OF

CALIFORNIA

Introduction

xxxiii commentary which follows this text. This will show how much of the body of the text is drawn direct from the language of the Bible. This unconscious enriching of his own style followed naturally from the way in which Bunyan, like most of his contemporaries, read the Bible. His own accounts in Grace Abounding, tell us how he pored over the book, sometimes searching at random for å text which should settle his spiritual fate, sometimes reading at large and continuously. And in prison, as we have seen, he had only two books, the Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. The range of his citations in The Pilgrim's Progress is proof that he knew all parts of the Bible, and had sought to distil the full spiritual meaning from every chapter and verse in both Old and New Testaments. It is this close scrutiny of the individual texts that created his familiarity with the book. Reading for the story or for the larger meaning of a prophecy makes one know the civilization and the ideas of the Old Testament, perhaps, and the doctrine of the New; but it does not make the individual words and phrases a part of the texture of one's thought as did the older way of reading, when faith in the inspiration of each individual word of the Scriptures had not been questioned.

Not only, however, was Bunyan's mind thus running over with the language of the Bible, but his subject and his manner of treating it led naturally to his use of a style that is marked by the same directness and simplicity. The Old Testament was written for a people of primitive simplicity of thought, and in a language which had no means of expression for ideas which were not simple and concrete. The New Testament is nearly as simple. Even the epistles of St. Paul, though they deal with the mysteries of the faith, were sent to churches made up chiefly of the unlearned; and accordingly they set forth their

truths rather by illuminating or suggestive figures of speech than by abstraction and generalization. Furthermore, the translation into English was made at a time when the English language had comparatively few learned words, and it was made for the express purpose of spreading the gospel widely among the common people of England. All these facts combined to produce a style which is the simplest and most concrete that we know in English; and simplicity makes for universal appeal, as concreteness does for vividness and warmth of expression. Now these are just the qualities which best fitted Bunyan's purpose. He too was writing in the first place for the unlearned; and therefore he put his allegory into language which would reach all men. And he was bodying forth a vision that came to him with singular vividness and living concreteness, for we must not forget the testimony of Grace Abounding that he heard voices in the air about him, and saw visions as it were with his bodily eyes. For both these reasons it was inevitable that knowing every word and syllable of the Bible as he did he should unconsciously use its language when he came to the writing of The Pilgrim's Progress.

Another cause makes it not surprising that Bunyan's style is like that of the Bible, and that is his use of the vigorous and homely language which he himself talked with his flock in the streets and on the farms of Bedfordshire. Here again there is close similarity between Bunyan and William Tindale, the first translator of the English Bible. The latter we are told in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, had declared before he entered on the work, speaking to a bigoted priest and echoing the words of Erasmus, that he would " cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou doest"; and by translation and vigorous compositions of his own he labored to

bring the gospel to every man and woman in England, until his labors were brought to an end at the stake. With this purpose firm in his mind he turned the Hebrew and the Greek into the homely language of the street and market-place and farm. Thus the language of the Bible was singularly fitted to the purpose of Bunyan, who also was writing in the first place for the unlettered, and who had the same prophetic spirit and mission that touched. Tindale's language with fire. We find in The Pilgrim's Progress, therefore, nearly the same combination of unconscious and transparent simplicity with high and inspired earnestness that has made the style of the English Bible the highest standard of English prose.

In his allegory Bunyan set forth the life of a Christian believer from the time that he awakens to a sense of his sins and turns steadfastly to a new life. The brief biography of Bunyan in the earlier part of this Introduction will show how much he drew on his own experience. The outward frame of the allegory is drawn from the Calvinistic scheme of theology, which was ultimately derived from the theology of St. Augustine; and that in turn was based on a vivid sense of the everlasting war between the good and the evil in human nature. According to this doctrine, as it was worked out by Calvin, and held by all parties of the English Puritans, all mankind, through the original sin of Adam, is born corrupt; repentance and good works are not in themselves sufficient to remove the penalties of this original taint of sin, forgiveness for which can come only by the free grace of God, earned by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross; and this free grace comes to those only whom He in His eternal wisdom has elected, without deserving on the part of those who are thus preordained to be saved. Therefore, when Christian in the

allegory has turned his back on the City of Destruction, and has repented of his sin, he has made only a preliminary step: he must then struggle on and pray until he feels the burden of his sins fall from his back and roll into the sepulcher of Jesus.

But except for this beginning of the allegory and a few other passages, such as the incident of poor Ignorance at the end, Bunyan pays little attention to the theological scheme. If he had not seen through its precisions and subtleties to the universal moral truths on which it rests, The Pilgrim's Progress would never have lived to our day. Every man who has turned his back on inclination and set himself to follow the narrow path of duty, finds here reflected his own experience. For all of us the first resolution is easy; but old-established habits, and the memories of the pleasures that the new duties proscribe, even more readily gather to clog the good resolution: the Slough of Despond belongs to universal human experience. So do the Valley of Humiliation and the Valley of the Shadow of Death, Vanity Fair, where all the passing allurements of the passing day are laid out to distract attention from higher purposes, and at the very end, when the day seems won, Doubting Castle and the Giant Despair. Nor are the comforts which Christian meets on his pilgrimage less largely conceived: the house of the Interpreter with the ministrations of the grave and beautiful damsels who represent the Christian virtues, the House Beautiful and the chamber whose name was Peace, and the Delectable Mountains with their glimpse of the supernal glories beyond, all figure forth realities of human life as each of us know it. In this struggle some of us must, like Christian, fight our way through the lowest depths; others, like Faithful, find sunshine in the darkest places. But the allegory holds for every one who has set himself to rise

to a higher level of living; and the enormous number of readers of many nations is proof that the book has touched essential chords in our common human nature.

There is a passage in the Grace Abounding which, I think, best embodies the real spirit of The Pilgrim's Progress. It is near the beginning of the book, where Bunyan has been describing the black despair which oppressed him after the conviction of his sinful life was borne in on him. "But upon a day," he goes on, "the good providence of God did cast me to Bedford, to work on my calling; and in one of the streets of that town, I came where there were three or four poor women sitting at a door, in the sun, talking about the things of God. . . . And methought they spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me, as if they had found a new world.

...

I saw as if

they were set on the sunny side of some high mountain, there refreshing themselves with the pleasant beams of the sun, while I was shivering and shrinking in the cold, afflicted with frost, snow, and dark clouds." It is this sense of the religious life as a sunny life, which spreads a glow of cheer and happiness around it, that is after all the dominant note of The Pilgrim's Progress; and it is significant that the passage where Bunyan's style kindles to its greatest beauty is the passage that describes the final blessedness of the Celestial City; for the allegory is really concerned, not with theological tenets, but with large moral truths, which are deep-seated and universal in human

nature.