Works of that eminent servant of Christ, John Bunyan, minister of the gospel.

Front matter

OF THE

U N I VLR.S ITY Of ILLINOIS

Received by bequest from Albert H. Lybyer Professor of History University of Illinois 1916-1949

Introduction

TO TIIE

COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN BUNYAN.

By Rev. JOHN P. GULLIVER, D.D., President of Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois.

The career of Bunyan is a marvel. It will repay the labour of a careful analysis by the rhetorician, the orator, the writer of fiction, the preacher, the Sabbath-school teacher and the Christian parent ; for each of these may draw out fronTSome portion of his multifarious productions the secret of success in his own department of effort.

THE SUCCESS OF BUNYAN.

The literary rank of Bunyan.

Bunyan was successful even in his wickedness. He styles himself, as Paul did, “The chief of sinners.” In both cases the title was deserved, not so much on account of eminent depravity as of eminent ability and energy. All the natural qualities which afterward gave him power as a Christian preacher and writer were exhibited in his leadership in profanity, in revilings, and in all iniquity.

Bunyan was successful as a Christian man, as a popular orator, as a practical religious writer, and to no small extent as a theologian. In some of these departments his success has been most remarkable.

Bunyan was an illiterate man. He was an ordinary mechanic —

“a tinker,” as the parlance of the times termed him. Unlike the craftsmen of our nation and age, he had enjoyed only the most , limited opportunity for education. Yet his language possesses some of the highest quali- 1 'ties known to rhetoric ; his thought, even in his most abstract treatises, where it is cum- Jwbered with the system of minute subdivision then in vogue, is precise, discriminating, ■ comprehensive, and at times profound ; while the peculiar vitality of the Pilgrim’s Progress and the Holy War has made them the delight alike of child and man, of the Y cottager and the king, of the cultured and the unlettered. If there is any book 4 except King James’ Bible which has a surer prospect than any other of a permanent ^ place in English literature, that book is Bunyan's Pilgrim’s Progress. Is it claiming too .much if it is placed on an equality, in this respect, even with the Paradise Lost and the ^lays of Shakespeare ?

In language, Bunyan certainly has the advantage, for he wrote Y^n the dialect of the English Bible, which was the popular dialect of Bu uyan s lan' £ the day, modified and elevated to suit the sacred use to which it was guage.

Introduction To The Complete Works Of John Runyan

Bunyan’s literary resources.

applied. The words of Shakespeare already require a glossary. Much of his vocabulary, though by no means the whole of it, is destined to become as obsolete as that of Chaucer is now. But the most unlettered reader finds no obscurity clouding the words of Bunyan’s allegories. They are taken from the very warp and woof of the English language, not merely as it was spoken at the time, but as it has been spoken since, and as it will continue to be spoken so long as the English Bible gives law to English speech. The words of the royal Milton, immortal as they will surely be among the learned, are growing yearly less intelligible to the people. But the words of Bunyan, aside from an occasional quaintness, are as easily understood by the English-speaking population of the world as they were the day they were written.

In other respects than in language it would be presumptuous to compare Bunyan with the masters of English literature. His classical training was confined to Fox’s “ Book of Martyrs” and the Bible. His early reading was comprehended by “The Practice of Piety” and the “Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven” — two books which constituted the only marriage-portion of his wife. But the paucity of his resources only renders more wonderful the results he gained. If we consider literary success to consist in power over men, it may be doubted whether Bunyan should not still be placed in the very front rank. The impersonations * of Shakespeare will undoubtedly be as permanent as are the traits of the human nature which he has photographed. But it can be said, with equal truth, that the impersonations of Bunyan, rude and unfinished as they sometimes seem, will possess an interest so long as the process of man’s redemption from sin is a thing which angels or men desire to look into. The classic machinery of Milton’s visions, grand and impressive as it certainly is, begins to seem ponderous and unwieldy to the readers of our times, as if we were made the spectators of a tournament of mediaeval knights in iron armour. But the creations of the Interpreter’s Plouse, Doubting Castle, the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and of the Land of Beulah, are as clear and fresh and beautiful to the readers of the nineteenth as to those of the sixteenth century.

The literary immortality which has been an object of intense ambition to many of the most gifted men of the race has been gained, without a thought or an effort, by the humble story-teller of Bedford jail.

Similar remarks might be made concerning the theological rank icaio-ank11 Sthe0l°S these writings. Not a despicable theologian in his graver homilies, Bunyan becomes almost an inspired prophet in his religious fictions. The greatest of the systematic theologians will be left behind by the progress of the careful study of God’s truth. But when Augustine and Calvin and Edwards have ceased to be recognized as authorities, the theology they taught, changed from the abstract to the concrete, will be studied and accepted in the simple adventures of Christian and his family, in the deeds of Faithful and the experience of Hopeful, and in the wonderful sights of the Delectable Mountains.

That such anticipations concerning the literary “immortality” of

The early success ^.jiese uiljque works of sanctified genius are not visionary, may be of Bunyan’s works. J , „ n. , , . „ , . ,

safely argued from their immediate success at the time of their publication, and from the permanency of their high place in literature since. The sale which followed their first publication in England, amounting to more than one hundred thousand copies — an immense issue for the times — their republication in the infant colonies of New England, their speedy translation into the languages of the French, the Dutch, the Flemings, the Highland Scotch, and the -Irish, is but the introduction of a career of influence and popularity to which, among uninspired writings, the works of Shakespeare present perhaps the only parallel in the history of literature.

Introduction To Thu Complete Works Of John Runyan

Such ft phenomenon in the world of letters, nnd such n power in the kingdom of Christ, challenge a scrutinizing examination alike from the critic and the Christian.

TIIE SPECIAL SUBJECT OF THIS ESSAY.

Our main inquiry in this essay will be for the causes of this success.

^ hat made Bunyan for six years after his conversion a convcnti- Inquiry for the cle exhorter so formidable to the proud Episcopate of the realm that ' " 1 ‘

only the thick walls of the Bedford jail, under the sentence of the Bedford justices, sustained by no less a jurist than Sir Matthew Hale, could protect the English hierarchy against his sturdy blows?

Why should the refusal to use the “Book of Common Prayer” — a frequent and in most men a scarcely noticeable violation of the bigoted English statutes of the dayhave become a crime of such magnitude in Bunyan as to demand the expiation of a twelve years’ imprisonment?

What was the inspiration that made those twelve years an era in English literature, and endowed the Bedford jail with a literary celebrity not inferior to that of the Arno and the Avon? And what was the spell which, after his release, drew constant crowds to the dreamer’s spacious chapel in Bedford ?

It is plain that the discovery of Bunyan’s secret, if our. analysis be delicate enough to catch and retain for examination a quality so spiritual, would render a most important service to all who, in any capacity, are seeking “ to preach the gospel to every creature.”

THE PREACHING OF BUNYAN COMP A RED WITH THE PREACHING OF OUR

SAVIOUR.

The writer who can at the same time inform the intellect and move the sensibilities, has reached the perfection of his art. The speaker who can “so speak” as to affect at once the scholar and the peasant, and to charm all classes of men by the same spell, is the consummate orator. Among the examples of such success, Jesus our Saviour stands unapproached. Of his merely human imitators, perhaps none has achieved so great and so permanent success as John Bunyan. To analyze the style of the one and to determine the elements of his power will be to discover the secret of the other. Such an analysis, moreover, will give the solution of one of Tho sollltlon ' ‘ *

. . great question of

the most important questions of our era, viz. : How may the gospel be our era

so preached that men shall crowd to hear it, as they thronged the

river banks in the days of John the Baptist, as they covered the mountain acclivities to

listen to Jesus of Nazareth, and as they flocked to the spacious chapel in Bedford and

hung entranced upon the lips of Bunyan ?

Contrary to a very common impression, it must be admitted that our Saviour was eminently a doctrinal preacher. Whether his success . . "! l"lira' oc' were owing to this peculiarity, or whether he was successful in spite of it, no man can question the fact that instruction, and that in the deep things of God — in “ those things which,” as he himself says, “had been kept secret from the foundation of the world” — was his constant aim. That is a most superficial and unappreciative view of Christ’s teaching which supposes it to have been wholly or chiefly confined to the sphere of practical ethics. From the Sermon on the Mount, which is a most compact and profound doctrinal discourse, to the conversation with Peter in the twenty-first chapter of John, which was a most acute analysis of the “ evidences of regeneration,”

INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUNYAN.

'‘his doctrine drops as the rain and distils as the dew.” Such themes as the origin of evil and its proper treatment, the nature, origin, and evidences of the new birth, the impossibility of salvation by personal goodness, the necessity of faith to produce personal goodness, the mystery whereby Christ, “ being a man, made himself equal with God,” the peculiarities of the kingdom of heaven as compared with human governments, the absolute, Divine control over free human acts, the essential unity of the believing soul and its Saviour, together with many another of the most profound and even metaphysical truths, such as are calling forth the liveliest denunciations of the sensational preacher of our era, were the themes of his daily discourse.

Nor need we hesitate to admit that this richness in doctrinal dis-

Doctnne essential cuss}on was a positive and even a prime element in his success, as it to all popular sue- . q

cess_ must be in all permanent success m popular teaching, everywhere

and in every age. Truth is the natural pabulum of the human soul. From infancy to old age, among barbarians and philosophers, the inquiry is the same: “What is truth?” If the feelings are moved, or the will is determined, it is always by means of somethirig thought — that is, through the intellect. Even the fancies of the poetical preacher are attractive only through their verisimilitude. Christ gave to the famishing minds about him this bread of life in rich abundance, and they who ate of it never knew hunger again.

To say that the writings of Bunyan, the most attractive religious

Buny an also a doc teacher of modern times, are distinguished for their wealth of doctrinal preacher. . °

trinal truths, is to repeat what every reader, even of his most popular works, well knows. In his three great religious dramas, the Pilgrimages of Christian and Christiana and the Holy War, every character is a personified fact, and every incident is a vitalized doctrine. No man can thoroughly understand the Pilgrim’s Progress without becoming an accomplished theologian. The power of the book is largely due to this fact. As a story, it has no plot. Its characters are simple enough for a nursery tale. Its fancies are quaint, and even rude. The playwright and the bookmonger would ridicule an author who should expect success with the public by the use of such simple machinery. Yet the Pilgrim’s Progress is successful, more successful, certainly in popular impressiveness, than even the plays of Shakespeare, to which, in some respects, it bears a marked resemblance, but to which, in all the requisites for dramatic impression, except the single one now under discussion, it would be preposterous to compare it. The peculiar power of the book is to be found in its presentation of truth. The doctrines bristle along its pages like cannon upon the walls of a citadel. The attention of the reader is constantly aroused by a strong, bold, and almost explosive utterance of the successive truths of evangelical Christianity, reinforced, almost uniformly, by a scriptural reference, and expressed with such unquestionable common sense as to silence cavil before it can be spoken.

The opening scene gives vividly a contrast between justification by faith and by works, which is equal in polemic power to a dozen controversial treatises. In the progress of the allegory all the great doctrines, from total depravity to the resurrection, are clearly set forth, with the omission of scarcely a shade or a phase which has any practical adaptation or value. The reader is constantly stimulated by new' discoveries. He adds, from each page, something to his store of thought on the profoundest and mightiest themes which can engage the human mind. He is not only entertained, but he is conscious of being instructed. His pleasure is accompanied with respect lor the author, for the work, for himself as engaged in the best culture both of mind and heart, and for the system of Christian doctrine which shines out so clearly and gloriously from the simple narrative he is reading.

Introduction To Tiin Complete Works Of John Runyan

In tlicso particulars a marked similarity is to be traced between the writings of Hun* yan and the teachings of the “ Great Teacher.”

Jesus a preacher.

populnr

The manner of Christ’s teaching.

The manner of Christ precise, plain, impressive.

Christ’s language concrete.

Modern preachers who specially aim at popularity usually seek it by avoiding doctrine, especially in its more profound and analytic forms. Our Saviour, as we have seen, as well as the humble preacher of Bedford, while preaching the doctrines, attained an unparalleled degree and permanence of popularity.

How was this accomplished? The inquiry is a vital one. Upon its solution the question of the success of the Church in preaching the gospel to the world which lietli in wickedness depends.

Now, if we look at the manner of the teaching of Christ, as we have already examined its matter, we shall observe, first, that the truth be uttered was spoken with precision, so that he was never obliged to retract or amend bis words. It was spoken, also, plainly, except in cases when he chose to give an esoteric cast to his language, in order to communicate to his disciples instructions which the multitude were not prepared to receive. Never wras the apparatus of language so skilfully used to bring the conclusions of metaphysical philosophy and the direct revelations of the heavenly Father within the reach of the humblest intellect.

It was spoken impressively also. The words which he uttered were words of grace, of a rare and exceeding beauty — so that men “ wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.”

They were concrete words. An abstract truth was seldom presented alone, but generally in its combination with some familiar, every-day object. The definition of neighbour is the story, “A man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.” Evil is tares; good is wheat. The great perplexing problem of the permission of sin is solved by an ordinary farmer in an ordinary operation of agriculture. Instead of stating a philosophical problem and giving a philosophical solution, he turns to his hearers, and with a “ But what think ye?" he proceeds to tell a simple story, in which the principle he would teach is involved, and then leaves the conclusion to their own discernment, only adding the caution, “ He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

But the great power of the preaching of Jesus was its personality.

It struck home. Men felt that they were dealing with one who understood them. The Pharisees very often “ perceived that he spake of them.” Sometimes a more promiscuous crowd were struck by a penetrative .word as with a shock from an electric battery, and, “ being convicted by their own consciences, went out, one by one, beginning at the oldest, unto the last.” All his preaching showed that “ he knew what was in man.” This personality was not only seen in appeals to the conscience. He touched the heart also. He was full of human sympathies. It is true that his keen analysis delighted the perplexed intellect, and that his clear illustrations made even “wayfaring” men, though fools in ignorance, exult in the possession of some grand truth which prophets and wise men had desired to see, but had not seen it. But it was his love, or to express the thought more precisely, it was his broad, sympathetic humanity, that chiefly made great v ' ^

multitudes follow him in the city and upon the mountain, across the sea and into the wilderness, held by a spell which they could hardly have defined, and yet were unable to resist. The word humanity is used rather than the word love, in this connection, because something more is meant than a simple feeling of tenderness or a desire to promote happiness. The word is used to designate sympathy with all human

Christ’s

personal.

INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUNYAN.

emotion and aspiration, as well as with men’s modes of thought and habits of life. It is the sentiment described by the heathen poet when he said: “I am human, and nothing which is human is foreign to me.” Jesus showed himself a man under all circumstances. He was tempted at all points as man is, and knew how to succour tempted man. There was nothing regal or priestly or even sombre about him. The traditional assertion, “Our Saviour wept, but was never known to smile,” has more antiquity than authenticity. ITe certainly never betrays any anxiety about his dignity. He shows the most intense hatred of formality and of all the requirements of religious etiquette. He can hardly conceal his contempt for the ecclesiastical martinets who sought to stone him because he had made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day. He taught that the Sabbath, and so all God’s institutions, was made for man, whom God made, and as God made him. He preached a gospel which was antagonistic to sin in man, but not antagonistic to man. His teaching and his life were full of this beautiful and sympathetic humanity. Men instinctively felt that Jesus was their fellow, a man indeed absolutely pure, and a being in some relations infinitely more than man, but in his human relations a being on their level. While he sometimes drew from them the adoring exclamation, “My Lord and my God!” at other times they hesitated not to ask querulously, “Lord, carest thou not that we perish?” while provident Martha, in the very tenderest mood of grief, reproached him, with the familiarity of a sister, in the words, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” The scenes at the blessing of the children, at the grave of Lazarus, at the summary ejection of the money-changers from the temple, are only excerpts from a life of intense sympathy with all that is human in man. He was a stranger only to the sin of man, alienated only from the progeny of evil in the soul — the works of those who are of their father the devil, and who do his deeds.

This broad, deep humanity, tinging all the language of his teaching and interpenetrating its very substance, seemed, when he spoke, to envelop speaker and hearers in one comprehensive, magnetic atmosphere, and made their hearts beat together as one, till the very life of Christ was communicated to those around him, and an all-enveloping sympathy — which was more than a sympathy, which was a substance, unseen and ethereal, but potential and pervading — made the vastest multitude one intellectual and moral being, thinking, feeling, moving with the one master spirit. It is no wonder they were astonished at his power over them, or that his bitterest enemies were compelled to exclaim, “Never man spake like this man.”

A discriminating and thorough analysis of the teaching and oratory

The sam^elements 0£ tjie great masters of eloquence will show that, in various proporof power in all pop- , . . , .

! orators tions, the elements ot power now enumerated have been present m

their speech and writings. It will also be found that this power has been just in proportion to the perfection they had attained in these various essentials of true eloquence.

There may be profound thought which is yet not precise and clear, and the result will be only bewilderment in the hearer. There may be clear thought which is not profound or original or forcible, and the result will be, at the best, only a patient approval of what is to the audience a very dull discourse. Or the thought may be both clear and profound, while the words are anything but “ gracious words.” The rhetoric may be rough or pedantic, or suggestive of disagreeable associations, or flighty with pretti nesses or rotund with bombast. Or the composition may be faultless in thought and expression, and yet may be so abstract in form that the common people will be far from hearing it gladly, while even the philosopher will experience a stir of the thoughts rather

INTRODUCTION TO THE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUNYAN.

than a quickening of the conscience or a marshalling of the purposes to right action. Or the preacher may have the clearness of Addison, the profundity of Plato, the beautiful diction of Vaughn, and the concreteness of Dean Swift, all combined, yet, if he be not interpenetrated with humanity and surrounded with it as an atmosphere, he will never do wluit Luther did, nor what Whitefield did, nor what Banyan did, nor, even at a distant approximation, what Christ did.

Perhaps this analysis of manner in the successful religious teacher

will guide us to the secret, in part at least, of Banyan’s great and

e 1 jo over men> continued influence over all classes of men while teaching the whole circle of Christian doctrine.

Ill the first place, then, every reader of Banyan must have observed the precision and

clearness of his style and thought. The reader is never compelled to

go over a sentence the second time. The impression it makes upon r|<'-"'ne.ss of Bun- ° i * r yans style,

his mind is clear, well-cut, and immediate. Occasionally he comes

upon a sentence whose quaintness gives him a moment’s pause, as when Faithful commences his defence before the court at Vanity Fair in this way: “ That he had only set himself against that which had set itself against Him that is higher than the highest.” But the delay reveals to him a pith and richness of meaning which will be likely to make him linger upon the sentence till it is indelibly printed upon his memory. Generally, however, the thought of the author is seized at once. The impression upon the imagination and feelings is not impaired by even the least perplexity of the intellect. Each sentence is a nail fastened in a sure place.

The suggestion that Banyan is a profound writer will hardly, however, be so readily assented to. Certainly, if our idea of profundity in a writer is that he shall be shadowy and unintelligible, or that he shall be abstract, or that he shall wander into the regions of the unknown and the unknowable, then Bunyan is not profound. Banyan is no Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is no German philosopher turned into a mere ghost of a man by the excessive subjectivity of his speculations. He is no propoundcr of theories concerning matters which no theory can explain. The theologians of all the evangelical schools accept the Pilgrim’s Progress. It does not even enter their ancient battle-grounds.

But if to be profound is to go to the bottom of the subject in hand, if it is to follow with a sharp analysis the dividing line between things that differ, if it is to search every element that enters into a just and safe conclusion, then Bunyan is profound.

The way of life is the subject of the Bible. To point out that way a certain number of facts and truths are considered necessary by Infinite Wisdom. These, when arranged systematically and discriminated from error, constitute our systems of theology.

The way of life is also the subject of Banyan’s allegories. It would be a curious experiment should some constructive mind attempt to draw from them a system of underlying doctrine, as theologians have done from the Bible. If nothing were omitted which Bunyan uses, if all his qualifications were noted and all perversions guarded against, there can be little doubt that a very complete body of divinity would be the result. It is this peculiarity which is the basis of Bunyan’s strength. The reader is gaining truth — the food of the soul — in every line.

That Bunyan has the next requisite of a popular style is evident.

No reader doubts that he uses concrete rather than abstract terms, Bun} an s st% Ie

concrete.

or, more precisely, that he individualizes rather than generalizes his

ideas. He invests the most abstract qualities with all the charm of a personal iudivid-

Bunyan’s system of theology.

10 INTRODUCTION TO TIIE COMPLETE WORKS OF JOHN RUNYAN.

uality. He turns a doctrine into an exciting adventure. He converts great moral facts into solid existences, as a mountain, a burden on the back, a man in a cage, a giant’s castle, a celestial city. In this he closely follows the Bible, and never fails to appropriate its imagery when it is possible to do so. There is nothing in Shakespeare more perfect than the impersonations of Obstinate and Pliable in the very beginning of his storv. The description of Vanity Fail’, its streets, its rulers, its citizens, and its doings, makes a group which the painter could transfer almost unchanged from the paper to the canvas. In the Holy War the generalizations of mental philosophy in all their multitude rise before us in the form of walls and gates and magistrates and armies, as if “spirits from the vasty deep” had suddenly taken to themselves form and solidity, and were lifting their huge proportions all around us. What a study is his nomenclature alone! Who but Bunyan would have concocted such a catalogue as this of the court at Vanity Fair?

Judge, My Lord Hate-good.

Witnesses, Envy, Superstition, and Pick-thank.

The Prince of the Realm, Beelzebub.

The Nobility, Lord Oldman, Lord Carnal-delight Lord Luxurious, Lord Desire-ofvain-glory, Lord Lechery, Sir Having-greedy.

The statutes are acts come down from Pharaoh, Darius, and Nebuchadnezzar!

The roll of the Jury puts a fitting climax upon this pyramid of personification: Mr. Blindman, the foreman, Mr. No-good, Mr. Malice, Mr. Love-lust, Mr. Live-locse, Mr. Heady, Mr. High-mind, Mr. Enmity, Mr. Liar, Mr. Cruelty, Mr. Hate-light, Mr. Implacable !

Defect of modern preachers.

What an immense acquisition of power would come to many of the ablest preachers of our era if they could learn Bunyan’s art of giving to their airy abstractions “ a local habitation and a name,” not by descriptive appellations, but by descriptive impersonations ! The whole power of many preachers, otherwise of very inferior abilities and attainments, lies in the possession of this art. Let the philosopher and the scholar beware how they despise a gift which, however unnecessary within the walls of the university, is one. of the grand instrumentalities by which men are to be brought up from the East and the West and the North and the South to sit down together in the kingdom of God.

Bunyan’s

humanity.

hubroad Bunyan’s humanity, by which we mean, as before, a broad and deep sympathy with all that belongs to men, is another of tlie chief elements of his power. He comes into contact with his readers at every point. He is so guileless, so frank, so fearless, so kindly, so keen, so witty, so intensely in earnest, that, before you are aware of it, he has thrown over you the spell of an enchanter. No man ever attained more perfectly the divine art of drawing human beings “ with the cords of love and the bands of a man.”

The element of humour plays a very important part in this attractive process — not less important because there is no oj)en expression of it. It would shock some persons to hear the intimation that our Saviour ever indulged in humour. But a fair analysis would readily detect something closely analogous to this fascinating quality in many passages, especially those of a controversial character. The repartees made to the ecclesiastical lawyers who attempted to “entangle him in his talk” had in them that sense of logical absurdity and that enjoyment of deserved personal discomfiture which are important elements in the higher grades of humour. The scene at Gadara, when the devils were taken at their word and sent into a herd of swine, is essentially ludicrous, and may have been intended to match the