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JOHN BUNYAN.

1628-1688.

"Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale
Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail;
Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style
May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile;
Witty, and well employed, and, like thy Lord,
Speaking in parables his slighted word;

I name thee not, lest so despised a name
Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame;

Yet e'en in transitory life's late day,

That mingles all my brown with sober gray,

Revere the man, whose pilgrim marks the road,

And guides the progress of the soul to God."—CowPER.

JOHN BUNYAN, the author of the most popular allegory in any language, was born in 1628 at Elstow, about two miles from Bedford, the county-seat of Bedfordshire, England. He got a little instruction in reading and writing at the village school, but lost it nearly all before he came of age. He represents himself as having been in youth exceedingly depraved; but this self-depreciation was probably the utterance of relig ious enthusiasm, or of a conscience morbidly acute. He was at least perfectly chaste, and does not appear to have ever been drunk. "The four chief sins of which he was guilty," says Macaulay, "were dancing, ringing the bells of the parish church, playing at tipcat,' and reading the History of Sir Bevis of Southampton." To these I think we may add sabbath-breaking, ale-tippling, and profane swearing; but on being reproved for the last-named vice by a "loose and ungodly" woman, who protested that even she was shocked at his blasphemy, he at once and forever abandoned it.

During a great part of his youth and early manhood he was on the verge of insanity. His self-inquisitorial habit amounted to a disease. His vivid imagination was ever summoning up the most frightful images of hell and devils, and himself in the midst of them. In the commonest events he was sure he recognized the miracuous interposition of a supernatural hand, often terrible, sometimes merciful. "God 'd not utterly leave me. Once I fell into a creek of the sea, and hardly escaped drowning. Another time I fell out of a boat into Bedford River; but mercy yet preserved me; besides, another time, being in the field with my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway; so I, having a stick, struck her over the back, and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick and plucked her sting out with my fingers; by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might by my desperateness have brought myself to my end. This also I have taken notice of with thank-giving; when I was a soldier, I with others were [was] drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it; but when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which, when I had consented, he took my place, and, coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head with a musket bullet, and died. Here, as I said, were judgments and mercy."*

* Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners: by John Bunyan.

....

These were but transient gleams. "Often, after I had spent this and the other day in sin, I have been greatly afflicted, while asleep, with the apprehension of devils and wicked spirits, who, as I then thought, labored to draw me away with them. . . . . These things, I say, when I was but a child but nine or ten years old, did so distress my soul. . . . . I was also then so overcome with despair of life and heaven, that I should often wish either that there had been no hell, or that I had been a devil, supposing that they were only tormentors! that, if it needs must be that I went thither, I might be rather a tormentor than be tormented myself!"*

He feared he had committed "the unpardonable sin," and an aged godly man, whom in his distress he consulted on the subject, concurred with him in this apprehension. Day and night he felt himself driven by devils to sell Christ. "Sell him, sell him, sell him!" rang in his ears, and was whispered to him by a thousand fiendish tongues. "Never! never! not for thousands of worlds," he replied, hour after hour; till at last, amid unspeakable agony, he exclaimed, "Let him go, if he will!" No words can paint the horrible visions and despair that succeeded. "I lifted up my head, but methought I saw as if the sun that shineth in the heavens did grudge to give me light; and as if the very stones in the streets, and tiles upon the houses, did bend themselves against me. Oh, how happy now was every creature over I was! For they stood fast and kept their station, but I was gone and lost."+

Other fantasies came to torment him. "At one time he took it into his head that all persons of Israelite blood would be saved, and tried to make out that he partook of that blood; but his hopes were speedily destroyed by his father, who seems to have had no ambition to be regarded as a Jew.

"At another time Bunyan was disturbed by a strange dilemma. 'If I have not faith, I am lost; if I have faith, I can work miracles.' He was tempted to cry to the puddles between Elstow and Bedford, 'Be ye dry,' and to stake his eternal hopes on the event!

"Then he took up a notion that the day of grace for Bedford and the neighboring villages was past; that all who were to be saved in that part of England were already converted; and that he had begun to pray and strive some months too late.

"Then he was harassed by doubts whether the Turks were not in the right, and the Christians in the wrong. Then he was troubled by a maniacal impulse which prompted him to pray to the trees, to a broomstick, to the parish bull!" ‡

Civil war raging in England, he enlisted in the parliamentary army at the age of seventeen. The incident already quoted, in reference to his comrade who volunteered to take his place and was shot, occurred at the siege of Leicester in June, 1645. His military experience enriched his style with many embellishments and happy illustrations.

At nineteen he married his first wife. Little better than a gipsy, he had saved nothing of his earnings, and the bride was equally destitute. "We came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both; yet this she had for her part, The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven, and The Practice of Piety, which her father had left when he died." Tenderly and faithfully did this good woman strive to win her young husband from his wicked ways, and well was her fidelity rewarded. At first his reformation was only external. From the extremity of remorse and fear, he passed to the extreme of self-righteousness. "I would think with myself, God cannot choose but be now pleased with me;' yea, to relate it in my own way, I thought 'no man in England could please God better than I.' Thus I continued about a twelvemonth or more." Humiliation and despair followed. At twenty-five all the storms had cleared away, to return only briefly and at long intervals. He had found that peace which the world cannot give nor take away. The Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, § 7. + Ibid., § 187. + Macaulay.

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