17. OBSERVATIONS ON THE MOST PROMINENT PARTS OF THE 'PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.'
Before taking a walk with the pilgrims, to point out a few peculiarities not noticed by commentators, it may be well to answer the inquiry so often made—Is the narrative that of the author's and his wife's own experience? My humble opinion is that he did not so intend it. His first wife had been for years an inhabitant of the Celestial City, and his second was a decided Christian long before his 'Pilgrim' was written. At the pillar to commemorate Lot's wife, Hopeful calls to Christian, 'for he was learned,'—a title, so far as lettered lore was concerned, Bunyan could not have given to himself, nor would he have applied it as to his own spiritual knowledge. It appears not to be intended to portray the experience of any one man or woman, but the feelings, doubts, conflicts, and enjoyments of the Christian character. The whole household of faith embodied and described in the sacred pages, enlarged by his own experience, and that which he discovered in his Christian intercourse: from the first fearful cry, 'What shall I do to be saved?' until the crown of glory and immortality is put upon his head with the anthem, 'It is finished,' 'Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.' Among some very singular discoveries made from the pages of this eminently non-sectarian book, is, that it sanctions the old and curious custom of christening infants. The mind capable of making such a discovery, must be familiar with very jesuitic and far-fetched arguments in defence of a custom which, Bunyan thought, set the Rule, and reason too, at defiance, and could only be defended by tradition, hamled down to us by the Papiats from the dark and gloomy ages of superstition. It is in an edition with notes by Mr. St. John, and a key by H. Wood. In the index there appears the following sentiments under the word—
'BUNYAN.—The ordinance of, to be observed, and the advantage that children are thereby made partakers, who are thus only admitted into the visible course of Christ. Christian's sons have been married, and their obre branches were sprunging up, when Christians and her troop of children and grandchildren had passed the hill Lucre, and arrived at the green meadows. Here they find a house is built for the nourishing and bringing up those lands, the babes of those women that go on pilgrimage.'
The annotator seizes an opportunity from this parental anxiety to 'train up a child in the way he should go,' to introduce Bunyan as an authority for the christening of infants.
But to return to our 'Pilgrim.' A charge has been made against the arrangement of the story, because the converts in the town of Vanity are not described as having entered the way by the wicket-gate. They witness the patient endurance of sufferings in Faithful, and are led to feel that there must be some solemn realities in religion to which they were strangers; we have no account of their convictions nor misery; their Slough of Despond, or entering the wicket-gate, or relief on the sight of Christ crucified, for all this has been already told in Christian's experience. The lovely inmates in the Palace Beautiful, descriptive of the temper which every member of a Christian church ought to cultivate, are left there as if they went no further towards Zion. Christian's journey does not appear to occupy the time taken to perform the same distance by Christiana. These, and many other apparent discrepancies, are essential to the author's design, because he represents it all under the similitude of a DREAM. The following quotations clearly indicate some changes of importance, interfering with Christian liberty between the writing of the First Part in prison before 1673, and the publication of the Second Part in 1684. When Christiana came to the Slough of Despond, 'She perceived also, that notwithstanding the command of the King, to make this pass for pilgrims good, yet it was rather worse than formerly. For that many more to the present to be the King's labourers, and that as they are demanding the King's highway, the being of and being in the of stones, and so may instead of not being.'
Before the pilgrims attempted to ascend the
1. Published by Richey's, Sherborne Law, 1834.
Hill Difficulty, they sought for some refreshment, and Great-heart said—
'This is the spring that Christian drank of before he went up this hill; and then 'twas clear and good; but now 'tis dirty with the feet of some that were not desirous that pilgrims here should quench their thirst.'
The two lions in the way to frighten the young inquirer from making a public profession at the Palace Beautiful, may represent the civil and ecclesiastical powers when assuming the throne of God, to judge and compel men as to forms of Divine worship. Their effort was to prevent further inquiries, and thus turn the pilgrims back to the City of Destruction; they are chained, to show that these devils are under Divine control, and can only hurt such as they may devour. A cessation, or temporary relief from persecution, puts them to sleep as Faithful passes; and a recollection of the misery and cruelties they had so recently perpetrated, raises Giant Grim to back them, and terrify Christiana, Mercy, and the children. The effects of this cruel persecution of the saints thinned the number of professors.
'Now, to say the truth, this way had of late lam much unoccupied, and was almost all grown over with grass.'
Their fears are at that time dissipated by Great-heart the guide, who slays the Giant.
While Christiana and her company rest at the town of Vanity,
'There came a monster out of the woods, and slew many of the people of the town. It would also carry away their children, and teach them to suck its whales. Now no man in the town durst so much as face this monster; but all men fled when they heard the noise of his coming. This monster propounded conditions to men; and such men as loved their lives more than their souls, accepted those conditions. So they came under.'
From all this it is obvious, that between the time when Bunyan wrote the First Part, and the publication of the Second, some painful events had taken place, interfering with a Christian profession. Those iniquitous laws, called the Five Miic and the Conventicle Acts, were passed in the 16, 17, and 22 Charles II.; the first of these imposed ruinous fines, imprisonment, and death, upon all persons above sixteen years of age, who attended Divine service where the Liturgy, the compulsive use of which had proved an awful curse and scourge to the kingdom, was not read. The second ordained that no nonconformist minister should live within five miles of any town. Bunyan did inhabit and live in Bedford by compulsion, but he was not proceeded against, although it would have been as just as was the conduct of the Recorder of London on the trial of Penn, for holding a conventicle; for he ordered an officer of the court to put Penn's hat on his head, and then fined Penn for having it on! The third of these Acts was to suppress all meetings for worship among the nonconformists; these were passed in 1665, 1666, and 1671, and in a short time made the frightful desolations to which we have before referred; so that it appears as if the First Part was written before 1666 or 1667, when these abominable laws were enforced, and the Second Part after their effects had been seen and felt. That these horrid laws were obtained and put in force by the clergy, urged on by the bishops, we have melancholy proof. Even all publicans attending any conventicle, had their licenses taken from them. In the diocese of Salisbury, not one dissenting meeting was left. On October 11, 1666, an order was issued, that in Scotland all leases and rents should be void as to those who did not attend the parish church. Any person holding a conventicle was fined five thousand marks; and at length the King ordered military execution in that kingdom upon all nonconformists, without process or conviction. The result of the severe sufferings of our Scottish forefathers in the faith, was the exemption of their posterity from the use of the detested book. The saints of those days comforted one another with a proverb:—'It is better that the body should die to this world by the lions without, than that body and soul should die eternally by our lusts within.' Interference with the education of the children of dissenters was under the 14 Charles II., which enacts, 'That no person shall teach any children, whether in a private family or in a school, unless licensed by his diocesan, and all were to be taught according to the Book of Common Prayer,' or ruinous fines and imprisonments were enforced. Thus the Slough of Despond became more foul; the spring of water became muddy; the lions so thinned the number of pilgrims that the grass grew upon the road, and the monster was very rampant. He who feels no indignation when listening to such enormous crimes perpetrated by wicked laws, has the despicable spirit of a slave. Nothing but the voice of the Saviour commanding us to forgive his and our enemies, could prevent us leading our children to the altar of our God to swear eternal enmity against a system founded on tyranny, and producing as its effects all the abominations of desolation. There is great reason to suppose that the man in the iron cage, at the Interpreter's house, alludes to an apostate, one John Child. He had been a Baptist minister, and was born at Bedford in 1638. It may have been to him that Burroughs refers in his account of a disputation which he and some Quakers had in Bedford Church with John Bunion, and one Fen, and J. Child, Nov. 23, 1656. They, as Burroughs says, laid down, 'That very God and the everlasting Father died on the cross as man.
1 See Harris's Life of Charles II., vol. ii. p. 108, &c.
2 Ibid. p. 120.
That the Word that was in the beginning was crucified. That justification is without respect to obedience. That there is a light which conviueth of sin, besides the light of Christ. That there is no saving knowledge, but comes from without from heaven. John Child was then only eighteen years of age, and he appears to have been an intimate friend of Bunyan's, so that when his 'Vindication of Gospel Truths' was published, John Child united in a recommendatory preface—this was in 1657. From a dread of persecution he conformed to the Church of England, and he may be the person referred to in Bunyan's 'Detence of Justification,' who said, 'If the devil should preach, I would hear him, before I would suffer persecution; as a brave fellow which I could name, in his rant, was pleased to declare.' This poor wretch afterwards became terrified with awful compunctions of conscience. He was visited by Mr. Iveach, Mr. Collins, and a Mr. B. (probably Bunyan.) When pressed to return to the fold of Christ, he said, 'If ever I am taken at a meeting, they will have no mercy on me, and triumph, This is the man that made his reconstitution; and then ruin me to all intents and purposes, and I cannot bear the thought of a cross nor a prison. I had a fancy, the other morning, that the sheriff's officers were coming to seize all that I had.' His cries were awful. 'I shall go to hell; I am broken in judgment: when I think to pray, either I have a flushing in my face, as if it were in a flame, or I am dumb and cannot speak.' In a bit of desperation he destroyed himself on the 15th October 1684. This was one of the innumerable unholy triumphs of the state in its interference with religion. Christian's sleeping in the arbour, as well as the emblem of the muck-rake seen in the Interpreter's house, is illustrated by Quarles in his *Ludderas* —
'Well, sleep thy till, and take thy soft reposes,
But know, withal, sweet fruits have some chores,
And he repents in thorns, that sleeps in beds of roses.'
And on an avaricious muck-rake —
'The culture of insatiate minds
Still wants, and wanting seeks, and seeking finds
New feet to increase her raviious fire.'
The warning giving by Evangelist to the pilgrims, that persecution awaited them, might have been drawn from the affectionately faithful conduct of Mr. Gifford, Bunyan's pastor, in encouraging him to preach in the villages at the risk of imprisonment, and even of death.
The trial at Vanity Fair is an almost unconscious operation of quiet but keen satire upon the trials which took place at the time, sanctioned by all the formalities of law: 'they brought them forth to their trial in order to their condemnation.' 'The imaginary trial of Faithful, before a jury composed of personified vices, was just and merciful, when compared with the real trial of Lady Alice Laslo before that tribunal where all the vices sat in the person of Jefferies.'
This is one of the most remarkable passages in the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' It is impossible to doubt that Bunyan intended to satirize the mode in which state trials were conducted under Charles II. The license given to witnesses for the prosecution, the shameless partiality and ferocious insolence of the judge, the precipitancy and the blind rancour of the jury, remind us of those odious mummeries which, from the Restoration to the Revolution, were merely forms preliminary to hanging, drawing, and quartering. Lord Hate-good performs the office of counsel for the prisoners, as well as Scroggs himself could have performed it. No one who knows the state trials can be at a loss for parallel cases. Indeed, write what Bunyan would, the baseness and cruelty of the lawyers of those times 'sinned up to it still,' and even went beyond it.
'Judge. Thou runagate, Sarrive, and traitor, has: thou heard what these honest gentlemen have witnessed against thee.'
'Faithful. May I speak a few words in my own defence.'
'Judge. Sarrive, sarrive! thou deservest to live no longer, but to be slain immediately upon the place, yet, that all men may see our gentlemen to thee, set us hear what thou, vile runagate, hast to say.'
Had Bunyan possessed lands, or wealth, to have excited the cupidity of the lawyers or informers, he would not have escaped hanging for so faithful a picture of Judge Jefferies.
Every dissenter should read the trial of William Penn and William Mead, which took place in August 1670. They were indicted for preaching in Gracechurch Street, the police and military having taken possession of the Friends' Meeting-house there. The jury refused to find Mead guilty, when the judge addressed them—'Gentlemen, you shall not be dismissed till we have a verdict that the court will accept; and you shall be locked up without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco. You shall not thus think to abuse the court; we will have a verdict, by the help of God, or you shall starve for it.' They requested an essential accommodation, but it was peremptorily denied. Having been locked up all night, on the following morning, when the court was opened, the jury again persisted in finding Mead not guilty; and the foreman said, 'We have agreed according to our consciences.' The Lord-mayor replied, 'That conscience of yours would cut my throat;' he
1 Borroughs's Works, folio, p. 305.
2 *Reception of the Life and Death of John Child*, 1734.
3 Book 1—VII.
4 Edinburgh Review, December 1831.
5 State Trials, and also published at the time, page 24.
answered, 'No, my Lord, it never shall,' when the Lord-mayor said, 'But I will cut yours so soon as I can.' Again they were locked up until the evening; they then kept to their verdict, when the Lord-mayor threatened to cut the foreman's nose. Penn said, 'It is intolerable that my jury should be thus menaced,' when the Mayor cried out, 'Stop his mouth; jailer, bring fetters, and stake him to the ground.' Penn replied calmly, 'Do your pleasure; I matter not your fetters;' and the recorder thus addressed the jury, 'I say you shall go together, and bring in another verdict, or you shall starve.' A second night they were locked up without food or accommodation. On the third morning these true-born Englishmen again brought in their verdict NOT GUILTY, and for this the jury were sent as prisoners to Newgate. Their names were, Thomas Veer, Edward Beshell, John Hammond, Henry Henley, Henry Michel, John Brightman, Charles Milson, Gregory Walklet, John Baily, William Lever, James Damask, and Wil Plumsted—names that ought to be printed in gold, and exhibited in the house of every nonconformist, and sculptured in marble to ornament our new House of Commons. The effects of persecution for refusing to obey man when he usurped the throne of God, hastened an approaching era. England shuddered; dissenters increased; and eventually the King saved his contemptible head by the quickness of his heels. Toleration succeeded persecution, and it is now time that freedom should take the place of toleration, and the liberties of Englishmen be freed from the polluted touch of any hierarchy. The difference between the time when the First Part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' was written, and the Second printed, appears very strikingly in the state of the town of Vanity. 'In those days we were afraid to walk the streets, but now we can show our heads. Then the name of a professor was odious, now, specially in some parts of our town, religion is counted honourable.'
The surprising difference between then and now can only be accounted for by the Declaration for liberty of conscience made in 1672, while the author was in prison, proving by strong circumstantial evidence that the First Part was written before 1672, the Second having been written before 1684, and even then the nonconformist ministers were called 'kiduappers;' and very soon after this, persecution again lifted up her accursed head.
How keenly does Christian unravel the subtleties of By-ends and his company? Bunyan was awfully but justly severe against hypocrisy upon such as named the name of Christ, and did not depart from iniquity. In his 'Holy Life, the Beauty of Christianity,' he thus addresses such characters:
'Christ calls them hypocrites, whited walls, painted sepulchres, fools, and blind. This is the man that hath the breath of a dragon; he poisons the air round about him. This is the man that slags his children, his kinsmen, his friend, and himself; that offends his little ones. Oh! the millstone that God will shortly hang about your neck, when the time is come that you must be drowned in the sea and deluge of God's wrath.'
When By-ends would have joined the Pilgrim's company, Christian was decided: 'Not a step further, unless you will own religion in his rags as well as when in his silver slippers, and stand by him, too, when bound in irons.' A writer in the Edinburgh Review very justly says—
'The town of Bedford probably contained more than one politician, who, after contriving to raise an estate by seeking the Lord during the reign of the saints, contrived to keep what he had got by persecuting the saints during the reign of the strumpets.'
Christian having admirably triumphed over these enemies and over Demas, becomes confident, and not only involves himself, but leads his companions into great trouble, by leaving the strait but rough road, and thus falling into the hands of a fearful giant. While in the dungeon, and suffering under awful doubts, Bunyan aptly introduces the subject of suicide. This dialogue upon self-murder, between Christian and Hopeful in Doubting Castle, might have been intended as an antidote to Dr. Doane's singular treatise to prove 'that self-homicide is not so naturally sin, that it may never be otherwise.' So singular a thesis by a learned man and a dignitary of the Church, must have made a deep impression upon the public. It was published by authority in 1684. In his preface, the learned Doctor says, 'Whether it be because I had my first breeding and conversation with men of a suppressed and afflicted religion, accustomed to the despite of death, or from other causes; whensoever any affliction assails me, methinks I have the keys of the prison in my own hand, and no remedy presents itself so soon to my heart as mine own sword. Often meditation of this hath won me to a charitable interpretation of their action who die so;' and his conclusion is, 'that self-homicide may be free, not only from enormous degrees of sin, but from all.' The whole work displays great learning and extreme subtlety; I doubt much whether St. Thomas Aquinas could have argued so absurdly wicked a proposition better; and against such an adversary Bunyan appears in the person of Hopeful, and in a few words dissipates all the mist of his subtleties, and exposes the utter peril and destruction that must follow so awful a sin as self-murder. The dignitary of the Church was taught See vol. ii, p. 539.
December 1831.
Doane's Thesis, p. 20.
Marginal note to Second Part of the 'Pilgrim.'
INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR by schoolmen a difference between sins which a simple Christian could not have conceived. Dr. Donne quotes the penitential canons which inflict a greater penance upon one who kills his wife, than upon one who kills his mother: 'not that the fault is greater, but that, otherwise, more would commit it.' Our pious Pilgrim, taught by the Holy Spirit, abhors all sin as bringing the curse of the law upon the sinner, and requiring the blood of atonement to cleanse its stain.
The view of those who fell under despair, as seen from the Delectable Mountains, is exactly in accordance with the experience narrated in the 'Grace Abounding,' No. 186. 'O the unthought-of imaginations, frights, fears, and terrors, that are affected by a thorough application of guilt, yielded to desperation! this is the man that hath his dwelling among the tombs with the dead.' Compare this with the Pilgrim's feelings in Doubling Castle, and their view from the Delectable Mountains.
Bunyan was by nature a philosopher; he knew the devices of Satan, and warns the professor of his danger of backsliding. The conversation upon this subject between the pilgrims, opens the depths of the human heart, and the subtleties of Satan. One Temporary represents those professors who return to the world; he had wept under a sense of sin; had set out on pilgrimage, but was perverted by Save-self. Christian had a narrow escape from Worldly-wiseman, but Temporary was lost. He warns the pilgrim of one great device of the enemy in his treatise of 'A Holy Life.' 'Take heed, professor, of those sins which Satan finds most suitable to your temper and constitution;' these, as the little end of the wedge, enter with ease, and so make way for those that come after, with which Satan knows he can rend the soul in pieces.
In the conversation with Ignorance, Bunyan speaks the sentiments, but not in the language of Arthur Dent, when, in the Plain Man's Pathway to Homen, he says -
'You measure yourselves by yourselves, and by others, which is a law uncovered. For you seem to be straight, so long as you are measured by yourselves and by others, but by the rule of God's Word unto you, and then you he altogether crooked.'
At length Christian and Hopeful arrive at the river which has no bridge; they cross in safety, and ascend to blessedness, which 'eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.' We see them enter, and are ready to exclaim -
'Celestial visions—Then the wondrous story,
Of Bunyan's L. is not even a new mind, but,
How he believes, in our own category,
And saw him pass the pearly part, through.
Page 25.
Catching, meanwhile, a beatific view
Of that bright city, shining his face on
Where white and strewn appeared of golden hue,
Where spirits of the just their center to date,
Walked in white robes, with palms, and crowns, every one.'
After having accompanied the Pilgrim and his friend Hopeful to the gates of the Celestial City, and longed to enter with him into the realms of bliss, we naturally revert to his widow and orphans, and with renewed delight do we find the truth of the promise: 'Thy Maker is thy husband,' 'a father to the fatherless.' We unite heart and soul with the amiable family at the Interpreter's house, who 'leaped for joy' when they arrived. And on reaching the Palace Beautiful, 'O what a noise for gladness was there within, when the Pains I did but drop that word out of her mouth—Christiana and her boys have come on pilgrimage!' Having been the road before, we feel renewed pleasure at every step, and richly enjoy our new companions; for the inexhaustible treasures of Bunyan's mind furnishes us with new pleasures every step of the way.
Bunyan's views of church-fellowship show his heavenly-mindedness, and happy would it be for the church if all its members were deeply imbued with these peaceful, lovely principles; he thus expresses them:
'Christians are like the several Plowers in a garden, that have upon each of them the Dew of Heaven, which being shaken with the wind, they let fall their dew at each other's roots, whereby they are jointly nourished, and become nourishers of one another. Also where the Gardiner has set them, there they stand, and quarrel not with one another. For Christians to commune strongly of God's matters one with another, it is as if they opened to each other's nostrils Boxes of Perfumes.' Saith Paul to the Church at Rome. I have to say, that I may import unto you some spiritual gift, to the end you may be established; that is, that I may be comforted together with you, by the mutual faith both of you and me.' Rom. i. 11, 12.
The character of Mercy is lovely throughout the whole journey; but there is a circumstance in her courtship which may not be generally understood. It is where she refers to the conduct of her brother-in-law to her sister Bountiful—a method of separating man and wife at all times perfectly illegal, and happily at present unknown: 'Because my sister was resolved to do as she begun, that is, to show kindness to the poor, therefore her husband first cried her down at the cross, and then turned her out of his doors.' This is a summary mode of divorce, not mentioned in any work on vulgar customs or popular antiquities. My kind friend, the Rev. J. Jukes, the pastor of the church at Bedford, informs me, 'That the practice of crying a wife at
2. Burton's Music Press p. 75. 1894. 5 p. 300.
3. Vol. ii. p. 570. Treason on 'Christine Beheswine,' see also the 'Pilgrim,' Part II, of the garden in the later, later's house.
the market-cross seems to have prevailed in Bedfordshire almost to the present time, and to have been merely a mode of advertisement to the public, that the husband would not pay the debts of his wife, contracted subsequent to the time when it occurred.'
The character of Mr. Brisk is wittily drawn in Bunyan's Emblems:—
—'Candles that do blink within the socket,
And saints whose eyes are always in their pocket,
Are much alike; such candles make us fumble;
And at such saints, good men and bad do stumble.'
Bunyan enjoyed the beauties of nature, especially the singing of birds; thus when Christians leaves the Palace Beautiful, the songs of the birds are reduced to poetry, to comfort the pilgrims. A bird furnished him with one of his Divine Emblems. It is upon the lack:—
'This pretty bird, oh! how she flies and sings
But could she do so if she had not wings?
Her wings bespoke my faith, her songs my peace;
When I believe and sing, my doublings cease.'
Mercy longs for that mirror which flatters not, and the shepherds give her a Bible. Modern Christians may wonder that she had not previously furnished herself with one; doubtless she had the use of one, and all her pocket money went to relieve the distresses of the poor of Christ's flock. Think of the thousands of pious men and women incarcerated in dungeons, because they loved Christ, and dared not violate conscience. What a charge upon those saints who possessed the means of rendering them assistance! The revenues of the Church by law established were never used for the distribution of Bibles. The Church had obtained a most enormous and injurious privilege, for the sole printing of Bibles in all languages, to withhold altogether, or give a supply as they chose. The natural consequence of this was, a high price for books printed on bad paper, and miserably incorrect. Of late years, part of the wealth she derived from her monopoly in printing incorrect Bibles has been wrung from her, and the Word of life now flows all pure as a mighty river, to refresh the earth. All honour be paid to those who fought that battle, and obtained that important victory. In Bunyan's time, the Church allowed it only 'in a niggard stream, and that polluted.' Herbert has well expressed the value of the mirror which Mercy longed for:— 'The Bible is the looking glass of souls, wherein
All men may see
Whether they be
Still as by nature they are, deformed with sin;
Or in a better case,
As new adorned with grace.'
¹ Herbert's Synagogue, p. 1.
And he has thus shown the value of its sacred pages, to guide the benighted travellers: 'Great-heart struck a light, and took a view of his book or map.'
'The Bible! That's the book. The book indeed,
The book of books!
On which who looks,
As he should do so, shall never need
Wish for a better light
To guide him in the night'²
The Christian reader can scarcely know, after having read the whole volume, which gave the greatest enjoyment—whether travelling in company with Christian and his bosom friend, or the delightful feelings excited by witnessing the matronly conduct of Christians; seeing her modest friend, Mercy, a lovely companion, or the excellent picture of child-like behaviour in the four boys; retracing the road, every step becomes delightfully interesting, and the Valley of Humiliation the most lovely picture of the whole. The courtship of Mr. Brisk—the additions to their company—the weddings, and the happy close—this, with the final perseverance of the whole party, leads every reader earnestly to wish for a Third Part, more adventures, more of the Divine goodness, more proofs that in this world, with all its bitterness, the gospel of Jesus Christ makes its possessors happy: yes, 'we have the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come.' But death, probably from the latent effects of his imprisonment, cut short the valuable life of the pilgrim's friend. And now, after long neglect, his country is teeming with his name as a national honour, and scarcely knows how sufficiently to show respect and admiration to his memory. Magnificent merchant-ships bear that name to oriental and transatlantic countries. Several thousand pounds have been subscribed to adorn the scene of his labours at Bedford, with a BUNYAN CHAPEL, capable of seating about twelve hundred worshippers—a more appropriate monument to his memory than a statue or a splendid tomb. The pens of our greatest literary men have been employed to exhibit his singular piety, his extraordinary talent, and his extensive usefulness, and his image is to be placed with those of Milton, Shakespeare, Hampden, and the giant men who have shed glory upon this nation, in the splendid new house in which the Commons of England are to hold their sittings. HACKETT, Sept. 1850.
² Herbert's Synagogue, p. 15.
³ The last words of Christians were—'I come, Lord, to be with thee, and bless thee.'
'How my heart
Longs, H. S. S., for thy country! to set free,
Th' improved in great from final flesh and sin,
From cold and from death, to wing her way,
Her joyful way, to liberty and thee'
FROM
THIS WORLD TO THAT WHICH IS TO COME:
DELIVERED UNDER
THE SIMILITUDE OF A DREAM.
THIS edition is prepared from a careful collation of the *twelve editions* published by the author during his life. It embraces the whole allegory in its native simplicity and beauty; illustrated with appropriate engravings; and VARIOUS NOTES; being extracts from Bunyan's various treatises which illustrate the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' together with the most striking and valuable Notes by Cheever, Macaulay, Newton, Mason, Scott, Iviney, Burdur, McNicoll, Dr. Dodd, and other Commentators, with a few by the Editor. To preserve the uniformity of the text, the *five similes* of all the original woodcuts, with the verse under each, are placed together in the order in which they first appeared; presenting a short pictorial outline of the principal scenes of this spiritual pilgrimage, in those rude representations which so delighted and interested us in our childhood.
SYNOPSIS OF THE ALLIGORY BY THE EDITOR.
FIRST PART.
THE Author's Apology, a poem. Graceless becomes a Christian; alarmed for the safety of his soul; is treated by his family as one diseased, guided by Evangelist; runs towards the Wicket-gate; is overtaken by Obstinate and Pliable; persuades Pliable to fly with him; fall into the Slough of Despond; Pliable returns; Christian, assisted by Help, goes on; meets Worldly-wiseman; complains of his burden, and is sent out of his way to the house of Legality, terrified at Mount Sinai; Evangelist appears and puts him again into the right road; arrives at the Wicket-gate; is admitted by Good-will, and sent to the Interpreter's house; is shown a picture; a dusty room; Passion and Patience; the fire of grace; the valiant man; the man in despair; the trembler; proceeds to the cross; loses his burden; angels give him a pardon, new clothing, a mark, and a roll; tries to alarm three men asleep, but in vain; meets Formalist and Hypocrisy, ascends the hill Difficulty; sleeps in the Arbour, and drops his roll; is awakened, and pursues his journey; meets Mistrust and Timorous; misses his roll; returns in grief, and recovers it; goes on to the Palace Beautiful; encouraged by Watchful, he passes the lions, and, after examination, is admitted *according to the laws of the house*; entertained; sleeps in the Chamber of Peace; sees the study; the armoury; the Delectable Mountains; enters the Valley of Humiliation; fights with and overcomes Apollyon; comes to the Valley of the Shadow of Death; terrified by the spies; assaulted with foes who care not for his sword; betakes himself to another weapon, 'All-prayer;' comes out of the Valley, and passes the old giants, Pagan and Pope; overtakes Faithful, a fellow-pilgrim; hold communion with each other; converse with Talkative; Evangelist forewarns them of persecution; enter Vanity Fair; are maltreated; imprisoned; Faithful is tried and burned; Christian pursues his journey, and is joined by Hopeful; By-euds wishes to join them; the sophistry of Hold-the-world detected; Demas tempts them to the hill Lucre, but they refuse; arrive at the River of the Water of Life, they go into By-path Meadow; follow Vain-Confidence; are taken by Giant Despair, and imprisoned in Doubting Castle; arguments for and against suicide; escape by the Key of Promise; erect a pillar to caution others; arrive at the Delectable Mountains; entertained by the shepherds; are shown Mounts Error, Caution, and Clear; see the Celestial Gate; receive some cautions; fail in attempting to convert Ignorance; robbery of Little-faith; meet the Flatterer, and are caught in his net; released by a Shining One; meet Atheist; adventures on the Enchanted Ground; means of watchfulness, enter the Land of Beulah; are sick with love; approach the River of Death; no bridge; full of fear and dread, but get safely over, received by angels; admitted to glory. SYNOPSIS OF THE ALLEGORY.
SECOND PART.
The Author's way of sending it forth, a poem. Sogacity narrates how Christiana, the widow of Christian, reflects upon her former conduct, feels her danger, and agrees with her children to follow her late husband in pilgrimage; is encouraged by a secret influence on her mind that she would be received; her neighbours dissuade her, but she prevails upon one of them, Mercy, to go with her; she is reviled by her acquaintance; get over the Slough of Despond, and are admitted at the Wicket-gate, and rejoice together. They are fed, washed, and sent on their way; the children eat the enemies' fruit; are assaulted, but rescued by the Reliever; arrive at the Interpreter's house; shown the significant rooms, the man who prefers a muck-rake to a celestial crown, the spider in the best room, the hen and chickens, butcher and sheep, the garden, the field, the robin; the Interpreter's proverbs; tree rotten at heart; they relate their experience; Mercy is sleepless for joy; they are washed, which calivens and strengthens them; sealed and clothed; Great-heart guards them to the house called Beautiful; pass the sepulchre where Christian lost his burden; pardon by word and deed, an important distinction; see Simple, Sloth, and Presumption hanging; names of those that they had ruined; Hill Difficulty; By-ways, although stopped and cautioned, still entered; rest in the Arbour, but are afraid to sleep; still suffer by forgetfulness; punishment of Timorous and Mistrust; Giant Grim slain; pilgrims arrive at the Palace Beautiful; Great-heart returns; they are entertained for a month; the children catechised; Mr. Brisk makes love to Mercy; her sister Beautiful's unhappy marriage; Matthew sick with the enemies' fruit; is healed by Dr. Skill; his prescriptions; instructive questions; they are greatly strengthened; Mr. Great-heart sent to guard them; enter the Valley of Humiliation, and are pleased with it; shepherd boy's song; see the place where Christian and Apollyon fought; come into the Valley of the Shadow of Death; are greatly terrified; Giant Maul slain; find Old Honest, a pilgrim, sleeping; he joins them; story of Mr. Fearing; good men sometimes much in the dark; he fears no difficulties, only lest he should deceive himself; case of Self-will; a singular sect in the author's time; are entertained at the house of Gaius; pilgrims the descendants of the martyrs; Matthew and Mercy betrothed; riddles in verse; Slay-good, a giant, slain; Feeble-mind rescued; proves to be related to Mr. Fearing; Not-right killed with a thunder-bolt; Matthew and Mercy, and James and Phebe, married; Feeble-mind and Ready-to-halt join the pilgrims; profitable converse between Honest and Great-heart; Vanity Fair; the death of Faithful had planted a little colony of pilgrims there; pleasant communion; courage and an unspotted life essential to pilgrims; Samuel and Grace, and Joseph and Martha, married. The Monster [state religion] assaulted and wounded; believed by some that he will die of his wounds; pass the place where Faithful was martyred; the silver mine; Lot's wife; arrive at the river near the Delectable Mountains; By-path Meadow; slay Giant Despair, and Diffidence, his wife, and destroy Doubting Castle; release Mr. Despondency and Miss Much-afraid; Great-heart addresses the shepherds in rhyme; Mounts Marvel, Innocent, and Charity; see the hole in the side of the Hill; Mercy longs for a curious mirror; the pilgrims are adorned, story of Turn-away; find Valiant-for-truth wounded by thieves; account of his conversion; the question debated, that if we shall know ourselves, shall we know others in the future state? arguments used by relatives to prevent pilgrimage; the Enchanted Ground; an arbour called the Slothful's Friend; in doubt as to the way, the book or map is examined; Heedless and Boid in a fatal sleep; surprised by a solemn noise, they are led to Mr. Stand-fast in prayer, he having been assailed by Madam Bubble; arrive in the Land of Beulah, and are delighted with celestial visions on the borders of the River of Death; Christiana summoned, addresses her guide, and blesses her children and her fellow-pilgrims; her last words; Mr. Ready-to-halt passes the River; Feeble-mind is called, will make no will, and goes up to the Celestial City; Despondency and Much-afraid die singing; Honest dies singing Grace reigns; Valiant-for-truth and Stand-fast joyfully pass the river, leaving a solemn message to relatives. Joy in heaven on the arrival of the pilgrims. Christiana's children a blessing to the church.