The Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan [most popular novels .txt] 📗

me. Now, if a child has such tenderness for a useless member, how much more tender is the Son of God to his afflicted members?” —⁠Saints Privilege, vol. 1, p. 674 The text here quoted forms the foundation of Bunyan’s admirable Advice to Sufferers, in which he delightfully dwells upon the topics which Evangelist addresses to the Pilgrims, when on the verge of bitter persecution. —⁠Editor ↩

Ecclesiastes 1; 2:11, 17; 11:8; Isaiah 40:17. ↩

Vanity Fair is the City of Destruction in its gala dress, in its most seductive and sensual allurements. It is this world in miniature, with its various temptations. Hitherto we have observed the pilgrims by themselves, in loneliness, in obscurity, in the hidden life and experience of the people of God. The allegory thus far has been that of the soul, amidst its spiritual enemies, toiling towards Heaven; now there comes a scene more open, tangible, external; the allurements of the world are to be presented, with the manner in which the true pilgrim conducts himself amidst them. It was necessary that Bunyan should show his pilgrimage in its external as well as its secret spiritual conflicts; it was necessary that he should draw the contrast between the pursuits and deportment of the children of this world and the children of light; that he should show how a true pilgrim appears, and is likely to be regarded, who, amidst the world’s vanities, lives above the world, is dead to it, and walks through it as a stranger and a pilgrim towards Heaven. —⁠Cheever ↩

A just description of this wicked world. How many, though they profess to be pilgrims, have never yet set one foot out of this fair; but live in it all the year round! They “walk according to the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2); for “the god of this world hath blinded their minds” (1 Corinthians 4:4). But all those for whose sins Jesus hath died “He delivers from this present evil world” (Galatians 1:4). You cannot be a pilgrim, if you are not delivered from this world and its vanities; for if you love the world, if it has your supreme affections, the love of God is not in you, (1 John 2:15); you have not one grain of precious faith in precious Jesus. —⁠Mason ↩

Mr. James, who, in 1815, published the Pilgrim in verse, conjectures that Bunyan’s description of the Fair arose from his having been at Sturbridge Fair, near Cambridge. It was thus described in 1786⁠—“The shops or booths are built in rows like streets, having each its name; as Garlick Row, Bookseller’s Row, Cook Row, etc. Here are all sorts of traders, who sell by wholesale or retail; as goldsmith’s toymen, braziers, turners, milliners, haberdashers, hatters, mercers, drapers, pewterers, china warehouses, and in a word, most trades that can be found in London. Here are also taverns, coffeehouses, and eating-houses, in great plenty. The chief diversions are puppets, rope-dancing, and music booths. To this Fair, people from Bedfordshire and the adjoining counties still resort. Similar kinds of fairs are now kept at Frankfort and Leipzig. These mercantile fairs were very injurious to morals; but not to the extent of debauchery and villany, which reign in our present annual fairs, near the metropolis and large cities.” See an account of this fair in Hone’s Year Book, page 1538. —⁠Editor Our author evidently designed to exhibit in his allegory the grand outlines of the difficulties, temptations, and sufferings, to which believers are exposed in this evil world; which, in a work of this nature, must be related as if they came upon them one after another in regular succession; though in actual experience several may meet together, many may molest the same person again and again, and some harass him in every stage of his journey. We should, therefore, singly consider the instruction conveyed by every allegorical incident, without measuring our experience, or calculating our progress, by comparing them with circumstances which might be reversed or altered with almost endless variety. In general, Vanity Fair represents the wretched state of things in those populous places especially, where true religion is neglected and persecuted; and, indeed, “in the whole world lying in wickedness,” as distinguished from the church of “redeemed sinners.” —⁠Scott ↩

1 Corinthians 5:10. ↩

Matthew 4:8; Luke 4:5⁠–⁠7. ↩

Christ will not allow his followers to bury their talent in the earth, or to put their light under a bushel; they are not to go out of the world, or to retire into cloisters, monasteries, or deserts; but they must all go through this fair. Thus our Lord endured all the temptations and sufferings of this evil world, without being impeded or entangled by them, or stepping in the least aside to avoid them; and he was exposed to greater enmity and contempt than any of His followers. —⁠Scott ↩

1 Corinthians 2:7, 8.

The world will seek to keep you out of Heaven with mocks, flouts, taunts, threatenings, jails, gibbets, halters, burnings, and deaths. There ever was enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, and no endeavours can reconcile them. The world says, They will never come over to us; and we again say, By God’s grace we will not go over to them. ↩

Holy Hunt of Hitchin, as he was called, a friend of Bunyan’s, passing the marketplace where mountebanks were performing, one cried after him, “Look there, Mr. Hunt!” Turning his head another way, he replied, “Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity.” —⁠Ivimey ↩

Psalms 119:37; Philippians 3:19, 20. ↩

Psalms 23:23.

An odd reply. What do they mean? That they are neither afraid nor ashamed to own what was the one subject of their souls’ pursuit⁠—the truth. Understand hereby, that the whole