Bunyan Part 4

Though he preached often, yet there must have been intervals, perhaps long intervals, of compulsory silence. The excitement of perpetual speech-making is fatal to the exercise of the higher qualities. The periods of calm enabled him to discover powers in himself of which he might otherwise have never known the existence. Of books he had but few; for a time only the Bible and Foxe's 'Martyrs.' But the Bible thoroughly known is a literature of itself--the rarest and the richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists. Foxe's 'Martyrs,' if he had a complete edition of it, would have given him a very adequate knowledge of history. With those two books he had no cause to complain of intellectual dest.i.tution. He must have read more, however. He knew George Herbert--perhaps Spenser--perhaps 'Paradise Lost.' But of books, except of the Bible, he was at no time a great student. Happily for himself, he had no other book of Divinity, and he needed none. His real study was human life as he had seen it, and the human heart as he had experienced the workings of it. Though he never mastered successfully the art of verse, he had other gifts which belong to a true poet. He had imagination, if not of the highest, yet of a very high order. He had infinite inventive humour, tenderness, and, better than all, powerful masculine sense. To obtain the use of these faculties he needed only composure, and this his imprisonment secured for him. He had published several theological compositions before his arrest, which have relatively little value. Those which he wrote in prison--even on theological subjects--would alone have made him a reputation as a Nonconformist divine. In no other writings are the peculiar views of Evangelical Calvinism brought out more clearly, or with a more heartfelt conviction of their truth. They have furnished an a.r.s.enal from which English Protestant divines have ever since equipped themselves. The most beautiful of them, 'Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners,' is his own spiritual biography, which contains the account of his early history. The first part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' was composed there as an amus.e.m.e.nt. To this, and to his other works which belong to literature, I shall return in a future chapter.

Visitors who saw him in the gaol found his manner and presence as impressive as his writings. 'He was mild and affable in conversation,'

says one of them, 'not given to loquacity or to much discourse, unless some urgent occasion required. It was observed he never spoke of himself or of his talents, but seemed low in his own eyes. He was never heard to reproach or revile any, whatever injury he received, but rather rebuked those who did so. He managed all things with such exactness as if he had made it his study not to give offence.'

The final 'Declaration of Indulgence' came at last, bringing with it the privilege for which Bunyan had fought and suffered. Charles II.

cared as little for liberty as his father or his brother, but he wished to set free the Catholics, and as a step towards it he conceded a general toleration to the Protestant Dissenters. Within two years of the pa.s.sing of the Conventicle Act of 1670, this and every other penal law against Nonconformists was suspended. They were allowed to open their 'meeting houses' for 'worship and devotion,' subject only to a few easy conditions. The localities were to be specified in which chapels were required, and the ministers were to receive their licenses from the Crown. To prevent suspicions, the Roman Catholics were for the present excluded from the benefit of the concession. Ma.s.s could be said, as before, only in private houses. A year later the Proclamation was confirmed by Act of Parliament.

Thus Bunyan's long imprisonment was ended. The cause was won. He had been its foremost representative and champion, and was one of the first persons to receive the benefit of the change of policy. He was now forty-four years old. The order for his release was signed on May 8, 1672. His license as pastor of the Baptist chapel at Bedford was issued on the 9th. He established himself in a small house in the town. 'When he came abroad,' says one, 'he found his temporal affairs were gone to wreck, and he had as to them to begin again as if he had newly come into the world. But yet he was not dest.i.tute of friends who had all along supported him with necessaries, and had been very good to his family: so that by their a.s.sistance, getting things a little about him again, he resolved, as much as possible, to decline worldly business, and give himself wholly up to the service of G.o.d.' As much as possible; but not entirely. In 1685, being afraid of a return of persecution, he made over, as a precaution, his whole estate to his wife; 'All and singular his goods, chattels, debts, ready money, plate, rings, household stuff, apparel, utensils, bra.s.s, pewter, bedding, and all his other substance.' In this deed he still describes himself as a brazier. The language is that of a man in easy, if not ample circ.u.mstances. 'Though by reason of losses which he sustained by imprisonment,' says another biographer, 'his treasures swelled not to excess, he always had sufficient to live decently and creditably.' His writings and his sufferings had made him famous throughout England. He became the actual head of the Baptist community. Men called him, half in irony, half in seriousness, Bishop Bunyan, and he pa.s.sed the rest of his life honourably and innocently, occupied in writing, preaching, district visiting, and opening daughter churches. Happy in his work, happy in the sense that his influence was daily extending--spreading over his own country, and to the far-off settlements in America, he spent his last years in his own land of Beulah, Doubting Castle out of sight, and the towers and minarets of Emmanuel Land growing nearer and clearer as the days went on.

He had not detected, or at least, at first, he did not detect, the sinister purpose which lay behind the Indulgence. The exception of the Roman Catholics gave him perfect confidence in the Government, and after his release he published a 'Discourse upon Antichrist,' with a preface, in which he credited Charles with the most righteous intentions, and urged his countrymen to be loyal and faithful to him.

His object in writing it, he said, 'was to testify his loyalty to the King, his love to the brethren, and his service to his country.'

Antichrist was of course the Pope, the deadliest of all enemies to vital Christianity. To its kings and princes England owed its past deliverance from him. To kings England must look for his final overthrow.

'As the n.o.ble King Henry VIII. did cast down the Antichristian worship, so he cast down the laws that held it up; so also did the good King Edward his son. The brave Queen Elizabeth, also, the sister of King Edward, left of things of this nature to her lasting fame behind her.' Cromwell he dared not mention--perhaps he did not wish to mention him. But he evidently believed that there was better hope in Charles Stuart than in conspiracy and revolution.

'Kings,' he said, 'must be the men that shall down with Antichrist, and they shall down with her in G.o.d's time. G.o.d hath begun to draw the hearts of some of them from her already, and He will set them in time against her round about. If, therefore, they do not that work so fast as we would have them, let us exercise patience and hope in G.o.d. 'Tis a wonder they go as fast as they do since the concerns of whole kingdoms lie upon their shoulders, and there are so many Sanballats and Tobias's to flatter them and misinform them. Let the King have visibly a place in your hearts, and with heart and mouth give G.o.d thanks for him. He is a better Saviour of us than we may be aware of, and hath delivered us from more deaths than we can tell how to think.

We are bidden to give G.o.d thanks for all men, and in the first place for kings, and all that are in authority. Be not angry with them, no not in thy thought. But consider if they go not in the work of Reformation so fast as thou wouldest they should, the fault may be thine. Know that thou also hast thy cold and chill frames of heart, and sittest still when thou shouldest be up and doing. Pray for the long life of the King. Pray that G.o.d would give wisdom and judgment to the King. Pray that G.o.d would discern all plots and conspiracies against his person and government. I do confess myself one of the old-fashioned professors that wish to fear G.o.d and honour the King. I am also for blessing them that curse me, for doing good to them that hate me, and for praying for them that despitefully use me and persecute me; and I have had more peace in the practice of these things than all the world are aware of.'

The Stuarts, both Charles and James, were grateful for Bunyan's services. The Nonconformists generally went up and down in Royal favour; lost their privileges and regained them as their help was needed or could be dispensed with. But Bunyan was never more molested.

He did what he liked. He preached where he pleased, and no one troubled him or called him to account. He was not insincere. His constancy in enduring so long an imprisonment which a word from him would have ended, lifts him beyond the reach of unworthy suspicions.

But he disapproved always of violent measures. His rule was to submit to the law; and where, as he said, he could not obey actively, then to bear with patience the punishment that might be inflicted on him.

Perhaps he really hoped, as long as hope was possible, that good might come out of the Stuarts.

CHAPTER VII.

LIFE AND DEATH OF MR. BADMAN.

To his contemporaries Bunyan was known as the Nonconformist Martyr, and the greatest living Protestant preacher. To us he is mainly interesting through his writings, and especially through the 'Pilgrim's Progress.' Although he possessed, in a remarkable degree, the gift of expressing himself in written words, he had himself no value for literature. He cared simply for spiritual truth, and literature in his eyes was only useful as a means of teaching it.

Every thing with which a reasonable man could concern himself was confined within the limits of Christian faith and practice. Ambition was folly. Amus.e.m.e.nt was idle trifling in a life so short as man's, and with issues so far-reaching depending upon it. To understand, and to make others understand, what Christ had done, and what Christ required men to do, was the occupation of his whole mind, and no object ever held his attention except in connection with it. With a purpose so strict, and a theory of religion so precise, there is usually little play for imagination or feeling. Though we read Protestant theology as a duty, we find it as dry in the mouth as sawdust. The literature which would please must represent nature, and nature refuses to be bound into our dogmatic systems. No object can be pictured truly, except by a mind which has sympathy with it.

Shakespeare no more hates Iago than Iago hates himself. He allows Iago to exhibit himself in his own way, as nature does. Every character, if justice is to be done to it, must be painted at its best, as it appears to itself; and a man impressed deeply with religious convictions is generally incapable of the sympathy which would give him an insight into what he disapproves and dislikes. And yet Bunyan, intensely religious as he was, and narrow as his theology was, is always human. His genius remains fresh and vigorous under the least promising conditions. All mankind being under sin together, he has no favourites to flatter, no opponents to misrepresent. There is a kindliness in his descriptions, even of the Evil One's attacks upon himself.

The 'Pilgrim's Progress,' though professedly an allegoric story of the Protestant plan of salvation, is conceived in the large, wide spirit of humanity itself. Anglo-Catholic and Lutheran, Calvinist and Deist can alike read it with delight, and find their own theories in it.

Even the Romanist has only to blot out a few paragraphs, and can discover no purer model of a Christian life to place in the hands of his children. The religion of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' is the religion which must be always and everywhere, as long as man believes that he has a soul and is responsible for his actions; and thus it is that, while theological folios once devoured as manna from Heaven now lie on the bookshelves dead as Egyptian mummies, this book is wrought into the mind and memory of every well-conditioned English or American child; while the matured man, furnished with all the knowledge which literature can teach him, still finds the adventures of Christian as charming as the adventures of Ulysses or aeneas. He sees there the reflexion of himself, the familiar features of his own nature, which remain the same from era to era. Time cannot impair its interest, or intellectual progress make it cease to be true to experience.

But the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' though the best known, is not the only work of imagination which Bunyan produced; he wrote another religious allegory, which Lord Macaulay thought would have been the best of its kind in the world if the 'Pilgrim's Progress' had not existed. The 'Life of Mr. Badman,' though now scarcely read at all, contains a vivid picture of rough English life in the days of Charles II. Bunyan was a poet, too, in the technical sense of the word, and though he disclaimed the name, and though rhyme and metre were to him as Saul's armour to David, the fine quality of his mind still shows itself in the uncongenial accoutrements.

It has been the fashion to call Bunyan's verse doggerel; but no verse is doggerel which has a sincere and rational meaning in it. Goethe, who understood his own trade, says that the test of poetry is the substance which remains when the poetry is reduced to prose. Bunyan had infinite invention. His mind was full of objects which he had gathered at first hand, from observation and reflection. He had excellent command of the English language, and could express what he wished with sharp, defined outlines, and without the waste of a word.

The rhythmical structure of his prose is carefully correct. Scarcely a syllable is ever out of place. His ear for verse, though less true, is seldom wholly at fault, and whether in prose or verse, he had the superlative merit that he could never write nonsense. If one of the motives of poetical form be to clothe thought and feeling in the dress in which it can lie most easily remembered, Bunyan's lines are often as successful as the best lines of Quarles or George Herbert. Who, for instance, could forget these?--

Sin is the worm of h.e.l.l, the lasting fire: h.e.l.l would soon lose its heat should sin expire; Better sinless in h.e.l.l than to be where Heaven is, and to be found a sinner there.

Or these, on persons whom the world calls men of spirit:--

Though you dare crack a coward's crown, Or quarrel for a pin, You dare not on the wicked frown, Or speak against their sin.

The 'Book of Ruth' and the 'History of Joseph' done into blank verse are really beautiful idylls. The substance with which he worked, indeed, is so good that there would be a difficulty in spoiling it completely; but the prose of the translation in the English Bible, faultless as it is, loses nothing in Bunyan's hands, and if we found these poems in the collected works of a poet laureate, we should consider that a difficult task had been accomplished successfully.

Bunyan felt, like the translators of the preceding century, that the text was sacred, that his duty was to give the exact meaning of it, without epithets or ornaments, and thus the original grace is completely preserved.

Of a wholly different kind, and more after Quarles's manner, is a collection of thoughts in verse, which he calls a book for boys and girls. All his observations ran naturally in one direction; to minds possessed and governed by religion, nature, be their creed what it may, is always a parable reflecting back their own views.

But how neatly expressed are these 'Meditations upon an Egg':--

The egg's no chick by falling from a hen, Nor man's a Christian till he's born again; The egg's at first contained in the sh.e.l.l, Men afore grace in sin and darkness dwell; The egg, when laid, by warmth is made a chicken, And Christ by grace the dead in sin doth quicken; The egg when first a chick the sh.e.l.l's its prison, So flesh to soul who yet with Christ is risen.

Or this, 'On a Swallow':--

This pretty bird! Oh, how she flies and sings; But could she do so if she had not wings?

Her wings bespeak my faith, her songs my peace; When I believe and sing, my doubtings cease.

Though the Globe Theatre was, in the opinion of Nonconformists, 'the heart of Satan's empire,' Bunyan must yet have known something of Shakespeare. In the second part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' we find:--

Who would true valour see, Let him come hither; One here will constant be, Come wind, come weather.

The resemblance to the song in 'As You Like It' is too near to be accidental:--

Who doth ambition shun, And loves to be in the sun; Seeking the food he eats, And pleased with what he gets, Come hither, come hither, come hither.

Here shall be no enemy, Save winter and rough weather.

Bunyan may, perhaps, have heard the lines, and the rhymes may have clung to him without his knowing whence they came. But he would never have been heard of outside his own communion, if his imagination had found no better form of expression for itself than verse. His especial gift was for allegory, the single form of imaginative fiction which he would not have considered trivial, and his especial instrument was plain, unaffected Saxon prose. 'The Holy War' is a people's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained in one. The 'Life of Mr. Badman' is a didactic tale, describing the career of a vulgar, middle-cla.s.s, unprincipled scoundrel.

These are properly Bunyan's 'works,' the results of his life so far as it affects the present generation of Englishmen; and as they are little known, I shall give an account of each of them.

The 'Life of Badman' is presented as a dialogue between Mr. Wiseman and Mr. Attentive. Mr. Wiseman tells the story, Mr. Attentive comments upon it. The names recall Bunyan's well-known manner. The figures stand for typical characters; but as the _dramatis personae_ of many writers of fiction, while professing to be beings of flesh and blood are no more than shadows, so Bunyan's shadows are solid men whom we can feel and handle.

Mr. Badman is, of course, one of the 'reprobate.' Bunyan considered theoretically that a reprobate may to outward appearance have the graces of a saint, and that there may be little in his conduct to mark his true character. A reprobate may be sorry for his sins, he may repent and lead a good life. He may reverence good men and may try to resemble them; he may pray, and his prayers may be answered; he may have the spirit of G.o.d, and may receive another heart, and yet he may be under the covenant of works, and may be eternally lost. This Bunyan could say while he was writing theology; but art has its rules as well as its more serious sister, and when he had to draw a living specimen, he drew him as he had seen him in his own Bedford neighbourhood.

Badman showed from childhood a propensity for evil. He was so 'addicted to lying that his parents could not distinguish when he was speaking the truth. He would invent, tell, and stand to the lies which he invented, with such an audacious face, that one might read in his very countenance the symptoms of a hard and desperate heart. It was not the fault of his parents; they were much dejected at the beginnings of their son, nor did he want counsel and correction, if that would have made him better: but all availed nothing.'

Lying was not Badman's only fault. He took to pilfering and stealing.

He robbed his neighbours' orchards. He picked up money if he found it lying about. Especially, Mr. Wiseman notes that he hated Sundays.

'Reading Scriptures, G.o.dly conferences, repeating of sermons and prayers, were things that he could not away with.' 'He was an enemy to that day, because more restraint was laid upon him from his own ways than was possible on any other.' Mr. Wiseman never doubts that the Puritan Sunday ought to have been appreciated by little boys. If a child disliked it, the cause could only be his own wickedness. Young Badman 'was greatly given also to swearing and cursing.' 'He made no more of it' than Mr. Wiseman made 'of telling his fingers.' 'He counted it a glory to swear and curse, and it was as natural to him as to eat, drink, or sleep.' Bunyan, in this description, is supposed to have taken the picture from himself. But too much may be made of this.

He was thinking, perhaps, of what he might have been if G.o.d's grace had not preserved him. He himself was saved. Badman is represented as given over from the first. Anecdotes, however, are told of contemporary providential judgments upon swearers, which had much impressed Bunyan. One was of a certain Dorothy Mately, a woman whose business was to wash rubbish at the Derby lead mines. Dorothy (it was in the year when Bunyan was first imprisoned), had stolen twopence from the coat of a boy who was working near her. When the boy taxed her with having robbed him, she wished the ground might swallow her up if she had ever touched his money. Presently after, some children who were watching her, saw a movement in the bank on which she was standing. They called to her to take care, but it was too late. The bank fell in, and she was carried down along with it. A man ran to help her, but the sides of the pit were crumbling round her: a large stone fell on her head; the rubbish followed, and she was overwhelmed.

When she was dug out afterwards, the pence were found in her pocket.

Bunyan was perfectly satisfied that her death was supernatural. To discover miracles is not peculiar to Catholics. They will be found wherever there is an active belief in immediate providential government.

Those more cautious in forming their conclusions will think, perhaps, that the woman was working above some shaft in the mine, that the crust had suddenly broken, and that it would equally have fallen in when gravitation required it to fall, if Dorothy Mately had been a saint. They will remember the words about the Tower of Siloam. But to return to Badman.

His father, being unable to manage so unpromising a child, bound him out as an apprentice. The master to whom he was a.s.signed was as good a man as the father could find: uptight, G.o.dfearing, and especially considerate of his servants. He never worked them too hard. He left them time to read and pray. He admitted no light or mischievous books within his doors. He was not one of those whose religion 'hung as a cloke in his house, and was never seen on him when he went abroad.'

His household was as well fed and cared for as himself, and he required nothing of others of which he did not set them an example in his own person.

This man did his best to reclaim young Badman, and was particularly kind to him. But his exertions were thrown away. The good-for-nothing youth read filthy romances on the sly. He fell asleep in church, or made eyes at the pretty girls. He made acquaintance with low companions. He became profligate, got drunk at alehouses, sold his master's property to get money, or stole it out of the cashbox. Thrice he ran away and was taken back again. The third time he was allowed to go. 'The House of Correction would have been the most fit for him, but thither his master was loath to send him, for the love he bore his father.'

He was again apprenticed; this time to a master like himself. Being wicked he was given over to wickedness. The ways of it were not altogether pleasant. He was fed worse and he was worked harder than he had been before; when he stole, or neglected his business, he was beaten. He liked his new place, however, better than the old. 'At least, there was no G.o.dliness in the house, which he hated worst of all.'

So far, Bunyan's hero was travelling the usual road of the Idle Apprentice, and the gallows would have been the commonplace ending of it. But this would not have answered Bunyan's purpose. He wished to represent the good-for-nothing character, under the more instructive aspect of worldly success, which bad men may arrive at as well as good, if they are prudent and cunning. Bunyan gives his hero every chance. He submits him from the first to the best influences; he creates opportunities for repentance at every stage of a long career--opportunities which the reprobate nature cannot profit by, yet increases its guilt by neglecting.