INTRODUCTION.

“THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS” is, without question, of all uninspired volumes, the most extraordinary book in the English language. Regard being had to the condition of its author, and the circumstances connected with its production, to its widespread popularity, and its suitableness for readers of every class, there is none to compare with it. It is so well known, that any information concerning either it or its author seems superfluous; and our ingenuity is at a loss to know how to write an introduction for a book for which, above all others, no introduction is required.

We shall probably find few readers who are not already acquainted with the leading facts of Bunyan’s life, and to whom a record of them would not appear like the rehearsal of an old story. It may suffice, therefore, if we present, in few words, such a summary as will refresh the memory, dwelling only on those which are fitted to shed a little light on his immortal production.

Born at Elstow in Bedfordshire in 1628, of parents who belonged to the humbler walks of life, he received little early education worthy of the name; but grew up in the ignorance which was then, and in England is still, common to his class. At an early age he learned the trade of tinker, and by that occupation earned his livelihood for a few years. Up to the time of his first marriage he lived, if not a desperately profligate, yet a thoroughly godless and openly wicked life. And though the character and conversation of his wife exerted a restraining influence, and awoke in him some desire for reformation, no real, and but little apparent, change took place until some time afterwards, when he became the subject of converting grace. The deep experiences through which he had passed in connection with this change, combined with his natural gifts, qualified him for profitably addressing others; and he very soon began, in an irregular way at first, to exercise the ministry, which ultimately became his sole occupation, and in which he attained to a proficiency unsurpassed by any preacher of his time. His preaching, and consequent absence from the parish church, attracted the notice of the ecclesiastical authorities of the neighborhood, at whose instigation he was thrown into prison for twelve years, where he tagged laces to support his wife and blind child, and conceived and wrote the wonderful allegory by which he has ranked himself for ever among the peers of the intellectual world, and secured for himself an ever-widening and undying fame. After his release he preached with great acceptance and usefulness, statedly at Bedford, occasionally in London and elsewhere; and composed and published various other works of great practical usefulness, some of which would no doubt have attained to a wide popularity had they not been eclipsed by his greatest production. He diligently prosecuted his labors until he was sixty years of age, when a severe cold caught in the discharge of a ministerial duty—a journey which he took for the purpose of reconciling a father and son who had quarrelled—abruptly terminated his life.

In the circumstances we have thus briefly narrated—especially in his imprisonment—some writers see the discipline and training which were necessary to fit him for writing “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” But though we cannot question that whatsoever God did for him and whatsoever men were permitted to do, had some effect in fitting him for whatever work he was destined to perform, it seems to us that such a discovery is but one of numerous instances in which men are wise after the event, and that Bunyan’s great work is not to be accounted for except by a profounder philosophy than such writers bring to the task. Few beforehand would have ventured to predict, from anything in the antecedents of the man Bunyan, that he would be able to produce such a book; or that anything in his circumstances and upbringing and parentage would produce such a man. He is a great creation, no more to be accounted for in such a manner than is the creation of a world. Antecedents conduce to, but do not account for, it. He is a phenomenon only to be understood on the principle that God, by a process which we cannot trace, and sometimes by means which appear to us unsuitable, raises up great men for the performance of great works. Not only does He make the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak to confound the mighty, but gives us to find both wisdom and strength where such qualities are least likely to exist.

It is a fact significant of the nature of the times, that Christian England, which ought to have been proud to rank him among her favored sons, had no better treatment for this man than the most relentless persecution, no better home for twelve years than a damp cell in the jail which stood on the bridge over the Ouse at Bedford. His crime, as we have intimated, was that of absenting himself from the Established Church, and holding meetings where he preached the gospel, and conducted worship in a manner which appeared to him more in accordance than the established service with New-Testament principles—one of the worst crimes, in the estimation of the authorities, of which a man could be guilty. On the warrant of a Justice he was apprehended at a meeting in Sansell, and, no bail being found, was thrown into prison to await his trial, which took place seven weeks afterwards. His indictment set forth that “John Bunyan of the town of Bedford, laborer, hath devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to church to hear Divine service, and is a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom, contrary to the laws of our sovereign lord the king.” On this indictment, without any examination of witnesses, he was found guilty. Justice Keeling, in a savage tone strangely unbecoming in a judge passing sentence, said, “Hear your judgment: you must be had back to prison, and there lie for three months following. And at three months’ end, if you do not submit to go to church to hear Divine service, and leave your preaching, you must be banished the realm; or be found to come back again without special license from the king, you must stretch by the neck for it, I tell you plainly. Jailor, take him away.”

Bunyan’s reply was as worthy of his Christian character, as the judge’s manner was unworthy of his exalted office. All that he had to say in answer to such brutal browbeating was, “If I was out of prison to-day, I would preach again to-morrow, by the help of God!” Such a man was evidently not to be frightened either by frowns or by threats; so they had him back to prison, of which he had already tasted the sweets. But not all the horrors of prison—not the pain of separation from his wife and four children, could move his dauntless soul. He felt that separation most keenly—no man could have felt it more. Especially was he solicitous about his blind daughter, to whom he was all the more tenderly attached because of her helplessness. “Poor child, thought I; what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must be beaten, must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind should blow upon thee! Oh, the hardships I thought my blind one might go under would break my heart in pieces.” Still he did not falter, for he could commit her as well as himself to God; and God’s peace was with him. “Verily, as I was going forth out of the doors, I had much ado to forbear saying to them that I carried the peace of God along with me; and, blessed be the Lord, I went away to prison with God’s comfort in my poor soul!”

His case seems to have given some trouble to the Justices. He was had up before them repeatedly, and always remanded. They were either unwilling or afraid to carry out Justice Keeling’s threat of banishment. And as their prisoner would not promise to change his course, they kept him where he was. His friends interceded for him. His wife, who was of a kindred spirit with himself, came to London with a petition for his release, and had it presented to the House of Lords. Although “a delicate young woman of retiring habits,” she appeared before the Judges and pleaded his cause “in language worthy of the most talented counsel.” But all their efforts were in vain. The one condition on which his release could be granted was the condition with which the prisoner would not comply. “Will your husband leave preaching?” said Judge Twisden to his wife; “if he will do so, then send for him.” “My Lord,” she replied, “he dares not leave preaching, so long as he can speak.” “My principles,” says Bunyan on another occasion, “are such as lead me to a denial to communicate in the things of the kingdom of Christ with ungodly and open profane; neither can I, in or by the superstitious inventions of this world, consent that my soul should be governed in any of my approaches to God, because commanded to the contrary, and commended for so refusing. Wherefore, excepting this one thing, for which I ought not to be rebuked, I shall, I trust, in despite of slander and falsehood, discover myself as a peaceable and obedient subject. But if nothing will do unless I make my conscience a continual butchery and slaughter-shop—unless, putting out mine own eyes, I commit me to the blind to lead me (as I doubt is desired by some)—I have determined, the Almighty God being my help, and shield, yet to suffer, and if frail life shall continue so long, even till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather than violate my faith and principles.”

He lay in prison for more than twelve years. Twelve years! How easy to write the words; how difficult to grasp all that they mean! The fifth part of his life at the season when life was in its prime—when his appreciation of nature was keenest—when free exercise would have proved the greatest luxury to a stalwart frame like his—when he would have entered with the greatest zest into home enjoyments—when his physical system was full of bounding life and capable of acting with the greatest vigor—the fifth part of his life spent within the limits of a dungeon—the little cell which he aptly calls his den! What a testimony to the heroic endurance of the man! What a testimony to his country’s disgrace! It is sad to think that England, with her Christian constitution, had no better treatment than this for one of her noblest sons, whose worth, blinded as she was by flunkeyisms and debaucheries in high places, she was unable to recognize.

To Bunyan it mattered little what they did. Happier far was he in prison than the clergyman in his living, or the bishop in his palace, or the king on his throne. Yea, it may be questioned if in all England there was a man so happy or so much to be envied as that prisoner on Bedford Bridge. The “God’s peace”—“God’s comfort”—of which he speaks as dwelling in his “poor soul,” is not dependent on place or circumstances, cannot be disturbed by the treatment he receives. He who hath it can defy the persecutor’s rage. Do to him what you will—strip him of his possessions and friends—drive him into exile—make him a homeless wanderer—he is happier in his penury and homelessness than others in the abundance of their wealth and comfort. The stream by whose side he strays lulls him with its melody. The wild-flower blooming at his feet with its bewitching beauty, hath for him a quiet but charming tale of One for whose care nothing is too minute. The mountains tower around in testimony of his Father’s power and faithfulness; and the stars overhead are so many provinces in his Father’s boundless domain—yea, all nature doth minister to his pleasure, because all outward things do “chime harmoniously with the movements of the harmonious soul.” Or if, by prison walls, as in Bunyan’s case, he be shut out from nature’s beauty—from daylight and the fragrant air—still he has left to him God and himself. The soul’s freedom is unimpaired. It can soon soar above all restraint and enjoy Divine fellowship. No prison walls are so thick that prayer cannot pierce them. No dungeon gloom so dark that it may not be radiated with celestial light.

“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.

“For though men keep my outward man
Within their locks and bars,
Yet by the faith of Christ I can
Mount higher than the stars.”

These were no meaningless sounds to him—no poetical expression of the feelings which he supposed might be experienced—no rhapsodical or exaggerated description of what he actually felt. Poetry apart, he elsewhere tells us of the glorious visions with which he was favored there. “O the Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and God the judge of all; Jesus the mediator, and the spirits of just men made perfect! I have seen here what I never can express. I have felt the truth of that Scripture, ‘Whom having not seen, ye love; in Whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.’” Most of the day was spent in “tagging laces,” with his blind girl by his side—an employment which he learned in prison, that thereby he might help to support his family. But when evening came, and the child was dismissed to her home with a parting benediction, his soul, free to soar where it listed, saw those glorious visions, and indulged in those pious meditations which are embodied in his immortal work. He had but to close his eyes, and he was no more the prisoner, but the pilgrim whose progress he so graphically describes. Bedford jail fades away, and his unfettered soul stands on some mount of vision where, from its commencement to its close, the course of his pilgrim lies open to his view. There he sees the City of Destruction, and remembers how he left it with the burden on his back—the Slough of Despond, and the overhanging hill near the house of Mr. Legality, with its deep rifts and flashing fires. He recalls his entrance at the wicket-gate—his visit to the Interpreter’s house—his rapture when, standing at the foot of the Cross and gazing on the Crucified, his burden fell from his shoulders and he was free. Again he is entertained at the Palace Beautiful, finds there refreshment and repose, and at break of day wakes up singing in the chamber whose name is Peace. Or he wanders among the Delectable Mountains with the shepherds for his companions; and from the hill Clear, looking through the glass of faith, discerns in the distance the pearly gates, and golden turrets, and jasper walls, that surround the City of the Blest. Or he dwells in the land of Beulah, where, not in imagination only, but in reality, his soul summers even now, ripening for the heaven which is so near that already he inhales its fragrance, and walks in its light, and holds converse with its shining ones—where the sun shineth night and day, and the birds sing continually, and the flowers are ever fresh and fair, and the voice of the turtle is heard in the land. Or, the river crossed, he climbs the hill which leads up to the gate of the City, or rather glides upward; for the shining ones have clasped his hands, and the burden of mortality left in the river no more clogs the movements of the ascending soul. The gates open at his approach—the trumpets sound in honor of his coming. The bells of the city “ring again for joy.” “Angels meet him with harp and crown, and give him the harp to praise withal and the crown in token of honor.” And the hosts of the glorified standing round welcome him with acclamations to their exalted fellowship, saying, “Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

All these are real to him—more real than the prison walls that surround him, or his prison garb, or prison fare. These are but the illusions which shall vanish; those the realities which shall endure. And, being so vividly presented to his mind, he is constrained to imprint them on his page. Rousing himself from his reverie, but with beaming eye and radiant countenance, for “he writes as if joy did make him write,” he flings from his graphic and fluent pen those vivid, brilliant pictures, over which, after his persecutors have perished, and his prison walls have crumbled into dust, and the painful circumstances of his earthly life have receded into the dim and distant past,—in many lands and throughout all generations—in the closet and the chamber—in the solitary hut and the crowded city—young and old, rich and poor, learned and illiterate, shall bend with ever fresh delight.

Without question, Bunyan’s imprisonment was made conducive for the furtherance of the gospel. The Providence which controls the wrath of man, and makes it contribute to its own purposes, so overruled the malice of his persecutors, as to make it serve the cause which they sought to destroy. Not only may we see the Divine hand, in the fact that Bunyan’s imprisonment afforded him leisure for the composition of those works which have made his name immortal; but an overruling Providence is specially seen, in some of the circumstances which facilitated his work. Cruelties such as were perpetrated in other prisons would probably have shortened his days, or at least have rendered writing and study impossible; but in the jail at Bedford where he was confined, though the place was loathsome in the extreme, the jailer treated the prisoners with such humanity that he incurred the displeasure of the Justices. Bunyan was allowed to visit his family occasionally, and it was on one of his visits that the circumstance occurred which most people would consider peculiarly providential. A neighboring priest heard of his absence from prison, and immediately despatched a messenger that he might bear witness against the jailer. Meanwhile Bunyan, feeling uneasy at home, had returned to prison sooner than was intended, so that when the messenger demanded, “Are all the prisoners safe?” the jailer could answer “Yes.” “Is John Bunyan safe?” “Yes.” Bunyan, on being called, appeared; and, said the jailer afterwards, “You may go out when you will, for you know much better when to return than I can tell you.” Thus were his health and life preserved, and the man who was forbidden to speak to a few assembled in a peasant’s cottage, furnished with facilities for writing a book by which he speaks to millions in every land, and through all succeeding generations; while the men who sought to silence him have been all forgotten. So do the enemies of the gospel frustrate their own schemes. So does the right live on, emerging into ever-increasing splendor, while the wrong sinks into merited oblivion.

The acceptance which his “Pilgrim’s Progress” has met with is altogether unparalleled. During the Author’s lifetime many copies are said to have been circulated in England—and that was at a time when books and readers were comparatively scarce. Several editions—some of them got up, as booksellers would say, in very superior style—were published in North America, and translations were issued in French and Flemish, Dutch, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish. Nor does time show any abatement of its popularity. Among all the competitors for public favor which have since issued from the press, it retains its pre-eminence. There is scarcely a known language into which it has not been rendered. Wherever English is spoken it is familiar as a household word. Both the First and Second Parts may be had together new, and neatly printed, for one penny, showing that notwithstanding the millions in circulation, and the new editions which are constantly appearing, publishers can still reckon on a sale of hundreds of thousands for one edition alone. It appears in all forms, and is read by all classes. Richly illustrated and elegantly bound, it adorns the drawing-room tables of the wealthy. Well thumbed and sometimes tattered, as if from constant, if not careless, usage, it lies on the shelf or the window-sill of the poor. Children are entranced with the interest of the story; its tranquil or gloomy scenes, its pictures of danger and conflict—of triumph and despair. Men too illiterate to account for the fascination, are attracted to its pages. And learned men, who have little sympathy with its religious purpose, feel the spell of its genius, and are compelled to admire it for the beauty or the awfulness of its creations, its vivid embodiments, its clear insight and keen satire, its terse Saxon style. The young Christian, just starting on his course, reads it for guidance and encouragement in his own conflicts and perils; and the aged saint lingering for a while on the river’s brink, before the messenger summons him into the presence of the King, testifies to the accuracy with which it pictures the serene and mellowed joys of the land of Beulah—the celestial air which the pilgrim breathes, the celestial fragrance which is wafted from on high, the celestial visitants with whom he holds converse as he nears his journey’s end; and the dull eye brightens, and the withered countenance glows with rapture, as, by the pilgrim’s passage of the river, and entrance at the gates, he is led to anticipate his own. It is wonderful that any man should have written a book of such universal and enduring popularity. More wonderful still that it should have been written in prison by an uneducated tinker, the descendant of a vagrant tribe—written spontaneously and unconsciously—not as an effort, but as a relief from mental fulness—as the thoughts came crowding up in all their freshness in an untrained but singularly original and fertile mind.

With all its popularity and excellence, it is easy to see that the book is not without faults. Its theology, scriptural in the main, is colored by his own experience. The long and painful journey which Christian makes with his burden before he finds relief at the cross, though it accords with fact often, is somewhat at variance with Scripture. The Second Part shows some improvement on the First in this respect; but there, too, the cross is placed too far on the way. It should have been at the wicket-gate, and not at the farther side of the Interpreter’s house; for there is really no true progress heavenward until the cross is seen.

As an allegory, moreover, it presents, as it could scarcely fail, some obvious inconsistencies. The wicket-gate is the proper entrance to the pilgrim’s course; and yet Hopeful enters it not through the wicket-gate, but at Vanity Fair, which is far on the way. Faithful, again, leaves it not by the river, which represents death, but is taken up in a chariot of fire. These and such like discrepancies are obvious to every reader; and the best excuse for them is that his purpose rendered them unavoidable. It was not possible by any consistent allegory to set forth so many distinct phases of spiritual life.

The wonder is not that there are inconsistencies in the allegory, but that these are so few and the beauties of the book so manifold. “It is the highest miracle of genius,” says Macaulay, “that things which are not should be as though they were, that the imagination of one mind should become the personal recollections of another. And this miracle the tinker has wrought. There is no ascent, no declivity, no resting-place, no turnstile, with which we are not perfectly acquainted.” His characters, though some of them are mere embodiments of abstract qualities, are painted with equal vividness. They are marked with individuality as much as if they were real personages who had sat for their portraits. There is no danger of our mistaking one for another; and such is the impression they produce on our minds, that, when once we have made acquaintance with them, they are not easily forgotten. Stern as he is in his treatment of wrong, and especially in peeling off the skin from sanctimonious villainy, what a depth of tenderness there is in his nature, and what a keen appreciation of the beautiful he now and again displays! When he writes of Christiana in the Second Part there is a preceptible softening in his tone; and the incidents of the journey are suited to the delicacy of woman and the tenderness of youth; for the writer knew well, and had himself imbibed, the spirit of Him Who “tempers the wind to the shorn lamb”—“Who gathers the lambs in His arms, and carries them in His bosom.” The quiet beauty of some of his scenes, and the soft light which falls on them, is perfectly charming; and all the more noticeable as contrasted with the lurid grandeur of others. What a sweet picture is that Palace Beautiful, with its waiting damsels and its chamber of peace—“the country birds that, in the spring-time, sing all day long in a most curious, melodious note,” one carolling, as Christiana listens, with words much like these.—

“Through all my life Thy favor is
So frankly showed to me,
That in Thy house for evermore
My dwelling-place shall be.”

And another responding,—

“For why? The Lord our God is good;
His mercy is for ever sure:
His truth at all times firmly stood,
And shall from age to age endure.”

Not less lovely, when Christiana passes through, is the Valley of Humiliation, green and fertile, and “beautified with lilies,” where “our Lord formerly had his country house, and loved to walk the meadows, for he found the air was pleasant,” where “laboring men have good estates,” where the shepherd boy doth sing his artless song, giving utterance to his heart’s content,—

“He that is down needs fear no fall;
He that is poor no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.”

And that land of Beulah, so near the gates of the City with only the river between, where the pilgrim, after the toils of the way, rests and ripens for glory, is so vividly presented to us, that, forgetting our surroundings, we can sometimes fancy ourselves in it, soothed and refreshed by its delicious influences, bathed in its golden light, and breathing its balmy air. And the Celestial City itself, shining like the sun, with its bells and trumpets, its golden pavement, its white-robed inhabitants, wearing crowns and waving palms, with “harps to play withal,”—what reader does not feel as if he stood with the writer looking in at the open gate, and, sympathizing with his desire, when carried away by his own imaginings, he says, “which, when I had seen, I wished myself among them.”

But time would fail and space forbids us to expatiate on the beauties of the book. The more we study it, the more do we feel how much it deserves its matchless popularity; and the more cordially do we commend it to the careful perusal of our readers. Our desire and prayer is, that some of them may be influenced by Bunyan’s pleasant companionship and wise guidance to commence, or, if they have commenced already, to persevere in and complete the pilgrimage which he so graphically describes.