The Works of John Bunyan, vol 3, John Bunyan [ebook reader color screen TXT] 📗

Wealth may procure many pleasures to clog the soul in its journey.

It may purchase indulgencies; it may incline some disciples to look at sinful imperfections through the wrong end of the telescope; it may purchase prayers—but devotional exercises, bought by gold, will freeze the soul. It is the poor disciple that receives the faithful admonitions of his equally poor fellow-saints. The rich have more ceremony, while the labourer enjoys more richly, more free from restraint, the warm outpourings of a devotional spirit.

Still there is nothing to prevent the greatest nobleman or monarch from running to heaven in company with the disciples of our lowly Master. If he refuses this road and this company, he must pursue his downward course to destruction.

The order in which the allegorical works of Bunyan were written, very naturally suggest itself from his own narratives, and from the dates of their publication. It was thus, while suffering his tedious and dangerous imprisonment for Christ’s sake, he was led to write an account of the dealings of God with his soul, which work he published in 1666, under the title of Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. While engaged in writing this remarkable narrative, the almost unbounded allegorical powers of his mind were brought into exercise—

‘And thus it was: I writing of the way

And race of saints, in this our gospel-day, Fell suddenly into an allegory

About their journey, and the way to glory.’

Having finished his Grace Abounding, he allowed his fertile imagination its full scope, and again wrote the result of his experience in the form of an allegorical narrative, called the Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to that which is to Come. At first the thoughts pressed upon him as fast as he could write them, yet he says—

‘I did not think

To show to all the world my pen and ink

In such a mode.’

And it was several years before he ventured to publish his beautiful allegory. He was released from prison in 1672, having been chosen in the previous year to be the pastor, or ministering elder of the church at Bedford. His time was then much occupied in re-organizing the church, after years of tempest and fiery persecution. At length, having overcome his own and his friends’ reluctance to publish so solemn a work on the conversion of a sinner and his way to heaven, in the form of an allegory, the Pilgrim’s Progress was printed in 1678. The wonderful popularity of this book, and the great good it produced, led him again to turn his Grace Abounding into a different form of narrative, in the more profound allegory of the Holy War; this was published in 1682, and in two years afterwards he completed the Pilgrim by a delightful second part. His long incarceration, followed by sudden and great activity, probably brought down his robust constitution; and as the end of his course drew nigh, he was doubly diligent, for in 1688, before his death-day, which was in August, he published six important treatises, and had prepared fourteen or fifteen others for the press. Among these were his final and almost dying instructions to the pilgrim, under the title of The Heavenly Footman, the man whom he describes in the poetical apology to the Pilgrim’s Progress, as he that ‘Runs and runs,

Till he unto the gate of glory comes.’

This treatise sheds a lustre over the latter days of our immortal allegorist. It is evidently the production of a mind expanded and chastened with the rich experience of sanctified age. In it we are reminded of those important directions to heavenly footmen, contained in his most admired books. Is there a Slough of Despond to be passed, and a hill Difficulty to be overcome? Here the footman is reminded of ‘many a dirty step, many a high hill, a long and tedious journey through a vast howling wilderness’; but he is encouraged, ‘the land of promise is at the end of the way.’ Must the man that would win eternal glory draw his sword, put on his helmet, and fight his way into the temple—the heavenly footman must press, crowd, and thrust through all that stand between heaven and his soul. Did Ignorance, who perished from the way, say to the pilgrims, ‘You go so fast, I must stay awhile behind?’ He who runs to heaven is told that the heavy-heeled, lazy, wanton, and foolish professor will not attain the prize. The wicket-gate, at the head of the way, is all-important; none can get to heaven unless they enter by Christ, the door and way, so the footman is reminded that it matters not how fast he runs, he can never attain the prize, if he is in the wrong road. Did the pilgrims so severely suffer from entering upon Byepath-meadow, and even after that bitter experience were they again misled into a bye path, by a black man clothed in white raiment? Our footman is warned—Beware then of bye and crooked paths that lead to death and damnation; the way to heaven is one, still there are many well-beaten bye paths that butt or shoot down upon it, and which lead to destruction.

To prevent vain and foolish company from calling you out of the path, or from loitering in it, say, I am in haste, I am running for a prize; if I win I am made, I win ALL; if I lose I lose all, and am undone. So it was with Faithful when even Christian, who saw him before, cried Ho ho, so ho. Faithful answered, ‘No, I am upon my life, the avenger of blood is behind me.’ In the same way the pilgrims refused the invitations of Demas with his silver mine. No, says the heavenly footman, I am running for heaven, for my soul, for God, for Christ, from hell and everlasting damnation.

Did the poor pilgrims go grunting, puffing, and sighing, one tumbleth over a bush, another sticks fast in the dirt, one cries out, I am down, and another, Ho! where are you? Pilgrim’s Progress.

So the footman is told that he will ‘meet with cross, pain, and wearisomeness to the flesh, with briars and quagmires, and other encumbrances,’ through all which he must persevere. Did Formalist and Hypocrite turn off into bye ways at the foot of the hill Difficulty, and miserably perish? Did Mistrust and Timorous run back for fear of the persecuting lions, Church and State? So the man that runs for heaven is cautioned—‘Some when they come at the cross can go no further, but back again to their sins they go, stumble and break their necks, or turn aside to the left or to the right, and perish.’ Be not ready to halt, nor run hobbling and halting, but, like my Lord Will-be-will in the Holy War, when fighting against Diabolus, get thy will tipt with heavenly grace, and go full speed for heaven. These quotations tend to prove that this invaluable treatise is a summary of the guide books which Bunyan had before written. It was doubtless one of the last productions of his prolific pen.

Two passages in the Heavenly Footman appear to favour the idea, that a period in life is, in some cases, fixed, beyond which there is no repentance; thus in a solemn warning against procrastination he says, ‘Dost thou know whether the day of grace will last a week longer or no? For the day of grace is past with some before their life is ended’; and ‘sometimes sinners have not heaven gates open to them so long as they suppose; and if they be once shut against a man, they are so heavy that all the men in the world, nor all the angels in heaven, can open them. Francis Spira can tell thee what it is to stay till the gate of mercy be quite shut.’

It becomes an interesting inquiry as to who Bunyan means by the ‘some’ of whom he says, ‘that the day of grace is past before their life is ended.’ This cannot refer to those who, neglecting the Saviour, are in a perishing condition. No minister felt a more ardent desire to rouse them to a sense of their danger and to guard them against despair than John Bunyan. In his Jerusalem Sinner Saved he thus argues ‘Why despair? thou art yet in the land of the living.’ ‘It is a sin to begin to despair before one sets his foot over the threshold of hell gates.’ ‘What, despair of bread in a land that is full of corn? Despair of mercy when our God is full of mercy, thou scrupulous fool; despair when we have a redeeming Christ alive. Let them despair that dwell where there is no God, and that are confined to those chambers of death which can be reached by no redemption.’ In Bunyan’s Come and Welcome, he proves that it would be ‘high blasphemy and damnable wickedness’ to imagine that Christ would cast out any that come to God by him. He cannot mean the backslider, for Bunyan was such.

David also, to an awful extent, and Peter to the denial of his Lord. No, he may mean those who, while neglecting the Saviour, are overtaken by madness, or more probably to such as Judas, Spira, and others who sell their Master, or renounce him. If a man abandons the Saviour, there is no other name under heaven whereby he can be saved; ‘there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin’; he is a despiser of God’s way of salvation, and tramples under foot the Son of God. While such a career continues, fiery indignation must be his wretched destiny. They who contemn the heavenly gift—the Holy Ghost—the word of God—the powers of the world to come—if they persevere unto death in such sentiments, the day of grace is past. There have been some who, like Esau, having sold their birthright, sought repentance even with tears, but found it not—they sought it not in God’s appointed way. All hope depends upon such sinners coming unto Christ, humbled and broken-hearted. He is willing, He is able to save even then to the uttermost, but they will not. He has promised, and will perform his word, ‘him that cometh to me I will in nowise cast out.’ The volume of inspiration is crowned at its close with the same cheering encouragement, ‘And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And WHOSOEVER WILL, let him take the water of life freely.’

I cannot imagine that any man would have sung with greater pleasure than Bunyan that hymn of Dr. Watts’—

‘Life is the time to serve the Lord,

The time to insure the great reward;

And while the lamp holds out to burn,

The vilest sinner may return.’

They only who reject the counsel and mercy of God, shut heaven’s gates against their own souls, and rush upon Jehovah’s buckler like Judas, or Spira, or like one of Bunyan’s early friends, John Childs, who apostatized for fear of persecution, and perished by his own hand. To such only the day of grace is past; they have set themselves in the scorner’s seat, from which they will be hurled into unutterable wretchedness.

Bunyan well knew that idleness engenders poverty and crime, and is the parent of every evil; and he exhorts his runner to the greatest diligence, not to ‘fool away his soul’ in slothfulness, which induces carelessness, until the sinner is remediless. Our first care is to get into the right way, and then so to run that ‘the devil, who is light of foot,’ may not overtake and trip us up. Running to heaven does not prevent the true, the real enjoyment of earthly blessings,