The Life of John Bunyan [14]
"If I would have given a thousand pounds for a tear I could not
shed one; no, nor sometimes scarce desire to shed one." And yet he
was all the while bewailing this hardness of heart, in which he
thought himself singular. "This much sunk me. I thought my
condition was alone; but how to get out of, or get rid of, these
things I could not." Again the very ground of his faith was
shaken. "Was the Bible true, or was it not rather a fable and
cunning story?" All thought "their own religion true. Might not
the Turks have as good Scriptures to prove their Mahomet Saviour as
Christians had for Christ? What if all we believed in should be
but 'a think-so' too?" So powerful and so real were his illusions
that he had hard work to keep himself from praying to things about
him, to "a bush, a bull, a besom, or the like," or even to Satan
himself. He heard voices behind him crying out that Satan desired
to have him, and that "so loud and plain that he would turn his
head to see who was calling him;" when on his knees in prayer he
fancied he felt the foul fiend pull his clothes from behind,
bidding him "break off, make haste; you have prayed enough."
This "horror of great darkness" was not always upon him. Bunyan
had his intervals of "sunshine-weather" when Giant Despair's fits
came on him, and the giant "lost the use of his hand." Texts of
Scripture would give him a "sweet glance," and flood his soul with
comfort. But these intervals of happiness were but short-lived.
They were but "hints, touches, and short visits," sweet when
present, but "like Peter's sheet, suddenly caught up again into
heaven." But, though transient, they helped the burdened Pilgrim
onward. So vivid was the impression sometimes made, that years
after he could specify the place where these beams of sunlight fell
on him - "sitting in a neighbour's house," - "travelling into the
country," - as he was "going home from sermon." And the joy was
real while it lasted. The words of the preacher's text, "Behold,
thou art fair, my love," kindling his spirit, he felt his "heart
filled with comfort and hope." "Now I could believe that my sins
would be forgiven." He was almost beside himself with ecstasy. "I
was now so taken with the love and mercy of God that I thought I
could have spoken of it even to the very crows that sat upon the
ploughed lands before me, had they been capable to have understood
me." "Surely," he cried with gladness, "I will not forget this
forty years hence." "But, alas! within less than forty days I
began to question all again." It was the Valley of the Shadow of
Death which Bunyan, like his own Pilgrim, was travelling through.
But, as in his allegory, "by and by the day broke," and "the Lord
did more fully and graciously discover Himself unto him." "One
day," he writes, "as I was musing on the wickedness and blasphemy
of my heart, that scripture came into my mind, 'He hath made peace
by the Blood of His Cross.' By which I was made to see, both again
and again and again that day, that God and my soul were friends by
this blood: Yea, I saw the justice of God and my sinful soul could
embrace and kiss each other. This was a good day to me. I hope I
shall not forget it." At another time the "glory and joy" of a
passage in the Hebrews (ii. 14-15) were "so weighty" that "I was
once or twice ready to swoon as I sat, not with grief and trouble,
but with solid joy and peace." "But, oh! now how was my soul led
on from truth to truth by God; now had I evidence of my salvation
from heaven, with many golden seals thereon all banging in my
sight, and I would long that the last day were come, or that I were
fourscore years old, that I might die quickly that my soul might be
at rest."
At this time he fell in with an old tattered copy of Luther's
"Commentary on the Galatians," "so old that it was ready to fall
piece from piece if I did but turn it over."