed, his sister visited him in prison. The guards were asleep, and his fellow-prisoners were drunk. She urged him to escape to the fields. He did so, and for three days hid himself in a ditch, and lived on water. Coming to Bedford, he practised as a physician, but continued his bad habits, drinking and losing heavily through gambling.

In the midst of such a course of life he happened one day to take up a book written by an eminent scholar and Puritan preacher, the Rev. Robert Bolton, born at Blackburn, Lancashire, 1572. It was probably the volume entitled, "The Four Last Things, and Directions for Walking with God," published in 1626. Mr. Bolton died in 1631, with these words upon his lips: "By the wonderful mercies of God, I am as full of comfort as my heart can hold, and feel nothing in my soul but Christ, with whom I heartily desire to be."

Mr. Bolton's book was the means of the conversion of Gifford, who, in turn, led Bunyan into the light, and, consequently, to the writing of that wonderful book, "The Pilgrim's Progress," in which Gifford is supposed to be the Evangelist, who points out to Pilgrim the wicket gate. Who shall measure the power of a good book!

For months, even years, Bunyan passed through the struggles which Pilgrim found in his difficult journey. He has glowingly depicted these in his "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners."

Sometimes he was in the depths of despair, because he felt that his sins had been too great to be forgiven. Then he feared that he was not one of the elect, or that he had committed the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Then doubts about the Bible and God took possession of him, till, under the mental strain, his health became affected, and consumption seemed imminent.

Sometimes a promise from the Bible would bring him the greatest joy. "I was now so taken with the love and mercy of God," he writes, "that I thought I could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon the ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood me."

In these days of alternate grief and joy, Bunyan came upon an old copy of Luther's "Commentary on the Galatians;" "so old, that it was ready to fall piece from piece if I did but turn it over.... I found my conditions as largely and profoundly handled, in his experience, as if his book had been written out of my heart. I do prefer this book of Martin Luther (excepting the Bible) before all the books that ever I have seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience."

This book was also most effective in the experience of John Wesley. "I went," Wesley wrote, "very unwillingly, to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther's Preface to the Epistle to the Galatians. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins."

Finally, "the peace of God which passeth understanding" came into Bunyan's heart. As he was walking in the field, he seemed to hear the sentence, "Thy righteousness is in heaven;" "and methought I saw," he says, "with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right hand, there I say, as my righteousness, so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing, God could not say of me, he wants my righteousness, for that was just before him. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. Now went I home rejoicing for the grace and love of God."

During these years of anxiety, Bunyan worked hard with his hands, feeling, as did his honest father, that it was one of the first of duties to be "very careful to maintain his family." He had been moderately successful at his trade, as a contemporary biographer writes, that "God had increased his stores so that he lived in great credit among his neighbors."

In the year 1653, when he was twenty-five,--the year in which Oliver Cromwell was made Lord Protector of England,--he became a member of Mr. Gifford's church. He probably removed to Bedford from Elstow, two years later, and was made a deacon in the church.

About this time his lovely wife, to whom he owed so much, died, leaving four children, one of them, his idolized blind daughter, Mary, born in 1650. His beloved friend and pastor, Mr. Gifford, died in September of the same year as his wife.

The members of the church, realizing that the uneducated tinker was gifted in speech, and believing in his earnestness, asked him "to speak a word of exhortation unto them."

At first, modest and shrinking as he was, "it did much dash and abash his spirit," but being entreated, he spoke twice, "but with much weakness and infirmity."

After this he was asked to go with others and hold meetings in the country roundabout; and finally, "after solemn prayer, with fasting, he was set apart to the more ordinary and public preaching of the Word."

"My great desire," he says, "in my fulfilling my ministry, was to get into the darkest places of the country, even amongst those people that were furtherest off of profession.... I preached what I felt, what I smartingly did feel.... Indeed, I have been as one sent to them from the dead. I went myself in chains, to preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my conscience, that I persuaded them to be aware of."

Later, he says, after two years "crying out against men's sins," he changed his manner of preaching; "I did labor much to hold forth Jesus Christ in all his offices, relations, and benefits unto the world."

On one occasion, having preached with much feeling, one of his friends took him by the hand, and spoke of the sweet sermon he had delivered. "Ay," said the self-searching preacher, "you need not remind me of that, for the devil told me of it before I was out of the pulpit."

Bunyan preached wherever there was an open door,--in a barn, a church, or on the village green. Crowds came to listen,--some from curiosity,--and great numbers were converted.

"No such preacher," says Froude, "to the uneducated English masses was to be found within the four seas."

Among the crowd gathered in a churchyard in Cambridgeshire on a week-day, was a Cambridge scholar, "none of the soberest," who had come to hear "the tinker prate," and gave a boy twopence to hold his horse while he listened. "But God met him there by his ministry, so that he came out much changed; and would by his good will hear none but the tinker for a long time after, he himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that country afterwards."

Another Cambridge University man asked Bunyan, "How dare you preach, seeing you have not the original, being not a scholar?"

"Have you the original?" asked Bunyan.

"Yes," said the scholar.

"Nay, but have you the very self-same original copies that were written by the penmen of the Scriptures, prophets and apostles?"

"No," was the reply, "but we have the true copies of these originals."

"How do you know that?" said Bunyan.

"How?" said the scholar, "why, we believe what we have is a true copy of the original."

"Then," said Bunyan, "so do I believe our English Bible is a true copy of the original." Then away rode the scholar.

Bunyan met with many obstacles in his preaching. When Dr. William Dell, the Puritan master of Caius College, Cambridge, asked him to preach in the parish church on Christmas, the orthodox parishioners were indignant. Some of the university professors were "angry with the tinker because he strove to mend souls as well as kettles and pans." Others declared him a witch, a highwayman, and accused him of nearly every vice. All these things deeply wounded the earnest man, but he kept steadily at work.

His first book, about two hundred pages, "Some Gospel Truths Opened according to the Scriptures," was published in London, in 1656, when Bunyan was twenty-eight years old. The Rev. John Burton, the pastor who succeeded Mr. Gifford, wrote the introduction, and commended the young author as one who had "neither the greatness nor the wisdom of the world to commend him ... not being chosen out of an earthly but out of a heavenly university,--the Church of Christ."

This book being replied to by Edward Burrough, a Quaker, defending his sect, Bunyan wrote a second book, "A Vindication of Gospel Truths Opened." His third book, published in 1658, a few days before Oliver Cromwell's death, was an exposition of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The volume went through nine editions in the author's lifetime. His fourth book, published in 1659, was entitled "The Doctrine of Law and Grace Unfolded."

All were written in simple language, with the earnestness of one, who, as he said, grieved more over the backsliding of one of his converts "than if one of my own children were going to the grave."

With the restoration of Charles II. the rule of Puritanism was over. Dissenters' chapels were shut up. The worshippers were commanded to attend the Established Church. Bunyan had preached for five years; and he could not give up his work, even now that his pulpit was closed by law. He continued to preach in barns and private houses.

On Nov. 12, 1600, he went to the little hamlet of Lower Samsell, near Harlington, to preach. Some one communicated this fact to a magistrate, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. This was told him, and he had time to escape; but he said if he were to flee, "the weak and newly converted brethren would be afraid to stand." He would never play the coward.

He opened the meeting with prayer, and began to speak from the words, "Dost thou believe on the Son of God?"

When the officers arrived, he was ordered to cease speaking. He replied "that he was about his Master's business, and must rather obey his Lord's voice than that of man." However, knowing that resistance was useless, as he was arrested in the king's name, he was led away to prison "with God's comfort," he says, "in my poor soul." He would not promise to discontinue preaching, saying rather, "If I were out of prison to-day, I would preach the gospel again to-morrow." He was sentenced to remain in prison for three months; if at the end of that time he refused to give up preaching, he would be sent away from his country, and if he came back without license, he would be hanged. Those were times of dreadful intolerance, and yet in this age we have not ceased to be intolerant of those whose beliefs are not like our own!

Bunyan had recently married a second time, and his wife was dangerously ill. He was a man of deep affections and loved his home. He said, "What a man is at home, that he is indeed. My house and my closet show most what I am, to my family and to the angels, though not to the world."

He wrote in prison, "The parting with my wife and poor children hath often been to me in this place as the pulling of my flesh from my bones; and that not only because I am too, too fond of those great mercies, but also because I should have often brought to my mind the hardships, miseries, and wants my poor family was like to meet with should I be taken from them, especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart than all I had beside. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow on thee.

"But yet, thought I, I must venture all with God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. I was as a man who was pulling down his house upon the head of his wife and children."

As the coronation of Charles II. took place in the spring of 1661, and it was customary to pardon prisoners under sentence for any offence short of felony, it was hoped by the followers of Bunyan that he would be released. As the local authorities did not put his name on the list of those who might properly be pardoned, his young wife, Elizabeth, scarcely recovered from her illness, travelled to London, and with great courage made her way to the House of Lords, and presented her petition to one of the peers. He received her kindly, but told her that her husband's case must be left with the judges at the next assizes.

Three times Elizabeth Bunyan, "with abashed face and trembling heart," stood before the judges, pleading for her husband. One of the judges, Sir Matthew Hale, was very kind to her, though he feared he could not help her, as the law was against her husband. The other judge, Twisden, was brutal in his manner, so that she feared he would strike her.

Unsuccessful, the poor woman went back to her home, and John Bunyan remained for twelve long years in prison.

For the first six months Bunyan was allowed considerable liberty by his sympathetic jailer. He went to some of the meetings of the Baptists, and to his home. Some of the bishops heard of it, and sent a messenger from London to ascertain if this were really so. The officer was told to call at night at the prison. It happened that Bunyan had been allowed to remain at his home that night, but he became so uneasy that he told his wife he must go back to prison. It was so late when he returned that the jailer chided him for coming at all.

Soon afterward the messenger arrived. "Are the prisoners all safe?" he asked.

"Yes," was the reply.

"Is John Bunyan safe?"

"Yes."

"Let me see him."

Bunyan was called, and fortunately was able to appear. When the messenger was gone, the jailer said, "Well, you may go out again just when you think proper, for you know when to return better than I can tell you." Soon, however, the jailer was censured, and came near losing his position, while Bunyan himself was not permitted "to look out at the door." His name does not appear again at a church meeting for seven years.

Bunyan's prison life was a very busy one. He did not, says his friend and biographer, the Rev. Charles Doe, "spend his time in a supine and careless manner, or eat the bread of idleness. For there I have been witness, that his own hands have ministered to his and to his family's necessities, by making many hundred gross of long, tagged, thread laces, to fill up the vacancies of his time, which he had learned for that purpose since he had been in prison. There also I surveyed his library, the least and yet the best that ever I saw, consisting only of two books, a Bible and the 'Book of Martyrs.'"

Bunyan's Bible and his Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" came into the possession of Mr. Bohn, the London publisher, and were purchased from him for the Bedford library, where they have been seen by thousands of visitors.

"With those two books," says Froude, "Bunyan had no cause to complain of intellectual destitution. Foxe's Martyrs, if he had a complete edition of it, would have given him a very adequate knowledge of history.... The Bible, thoroughly known, is a literature of itself--the rarest and richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists."

Besides these books, he seems to have had a rosebush, about which he wrote a poem:--

"This homely Bush doth to mine eyes expose, A very fair, yea, comely, ruddy rose. This rose doth always bow its head to me, Saying, 'Come pluck me; I thy rose will be.'"

He also wrote verses about a spider whose habits he closely watched.

Bunyan's prison, if it had much of discomfort, gave him leisure to read and write--the one thing for which most persons of brain are struggling. "Prisons in those days," says Canon Venables, "and indeed long afterwards, were, at their best, foul, dark, miserable places. A century later John Howard found Bedford jail, though better than some, in what would now be justly deemed a disgraceful condition. One who visited Bunyan during his confinement speaks of it 'as an uncomfortable and close prison.'"

Once or twice his friends tried to regain his liberty for him, but he always left the matter with his Lord. When they failed to obtain his freedom, he said, "Verily, I did meet my God sweetly again, comforting of me and satisfying of me, that it was his will and mind that I should be there."

In prison Bunyan's pen was a source of great joy to himself, and a blessing to all the world. His earliest prison work was "Profitable Meditations" in verse. He put portions of the Old and New Testament into poetry. Froude calls the "Book of Ruth" and the "History of Joseph" "beautiful idylls."

He wrote in prose a treatise on prayer, entitled, "Praying in the Spirit;" a book on "Christian Behavior;" the "Holy City," an exposition of the closing chapters of Revelation; a work on the "Resurrection of the Dead and Eternal Judgment;" and "Grace Abounding," the story of his own conversion. The latter book, "if he had written no other," says Canon Venables, "would stamp Bunyan as one of the greatest masters of the English language of his own or any other age."

This book was published by George Larkin, in London, in 1666, in the sixth year of Bunyan's imprisonment.

Besides these, he wrote his "Confession of Faith," and his "Defence of the Doctrine of Justification by Faith."

Bunyan's imprisonment came to an end May 8, 1672. Through the Declaration of Indulgence, granted by Charles II., Nonconformists were once more allowed to worship God as they chose.

It seems probable, from Bunyan's later biographers, that "Pilgrim's Progress" was written during a subsequent imprisonment of six months in 1675, when the Nonconformists were again suffering the rigors of law.

The first edition appeared in 1678, when Bunyan was fifty years old. A second edition was issued the same year, and a third, with additions, the year following, 1679.

After it was written in prison, Bunyan, always distrusting his own abilities, consulted with his friends about the wisdom of publishing it, as will be seen from the metrical preface:--

"When at first I took my pen in hand, Thus for to write, I did not understand That I at all should make a little book In such a mode; nay, I had undertook To make another; which, when almost done, Before I was aware I this begun.

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