The Life of John Bunyan [48]
his providential deliverance from death;
the graphic account of his difficulty in giving up bell-ringing at
Elstow Church, and dancing on Sundays on Elstow Green - these and
other minor touches which give a life and colour to the story,
which we should be very sorry to lose, are later additions. It is
impossible to over-estimate the value of the "Grace Abounding,"
both for the facts of Bunyan's earlier life and for the spiritual
experience of which these facts were, in his eyes only the outward
framework. Beginning with his parentage and boyhood, it carries us
down to his marriage and life in the wayside-cottage at Elstow, his
introduction to Mr. Gifford's congregation at Bedford, his joining
that holy brotherhood, and his subsequent call to the work of the
ministry among them, and winds up with an account of his
apprehension, examinations, and imprisonment in Bedford gaol. The
work concludes with a report of the conversation between his noble-
hearted wife and Sir Matthew Hale and the other judges at the
Midsummer assizes, narrated in a former chapter, "taken down," he
says, "from her own mouth." The whole story is of such sustained
interest that our chief regret on finishing it is that it stops
where it does, and does not go on much further. Its importance for
our knowledge of Bunyan as a man, as distinguished from an author,
and of the circumstances of his life, is seen by a comparison of
our acquaintance with his earlier and with his later years. When
he laid down his pen no one took it up, and beyond two or three
facts, and a few hazy anecdotes we know little or nothing of all
that happened between his final release and his death.
The value of the "Grace Abounding," however, as a work of
experimental religion may be easily over-estimated. It is not many
who can study Bunyan's minute history of the various stages of his
spiritual life with real profit. To some temperaments, especially
among the young, the book is more likely to prove injurious than
beneficial; it is calculated rather to nourish morbid imaginations,
and a dangerous habit of introspection, than to foster the quiet
growth of the inner life. Bunyan's unhappy mode of dealing with
the Bible as a collection of texts, each of Divine authority and
declaring a definite meaning entirely irrespective of its context,
by which the words hide the Word, is also utterly destructive of
the true purpose of the Holy Scriptures as a revelation of God's
loving and holy mind and will. Few things are more touching than
the eagerness with which, in his intense self-torture, Bunyan tried
to evade the force of those "fearful and terrible Scriptures" which
appeared to seal his condemnation, and to lay hold of the promises
to the penitent sinner. His tempest-tossed spirit could only find
rest by doing violence to the dogma, then universally accepted and
not quite extinct even in our own days, that the authority of the
Bible - that "Divine Library" - collectively taken, belongs to each
and every sentence of the Bible taken for and by itself, and that,
in Coleridge's words, "detached sentences from books composed at
the distance of centuries, nay, sometimes at a millenium from each
other, under different dispensations and for different objects,"
are to be brought together "into logical dependency." But "where
the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." The divinely given
life in the soul of man snaps the bonds of humanly-constructed
logical systems. Only those, however, who have known by experience
the force of Bunyan's spiritual combat, can fully appreciate and
profit by Bunyan's narrative. He tells us on the title-page that
it was written "for the support of the weak and tempted people of
God." For such the "Grace Abounding to the chief of sinners" will
ever prove most valuable. Those for whom it was intended will find
in it a message - of comfort and strength.
As has been said,
the graphic account of his difficulty in giving up bell-ringing at
Elstow Church, and dancing on Sundays on Elstow Green - these and
other minor touches which give a life and colour to the story,
which we should be very sorry to lose, are later additions. It is
impossible to over-estimate the value of the "Grace Abounding,"
both for the facts of Bunyan's earlier life and for the spiritual
experience of which these facts were, in his eyes only the outward
framework. Beginning with his parentage and boyhood, it carries us
down to his marriage and life in the wayside-cottage at Elstow, his
introduction to Mr. Gifford's congregation at Bedford, his joining
that holy brotherhood, and his subsequent call to the work of the
ministry among them, and winds up with an account of his
apprehension, examinations, and imprisonment in Bedford gaol. The
work concludes with a report of the conversation between his noble-
hearted wife and Sir Matthew Hale and the other judges at the
Midsummer assizes, narrated in a former chapter, "taken down," he
says, "from her own mouth." The whole story is of such sustained
interest that our chief regret on finishing it is that it stops
where it does, and does not go on much further. Its importance for
our knowledge of Bunyan as a man, as distinguished from an author,
and of the circumstances of his life, is seen by a comparison of
our acquaintance with his earlier and with his later years. When
he laid down his pen no one took it up, and beyond two or three
facts, and a few hazy anecdotes we know little or nothing of all
that happened between his final release and his death.
The value of the "Grace Abounding," however, as a work of
experimental religion may be easily over-estimated. It is not many
who can study Bunyan's minute history of the various stages of his
spiritual life with real profit. To some temperaments, especially
among the young, the book is more likely to prove injurious than
beneficial; it is calculated rather to nourish morbid imaginations,
and a dangerous habit of introspection, than to foster the quiet
growth of the inner life. Bunyan's unhappy mode of dealing with
the Bible as a collection of texts, each of Divine authority and
declaring a definite meaning entirely irrespective of its context,
by which the words hide the Word, is also utterly destructive of
the true purpose of the Holy Scriptures as a revelation of God's
loving and holy mind and will. Few things are more touching than
the eagerness with which, in his intense self-torture, Bunyan tried
to evade the force of those "fearful and terrible Scriptures" which
appeared to seal his condemnation, and to lay hold of the promises
to the penitent sinner. His tempest-tossed spirit could only find
rest by doing violence to the dogma, then universally accepted and
not quite extinct even in our own days, that the authority of the
Bible - that "Divine Library" - collectively taken, belongs to each
and every sentence of the Bible taken for and by itself, and that,
in Coleridge's words, "detached sentences from books composed at
the distance of centuries, nay, sometimes at a millenium from each
other, under different dispensations and for different objects,"
are to be brought together "into logical dependency." But "where
the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty." The divinely given
life in the soul of man snaps the bonds of humanly-constructed
logical systems. Only those, however, who have known by experience
the force of Bunyan's spiritual combat, can fully appreciate and
profit by Bunyan's narrative. He tells us on the title-page that
it was written "for the support of the weak and tempted people of
God." For such the "Grace Abounding to the chief of sinners" will
ever prove most valuable. Those for whom it was intended will find
in it a message - of comfort and strength.
As has been said,