John Bunyan | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 29, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 29.

John Bunyan.

BUNYAN was the opposite of a mystic. His common sense in his sermons of advice is extraordinarily close-packed and hard, and exhibits acute observation of the ways of human nature in practical life. He wrote once what was almost a novel, a history of one Mr. Badman, which is probably truer to contemporary life than the adventures of Jonathan Wild in the next century. If he did not weaken his eyesight over books, he sharpened it on men and women. All his volumes abound with anecdote and incidents which he had evidently seen in the town streets or by the road-side, and with phrases and proverbial sayings close to the soil.

Not the least agreeable of the signs of this realism, this sight for the bare fact in sense alone, are those descriptions of the country, of the birds, and flowers, and fields, and the simple cheerfulness of them to the country-born boy, which strew his pages from cover to cover. So, when he came to write his great book, he united in a perfectly natural way, and without forethought, the reality of a journey on earth with that of the search for Heaven.

The success with which, in a literary work, truth is fused with fact, is a measure of genius. It is, perhaps, more striking in this case because the work is an allegory, which is usually so drearily pale a kind of composition. The characters and action of the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” on the contrary, are a transcript of life, so vivid that it cannot wear out. It is not more realistic, however, than other portions of Bunyan’s voluminous writings, in which one may get an idea of English provincial character of high historical value and human interest.

Bunyan’s memory is singularly agreeable. Personally he was free from the defects of assumption, dogmatism, and spiritual pride which entered largely into the religious character of his epoch, and his sensitive conscience seems to have kept him humble after he had won a name. The two great elements of his work, the homely quality and the Christian quality, were deep-seated in his nature, and gave him charm. In an age of sectaries he was not a narrow bigot, and did not stickle for meaningless things; and in a time of political strife growing out of religious differences, and though himself a sufferer by twelve years’ imprisonment in early manhood, he did not confuse Heaven with any fantastic monarchy or commonwealth of Christ in London, nor show any rancor or revengeful spirit as a subject. The life of the man who could evolve such a story must have been very simply typical of the Christian life itself.—Evening Post.