Part 11

Well, when I had thus put my ends together, I showed them others, that I might see whether They would condemn them, or them justify: And some said, 'Let them live;' some, 'Let them die.' Some said, 'John, print it;' others said, 'Not so;' Some said, 'It might do good;' others said, 'No.' Now was I in a strait, and did not see Which was the best thing to be done of me; At last I thought, since you are thus divided, I print it will, and so the case decided."

Bunyan was already famous. The day after he was released from prison, he began to preach in a barn standing in an orchard in Bedford, which one of the congregation, Josias Ruffhead, acting for the members of the church, had purchased, "to be a place for the use of such as doe not conforme to the Church of England, who are of the Persuasion commonly called Congregationall." The barn was so thronged that many were obliged to stay outside. Here he preached till his death, sixteen years afterward.

He had a general oversight of the churches far and near, and was often called Bishop Bunyan.

He was urged to reside in London, but he would not leave Bedford. Here he lived in a cottage which had three small rooms on the ground floor--such a house as laborers now use. Behind the cottage stood a small building which served as his workshop. A person visiting him found in his "study" the Bible, "Pilgrim's Progress," and a few other books, chiefly his own productions, "all lying on a shelf or shelves."

His beloved blind daughter, Mary, had died while he was in prison. The other children, Thomas, John, Joseph, Sarah, and Elizabeth, four by the first mother, and two by the second, brightened the plain Bedford cottage. His son Thomas became a minister in 1673, the year after his father regained his liberty.

Whenever Bunyan went to London to preach, says Charles Doe, "if there were but one day's notice given, there would be more people come together than the meeting-house could hold. I have seen, by my computation, about twelve hundred at a morning lecture, by seven o'clock, on a working day, in the dark winter time. I also computed about three thousand that came to hear him one Lord's Day in London, at a town's-end meeting-house, so that half were fain to go back again for want of room, and then himself was fain at a back door to be pulled almost over people to get up-stairs to his pulpit." To what honor had the poor tinker already come!

It is said that Charles II. 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," was the reply, "I would gladly give up all my learning if I could preach like that tinker."

The wonderful success attending the "Pilgrim's Progress" must have been a surprise to modest John Bunyan. Macaulay says, "He had no suspicion that he was producing a masterpiece." It spread his fame over Europe and the American settlements. It was translated into many foreign languages during his life.

Dr. Brown says: "It is found in _Northern Europe_--in Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Lithuanian, Finnish, Lettish, Esthonian, and Russ; in _Eastern Europe_--in Servian, Bulgarian, Bohemian, Hungarian, and Polish; and in _Southern Europe_--in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romaic, or modern Greek. In _Asia_, it may be met with in Hebrew, Arabic, Modern Syriac, Armeno-Turkish, Græco-Turkish, and Armenian. Farther to the south, also, it is seen in Pashtu, or Afghani, and in the great Empire of India it is found in various forms.

"It has been translated into Hindustani or Urdu, Bengali, Uriya or Orissa, Hindi, Sindhi, Panjabi or Sikh, Telugu, Canarese, Tamil, Malayaline, Marathi-Balbodh, Gujarati, and Singhalese.

"In Indo-Chinese countries there are versions of it in Assamese, Khasi, Burmese, and Sgau-Karen. It has been given to the Dyaks of Borneo, to the Malays, to the Malagasy, to the Japanese, and to the many-millioned people of China, in various dialects, both classical and colloquial."

It has also been translated into the languages of Western Africa, the Pacific Islands, the Mexicans, and various tribes of Indians.

The greatest minds of the world have been unanimous in its praise. Everybody agrees with Toplady, who wrote "Rock of Ages," that "it is the finest allegorical work extant."

Macaulay said, "Bunyan is the first of allegorists, as Shakespeare is the first of dramatists," and recommended the study of his simple style to any who wished to gain command over his mother tongue.

Coleridge said, "I know of no book, the Bible excepted as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend, as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth, according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as 'The Pilgrim's Progress.'"

Fronde well says it has made Bunyan's "name a household word in every English-speaking family on the globe." Hallam calls his style "powerful and picturesque from concise simplicity." Green, the historian, thinks "Bunyan's English the simplest and homeliest English that has ever been used by any great English writer.... It is the English of the Bible."

The second part of "Pilgrim's Progress" was published seven years after the first, in 1685. In 1680 appeared the "Life and Death of Mr. Badman," a contrast to the good Pilgrim; in 1681, "Come and Welcome to Jesus Christ," which went through several editions; and in 1682, the "Holy War," which, Macaulay says, would have been our greatest allegory if "Pilgrim's Progress" had never been written. It represents the fall and recovery of man.

Several small books from Bunyan's pen appeared from year to year. In 1688, the year of his death, five of his works were published, "Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or a Help to Despairing Souls;" "The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate;" a poetical composition entitled, "The Building, Nature, and Excellency of the House of God;" the "Water of Life;" and "Solomon's Temple Spiritualized." "The Acceptable Sacrifice" was going through the press at the time of his death.

Besides these, Bunyan had prepared the manuscript of fourteen or more works. Ten were published soon after his death, by his devoted friend, Charles Doe, who said he thought the best work he could do for God was to get Bunyan's books printed and sold.

In the summer of 1688, a young man, in whom Bunyan was deeply interested, told him that his father was about to disinherit him, and begged the preacher to see him. Though scarcely recovered from an illness, he at once rode on horseback to Reading, met the father, obtained a promise of forgiveness, and returned homeward through London, where he was to preach near Whitechapel.

His forty miles to London were made through a pouring rain. Drenched and weary, he reached the home of his friend, Deacon John Strudwick, Holborn Bridge, Snow Hill. With his usual determination to do what he thought to be his duty, he preached Sunday, Aug. 19, 1688. Twelve days later, Aug. 31, he was dead. In two months he would have been sixty years old. He was buried in Mr. Strudwick's vault, in the Dissenters' burying-ground at Bunhill Field. The mother of John Wesley sleeps close by. This place was called Bunhill or Bonehill, from a vast quantity of human remains removed to it from the charnel house of St. Paul's Cathedral in 1549.

Bunyan died as he had lived, in complete trust and faith. He asked those who stood around his bedside to pray, and he joined fervently with them. "Weep not for me," he said, "but for yourselves. I go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will, no doubt, through the mediation of his blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner, where I hope we ere long shall meet to sing the new song, and remain everlastingly happy, world without end, Amen."

His blind Mary had gone before him; and Elizabeth, his noble wife, died four years after him, in 1692.

Bunyan's preaching was natural, simple, and earnest, with now and then an appropriate comparison and anecdote. He said, "I have observed that a word cast in by-the-by hath done more execution in a sermon than all that was spoken besides. Sometimes, also, when I have thought I did no good, then I did the most of all; and at other times, when I thought I should catch them, I have fished for nothing."

The Rev. Charles Doe describes Bunyan "as tall of stature, strong-boned, though not corpulent; somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes, ... hair reddish, but in his later days time had sprinkled it with gray, ... forehead something high, and his habit always plain and modest.... In his conversation he was mild and affable, not given to loquacity or much discourse in company.... He had a sharp, quick eye, with an excellent discerning of persons, being of good judgment and quick wit."

He was careful in preparing his sermons, usually committing them to writing after he had preached them. In composing his books his habit was, "first with doing, and then with undoing, and after that with doing again."

Froude says if Bunyan's "importance may be measured by the influence which he has exerted over succeeding generations, he must be counted among the most extraordinary persons whom England has produced.... To understand, and to make others understand, what Christ had done, and what Christ required men to do, was the occupation of his whole mind, and no object ever held his attention except in connection with it." Is it any wonder that the ministry of the poor, uneducated tinker was a marvellous success?

Visitors from all parts of the world go to Bedford yearly to look upon the scenes associated with Bunyan's life. In the Manor are seen his will, his cabinet, the Church Book, and various editions and foreign versions of the "Pilgrim's Progress."

Bunyan's chair is also shown, and the oak door with iron crossbars, once a part of Bedford jail, the home of the great preacher for twelve long years.

THOMAS ARNOLD.

Dr. Thomas Arnold of Rugby, "England's greatest schoolmaster," was born at West Cowes, Isle of Wight, June 13, 1795. He was the youngest son and seventh child of William and Martha Arnold. His father died before he was six years old. His early education was intrusted to his mother's sister, Mrs. Delafield; and later, at the age of twelve, he was sent to Winchester.

This aunt he never forgot. When she was seventy-seven he wrote to her, "This is your birthday, on which I have thought of you, and loved you, for as many years past as I can remember. No tenth of September will ever pass without my thinking of you and loving you."

The shy, retiring boy was early fond of books. When he was three, he received a present from his father of Smollett's "History of England," "as a reward," says Dean Stanley, in his life of Arnold, "for the accuracy with which he had gone through the stories connected with the portraits and pictures of the successive reigns; and at the same age he used to sit at his aunt's table arranging his geographical cards, and recognizing by their shape at a glance the different counties of the dissected map of England."

His first childish literary work was at the age of seven,--a play, on "Piercy, Earl of Northumberland." Between eight and twelve, when at school at Warminster, he rejoiced in Homer. A schoolmate writes: "Arnold's delight was in preparing for some part of the Siege of Troy; with a stick in his right hand, and the cover of a tin box, or any flat piece of wood, tied upon his left arm, he would come forth to the battle, and from Pope's Homer would pour forth fluently the challenge or the reproach.... Every book he had was easily recognized as his property by helmet and shields, and Hectors and Achilleses, on all the blank leaves; many of mine had some token of his graphic love of those heroes."

The home life seems to have been full of affection. Rose E. Selfe, in the _World's Worker_ series, gives these letters. His brother Matthew writes him from school, in 1800, before he is five years old, asking him for a letter, "with all the news you can think of. What new books you have, whether you like the great Bible as well as you did, how your garden and the flowers come on."

"My _darling little_ Tom...." his sister Susannah writes, "I shall expect to find you _very much_ improved, particularly in your _reading_. As you know you are _fond_ of kissing, give our DEAREST, DEAREST, DEAREST Mamma and Aunt ten each from Fan and myself. Oh, how I wish I could see and kiss them _myself_, and _you, too_, my _sweet dear_ Tom! I should like to know _very much_ if you are as fond of geography as you were last Christmas; tell _me_ when _you honour_ us with a letter. Adieu now, my _lovely_ Boy. With _sincerely_ wishing you _health_ and _happiness_,

I remain, your truly affectionate and loving sister,

SUE ARNOLD."

This sister, an invalid for twenty years, was most unselfish and lovable in character. She died at Laleham in 1832.

At the Winchester school he was called the poet Arnold to distinguish him from another boy of the same name. He used to recite ballad poetry for the pleasure of his schoolmates, and wrote a long poem, "Simon de Montfort," in imitation of Scott's "Marmion."

He had read Gibbon and Mitford through twice before he left Winchester, at sixteen. At fourteen he enjoyed "the modest, unaffected, and impartial narratives of Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon," and did not like "the numerous boasts which are everywhere to be met with in the Latin writers." He thought Roman history "scandalously exaggerated," and had no idea that he was thereafter, in his manhood, to write a fair and delightful Roman history himself.

In 1811 he was elected a scholar at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and four years later became a Fellow at Oriel College. He gained in 1815 and in 1817 the Chancellor's prize for the two University essays, Latin and English. In college he had a passion for Aristotle and Thucydides. Next to these he loved Herodotus. Though delicate in appearance, he took long walks, in which he studied nature, being a lover of flowers, birds, and clouds.

His friendships were warm and lasting. John Keble, author of "The Christian Year," Whately, later Archbishop of Dublin, and Coleridge, afterwards chief-justice, were his especial friends.

During his four years as a Fellow in Oriel College, he took private pupils, and read in the Oxford libraries. His plan was to make himself master of some one period, like the fifteenth century, and write full notes upon it.

Oxford was always very dear to Arnold. He wrote years later, "If I live till I am eighty, and were to enjoy all the happiness that the warmest wish could desire, I should never forget or cease to look back with something of a painful feeling on the years we were together there, and on all the delights that we have lost."

During these college years he was often restless and weary of duty, inclined to indolence, and an early riser with the greatest difficulty. These things he overcame in later life. He had some religious doubts, which completely vanished as he studied and thought more deeply.

In 1819 Arnold removed to Laleham, with his mother, sister, and aunt, and remained here for the next nine years, preparing private pupils for the universities.

A year after coming to Laleham, he married, when he was twenty-five, Mary, youngest daughter of the Rev. John Penrose, in Nottinghamshire, and sister of one of his best college friends, Trevenen Penrose. She was a worthy helper through all the laborious years which followed.

Although Arnold had fitted himself for the Church, he loved the work of teaching. He wrote to a friend about to engage in a similar occupation. "I know it has a bad name, but my wife and I always happened to be fond of it.... I enjoyed and do enjoy the society of youths of seventeen or eighteen; for they are all alive in limbs and spirits at least, if not in mind, while in older persons the body and spirits oftener become lazy and languid without the mind gaining any vigor to compensate for it....

"The misery of private tuition seems to me to consist in this, that men enter upon it as a means to some further end; are always impatient for the time when they may lay it aside; whereas, if you enter upon it heartily as your life's business, as a man enters upon any other profession, you are not then in danger of grudging every hour you give to it....

"I should say, have your pupils a good deal with you, and be as familiar with them as you possibly can. I did this continually more and more before I left Laleham, going to bathe with them, leaping, and all other gymnastic exercises within my capacity, and sometimes sailing or rowing with them. They, I believe, always liked it, and I enjoyed it myself like a boy, and found myself constantly the better for it."

"Large private schools," he thought, "the worst possible system; the choice lies between public schools, and an education whose character may be strictly private and domestic."

The home at Laleham was very dear to him. Here six of his children were born. He loved the quiet walks along the banks of the Thames, his garden back of his house, where, he said, "there is always something to interest me even in the very sight of the weeds and litter, for then I think how much improved the place will be when they are removed," and the churchyard, where in after years his mother, his infant child, and now his distinguished son Matthew are resting.

One of his pupils at Laleham thus writes of Arnold: "His great power as a private tutor resided in this, that he gave such an intense earnestness to life. Every pupil was made to feel that there was a work for him to do,--that his happiness as well as his duty lay in doing that work well.... His hold over all his pupils perfectly astonished me. It was not so much an enthusiastic admiration for his genius or learning or eloquence which stirred within them; it was a sympathetic thrill caught from a spirit that was earnestly at work in the world....

"In all this there was no excitement, no predilection for one class of work above another ... but an humble, profound, and most religious consciousness that work is the appointed calling of man on earth, the end for which his various faculties were given, the element in which his nature is ordained to develop itself."

Arnold used to say, "one must always expect to succeed, but never think he had succeeded."

Besides teaching, Arnold devoted his spare time to philology and history, preparing a Lexicon of Thucydides and articles on Roman History. He learned the German language that he might read Niebuhr's "History of Rome," and thereafter became deeply interested in German literature.

He wrote a friend concerning his little study "where I have a sofa full of books, as of old, and the two verse books lying about on it, and a volume of Herodotus; and where I sit up and read or write till twelve or one o'clock." Plato's "Phædo" was a great favorite. He thought it "nearly the perfection of human language."

To another he wrote, "One of my most useful books is dear old Tottle's (Aristotle's) 'Politics,' which give one so full a notion of the state of society and opinions in old times, that by their aid one can pick out the wheat from the chaff in Livy with great success."

Arnold was always a learner. He studied Hebrew when he was forty-three and Sanscrit when he was forty-five. He urged ministers not to study works on "Divinity" only. "A man requires," he said "first, the general cultivation of his mind, by constantly reading the works of the very greatest writers, philosophers, orators, and poets, and next, an understanding of the actual state of society, ... and of political economy as teaching him how to deal with the poor.... Further, I should advise a constant use of the biography of good men."

Arnold's friends were urging him to a wider sphere of influence. Laleham had become too expensive for his means, and he had determined to move elsewhere. Just at this time the head-mastership of Rugby became vacant. There were about thirty applicants, and his testimonials were sent in late. His college friend, Dr. Hawkins, afterwards Provost of Oriel, wrote the twelve trustees a letter about Arnold, predicting that if he were elected, "he would change the face of education all through the public schools of England." He was elected in December, 1827, and the words of Dr. Hawkins were fully verified.

In 1828 he received the degree of D.D., and entered upon his new duties.

It cost the Arnold family many a struggle to leave Laleham. "I cannot tell you," Dr. Arnold writes J. T. Coleridge, "how we both love it, and its perfect peace seems at times an appalling contrast to the publicity of Rugby. I am sure that nothing could stifle this regret, were it not for my full consciousness that I have nothing to do with rest here, but with labor."

To another friend he writes, "On Tuesday, if God will, we shall leave this dear place, this nine years' home of such exceeding happiness. But it boots not to look backwards. Forwards, forwards, forwards,--should be one's motto."

For fourteen years Arnold lived at Rugby and did his great work, which has made his name known and honored among all educated nations. "What a pity," said some persons, "that a man fit to be a statesman should be employed in teaching school-boys."

But Arnold knew the greatness of his chosen work. "It is a most touching thing to me," he said, "to receive a new fellow from his father, when I think what an influence there is in this place for evil as well as for good. I do not know anything which affects me more. If ever I could receive a new boy from his father without emotion, I should think it was high time to be off."

With much firmness he united great tenderness. "Lenity is seldom to be repented of," he wrote a friend who had asked his advice in dealing with a difficult pupil. "In cases," says Dean Stanley, "when it might have been thought that tenderness would have been extinguished by indignation, he was sometimes so deeply affected in pronouncing sentence of punishment on offenders as to be hardly able to speak."

Once, when he heard of some great fault in one of his pupils, "I felt," he said--and his eyes filled with tears as he spoke, "as if it had been one of my own children, and, till I had ascertained that it was really true, I mentioned it to no one, not even to any of the masters."

At another time he said to one of the masters, speaking of a promising lad, "If he should turn out ill, I think it would break my heart."

He wrote a friend, "I believe that boys may be governed a great deal by gentle methods and kindness, and appealing to their better feelings, if you show that you are not afraid of them; I have seen great boys, six feet high, shed tears when I have sent for them up to my room and spoken to them quietly, in private, for not knowing their lesson, and I have found that this treatment produced its effect afterwards in making them do better. But of course deeds must second words when needful, or words will soon be laughed at."

When occasion demanded, Arnold could be very firm. If a boy were habitually idle, or doing harm in the school, he was expelled, for a time or permanently. "Often it would be wholly unknown who were thus dismissed or why," says Dean Stanley; "latterly, Arnold generally allowed such cases to remain till the end of the half-year, that their removal might pass altogether unnoticed."

Many parents were displeased, but Arnold never hesitated for a moment in what he believed to be his duty. The result was that the tone of the school became so elevated that more wished to come than could be accommodated.