The Life of John Bunyan [21]
God than if he had made him
emperor of the Christian world." Bunyan was no preacher of vague
generalities. He knew that sermons miss their mark if they hit no
one. Self-application is their object. "Wherefore," he says, "I
laboured so to speak the word, as that the sin and person guilty
might be particularized by it." And what he preached he knew and
felt to be true. It was not what he read in books, but what he had
himself experienced. Like Dante he had been in hell himself, and
could speak as one who knew its terrors, and could tell also of the
blessedness of deliverance by the person and work of Christ. And
this consciousness gave him confidence and courage in declaring his
message. It was "as if an angel of God had stood at my back." "Oh
it hath been with such power and heavenly evidence upon my own soul
while I have been labouring to fasten it upon the conscience of
others, that I could not be contented with saying, 'I believe and
am sure.' Methought I was more than sure, if it be lawful so to
express myself, that the things I asserted were true."
Bunyan, like all earnest workers for God, had his disappointments
which wrung his heart. He could be satisfied with nothing less
than the conversion and sanctification of his hearers. "If I were
fruitless, it mattered not who commanded me; but if I were
fruitful, I cared not who did condemn." And the result of a sermon
was often very different from what he anticipated: "When I thought
I had done no good, then I did the most; and when I thought I
should catch them, I fished for nothing." "A word cast in by-the-
bye sometimes did more execution than all the Sermon besides." The
tie between him and his spiritual children was very close. The
backsliding of any of his converts caused him the most extreme
grief; "it was more to me than if one of my own children were going
to the grave. Nothing hath gone so near me as that, unless it was
the fear of the loss of the salvation of my own soul."
A story, often repeated, but too characteristic to be omitted,
illustrates the power of his preaching even in the early days of
his ministry. "Being to preach in a church in a country village in
Cambridgeshire" - it was before the Restoration - "and the public
being gathered together in the churchyard, a Cambridge scholar, and
none of the soberest neither, inquired what the meaning of that
concourse of people was (it being a week-day); and being told that
one Bunyan, a tinker, was to preach there, he gave a lad twopence
to hold his horse, saying he was resolved to hear the tinker prate;
and so he went into the church to hear him. But God met him there
by His ministry, so that he came out much changed; and would by his
good will hear none but the tinker for a long time after, he
himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that country
afterwards." "This story," continues the anonymous biographer, "I
know to be true, having many times discoursed with the man." To
the same ante-Restoration period, Dr. Brown also assigns the
anecdote of Bunyan's encounter, on the road near Cambridge, with
the university man who asked him how he dared to preach not having
the original Scriptures. With ready wit, Bunyan turned the tables
on the scholar by asking whether he had the actual originals, the
copies written by the apostles and prophets. The scholar replied,
"No," but they had what they believed to be a true copy of the
original. "And I," said Bunyan, "believe the English Bible to be a
true copy, too." "Then away rid the scholar."
The fame of such a preacher, naturally, soon spread far and wide;
all the countryside flocked eagerly to hear him. In some places,
as at Meldreth in Cambridgeshire, and Yelden in his own county of
Bedfordshire, the pulpits of the parish churches were opened to
him. At Yelden, the Rector, Dr. William Dell, the Puritan Master
of Caius College, Cambridge, formerly Chaplain
emperor of the Christian world." Bunyan was no preacher of vague
generalities. He knew that sermons miss their mark if they hit no
one. Self-application is their object. "Wherefore," he says, "I
laboured so to speak the word, as that the sin and person guilty
might be particularized by it." And what he preached he knew and
felt to be true. It was not what he read in books, but what he had
himself experienced. Like Dante he had been in hell himself, and
could speak as one who knew its terrors, and could tell also of the
blessedness of deliverance by the person and work of Christ. And
this consciousness gave him confidence and courage in declaring his
message. It was "as if an angel of God had stood at my back." "Oh
it hath been with such power and heavenly evidence upon my own soul
while I have been labouring to fasten it upon the conscience of
others, that I could not be contented with saying, 'I believe and
am sure.' Methought I was more than sure, if it be lawful so to
express myself, that the things I asserted were true."
Bunyan, like all earnest workers for God, had his disappointments
which wrung his heart. He could be satisfied with nothing less
than the conversion and sanctification of his hearers. "If I were
fruitless, it mattered not who commanded me; but if I were
fruitful, I cared not who did condemn." And the result of a sermon
was often very different from what he anticipated: "When I thought
I had done no good, then I did the most; and when I thought I
should catch them, I fished for nothing." "A word cast in by-the-
bye sometimes did more execution than all the Sermon besides." The
tie between him and his spiritual children was very close. The
backsliding of any of his converts caused him the most extreme
grief; "it was more to me than if one of my own children were going
to the grave. Nothing hath gone so near me as that, unless it was
the fear of the loss of the salvation of my own soul."
A story, often repeated, but too characteristic to be omitted,
illustrates the power of his preaching even in the early days of
his ministry. "Being to preach in a church in a country village in
Cambridgeshire" - it was before the Restoration - "and the public
being gathered together in the churchyard, a Cambridge scholar, and
none of the soberest neither, inquired what the meaning of that
concourse of people was (it being a week-day); and being told that
one Bunyan, a tinker, was to preach there, he gave a lad twopence
to hold his horse, saying he was resolved to hear the tinker prate;
and so he went into the church to hear him. But God met him there
by His ministry, so that he came out much changed; and would by his
good will hear none but the tinker for a long time after, he
himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that country
afterwards." "This story," continues the anonymous biographer, "I
know to be true, having many times discoursed with the man." To
the same ante-Restoration period, Dr. Brown also assigns the
anecdote of Bunyan's encounter, on the road near Cambridge, with
the university man who asked him how he dared to preach not having
the original Scriptures. With ready wit, Bunyan turned the tables
on the scholar by asking whether he had the actual originals, the
copies written by the apostles and prophets. The scholar replied,
"No," but they had what they believed to be a true copy of the
original. "And I," said Bunyan, "believe the English Bible to be a
true copy, too." "Then away rid the scholar."
The fame of such a preacher, naturally, soon spread far and wide;
all the countryside flocked eagerly to hear him. In some places,
as at Meldreth in Cambridgeshire, and Yelden in his own county of
Bedfordshire, the pulpits of the parish churches were opened to
him. At Yelden, the Rector, Dr. William Dell, the Puritan Master
of Caius College, Cambridge, formerly Chaplain