MORE BUNYANS' WANTED

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 20, 1875

MORE BUNYANS' WANTED.

Bunyan the pilgrim, dreamer, preacher, Sinner and soldier, tinker and teacher, For heresy scoffed, scourged, put in prison— The day of tolerance yet unrisen— Who heard from the dark of his dungeon lair The roar and the tumult of Vanity Fair, And showed man's pilgrimage forth with fashion Heroic, in God-guided poet-fashion, Has now his revenge; he looks down at you In a ducal-commissioned statue— A right good artist gave life and go to it, But his name's not Boehm, and rhyme says “no” to it— And the Dean of Westminster, frank and fluent, Spoke broad-church truths of the Baptist truant.

We like the Duke and we like the Dean, And the summer air in the summer green, When the Anabaptist poet and clown Was set up as the glory of Bedford town; But ducal and decanal folk should learn That to-day with the past is of small concern; That light for the day's life is each day's need, That the tinker teacher has sown his seed; And we want our Bunyan to show the way Through the Sloughs of Despond that are round us to-day. Our guide for straggling souls to wait, And lift the latch of the wicket gate.

The churches now debate and wrangle; Strange doubts theology entangle; Each sect to the other doth freedom grudge, Archbishop asks ruling of a judge. Why comes no pilgrim, with eye of fire, To tell us where pointeth min'ster spire? To show, though critics may sneer and scoff, The path to “the land that is very far off”? The people are weary of vestment vanities, Of litigation about inanities, And fain would listen, O preacher and peer, To a voice like that of this tinker seer; Who guided the pilgrim up, beyond The Valley of Death, and the Slough of Despond, And Doubting Castle, and Giant Despair To those Delectable Mountains fair, And over the River, and in at the Gate, Where for weary pilgrims the angels wait!

—English Paper