The Life of John Bunyan [63]
closing words of this his final testimony are such as deserve to be
written in letters of gold as the sum of all true Christian
teaching: "Be ye holy in all manner of conversation: Consider
that the holy God is your Father, and let this oblige you to live
like the children of God, that you may look your Father in the face
with comfort another day." "There is," writes Dean Stanley, "no
compromise in his words, no faltering in his convictions; but his
love and admiration are reserved on the whole for that which all
good men love, and his detestation on the whole is reserved for
that which all good men detest." By the catholic spirit which
breathes through his writings, especially through "The Pilgrim's
Progress," the tinker of Elstow "has become the teacher not of any
particular sect, but of the Universal Church."
CHAPTER IX.
We have, in this concluding chapter, to take a review of Bunyan's
merits as a writer, with especial reference to the works on which
his fame mainly rests, and, above all, to that which has given him
his chief title to be included in a series of Great Writers, "The
Pilgrim's Progress." Bunyan, as we have seen, was a very copious
author. His works, as collected by the late industrious Mr. Offor,
fill three bulky quarto volumes, each of nearly eight hundred
double-columned pages in small type. And this copiousness of
production is combined with a general excellence in the matter
produced. While few of his books approach the high standard of
"The Pilgrim's Progress" or "Holy War," none, it may be truly said,
sink very far below that standard. It may indeed be affirmed that
it was impossible for Bunyan to write badly. His genius was a
native genius. As soon as he began to write at all, he wrote well.
Without any training, is he says, in the school of Aristotle or
Plato, or any study of the great masters of literature, at one
bound he leapt to a high level of thought and composition. His
earliest book, "Some Gospel Truths Opened," "thrown off," writes
Dr. Brown, "at a heat," displays the same ease of style and
directness of speech and absence of stilted phraseology which he
maintained to the end. The great charm which pervades all Bunyan's
writings is their naturalness. You never feel that he is writing
for effect, still less to perform an uncongenial piece of task-
work. He writes because he had something to say which was worth
saying, a message to deliver on which the highest interests of
others were at stake, which demanded nothing more than a
straightforward earnestness and plainness of speech, such as coming
from the heart might best reach the hearts of others. He wrote as
he spoke, because a necessity was laid upon him which he dared not
evade. As he says in a passage quoted in a former chapter, he
might have stepped into a much higher style, and have employed more
literary ornament. But to attempt this would be, to one of his
intense earnestness, to degrade his calling. He dared not do it.
Like the great Apostle, "his speech and preaching was not with
enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit
and in power." God had not played with him, and he dared not play
with others. His errand was much too serious, and their need and
danger too urgent to waste time in tricking out his words with
human skill. And it is just this which, with all their rudeness,
their occasional bad grammar, and homely colloquialisms, gives to
Bunyan's writings a power of riveting the attention and stirring
the affections which few writers have attained to. The pent-up
fire glows in every line, and kindles the hearts of his readers.
"Beautiful images, vivid expressions, forcible arguments all aglow
with passion, tender pleadings, solemn warnings, make those who
read him all eye, all ear, all soul." This native vigour is
attributable, in no small degree, to the manner in which for the