The Riches of Bunyan | Page 5

There the prisoned
student was receiving for the churches new lessons of surpassing
beauty and potency; and the confessor, pillaged by informers and
bullied by judges, and lamented in his own stricken household and
desolate home, but only derided by his godless sovereign and heartless
courtiers, yet often found himself compensated for every loss, when,
like an earlier witness for the gospel of the Cross, enwrapped "IN THE
SPIRIT, ON THE LORD'S DAY." Such were the schools where
Non-conformist piety received its temper, its edge, and its lustre. The
story of Bunyan is, we say, one of the golden threads binding together
into harmony and symmetry, what, seen apart, seem but fragmentary
and incoherent influences--the track of a divine Providence controlling
the fates and reputations of the race. It is a Providence disappointing
men's judgments and purposes, exalting the lowly and depressing the
illustrious, rebuking despondency on the one hand and on the other
curbing presumption, setting up one and putting down another. This is
done even now and even here, as one of the many intimations which
even time and earth present, of that final and universal reparation which
is reserved for the general resurrection and the last judgment. Then the
unforgetting and universal Sovereign will avenge all the forgotten of
his people, nor leave unpunished one among the tallest and mightiest of
his enemies. As the foreshadowing of this, there is often in this life
what Milton has called, "a resurrection of character." Seen in Bunyan
and others on earth, it will be one day accomplished as to all the
families of mankind. We pronounce TOO SOON upon the apparent
inequalities of fame and recompense around us; while we fail to take in
the future as well as the present, and attempt to solve the mysteries of
time without including in the field of our survey the retributions of that
eternity which forms the selvage and hem of all the webs of earth. And

we pronounce not only too soon but VERY SUPERFICIALLY upon
the inequalities of happiness in the lot of those who fear and those who
scorn God; while we look mainly or merely to the outward
circumstances of home and station and bodily well-being, but take no
note of the inner and more enduring elements of felicity, supplied to the
sufferer for Christ by the blended powers of conscience and of
hope--the one of them purified and pacified by the blood of the great
sacrifice on Calvary; the other of them steadily and cheerfully soaring
to the glories and rest of the mount Zion above. Faithful, in his cage,
bearing the gibes and flouts of the rabble who thirsted for his blood,
was one of the happiest men in all Vanity Fair, even ere the hour when
his spirit mounted the fiery chariot that hurried him to his celestial
home.
The style of Bunyan, it may be further said, is one of the countless and
brilliant testimonials to the merit and power of our excellent received
version of the Bible. Shut out, as Bunyan was, from direct contact with
much other literature, he was most thoroughly conversant with the
remains of prophets and apostles, embalmed in that venerable work.
With those scriptures his mind was imbued, saturated, and tinged,
through its whole texture and substance. Upon the phraseology and
imagery and idioms of that book was formed his own vernacular style,
so racy, glowing, and energetic--long indeed underrated and decried,
but now beginning to receive its due honors, and winning the praise of
critics whose judgment and taste few will have the hardihood to
impeach. No immaculate perfection, indeed, is claimed for the English
version of the Scriptures. No perfect version has the world ever seen, or
is it ever like to see; but the writings of Bunyan must be admitted to
stand among the many crowding trophies of the power of our common
Bible to furnish the mind with "thoughts that breathe and words that
burn"--with holiest conceptions and mightiest utterances.
And Bunyan himself, as a theologian on whose head no learned
academy had laid its hand of patronage, or let fall its anointing dews,
but who, whether confronting the fanatics of his time or the
distinguished latitudinarian divines, showed himself so powerful a
reasoner, so acute and clear and practical a thinker, and so mighty in his
knowledge of the Scriptures--Bunyan himself, in his position and
merits as a theologian, furnishes a standing monument of the power of

the divine Spirit to fashion, by prayer and the study of the Bible, by
affliction and by temptation, and by bitter persecutions even, a preacher,
pastor, and writer, such as no university need have disdained to own.
To that Spirit Bunyan gave zealous, earnest, and continual worship.
Receiving his light and power from that good Spirit, and