A copy of The Pilgrim's Progress lies before me as I write, and though I think of countless thousands who have enjoyed its pages, not only in our own but in other lands, I feel sure that it is not by any means worn out. Shall we try with our mind's eye to peep into the prison cell at Bedford, in which John Bunyan dreamed his dreams and wrote his book?
But boys and girls have not been the only ones who have loved the book. Men and women with white hair have been among its readers. It has been read in log cabins, by the cheery blaze of wood fires, while the snow lay deep upon the hard, frozen ground and all outdoor work was at a standstill. Colporteurs have carried it across the dense forests of Russia and Siberia to the far-scattered homes of peasants, and it has found a welcome, too, in the halls and castles of the rich and noble. It has been read in their own language to the children of mission schools in India, China and Japan.
Bunyan was not a man of many books. Two only, we are told, formed his prison library: the Bible and Foxe's Book of Martyrs. But we cannot read his pilgrim tale without noticing how he had loved and studied the Word of God.
It is under the likeness or figure of a dream that the gifted writer chose to tell his story. Now and then, perhaps, we may read between the lines, and it is not unlikely that the "den" where, in his own words, he lay down and slept refers to his cell in the old Bedford prison where the book was written. He says, "I saw a man clothed in rags, standing in a certain place with his face turned away from his own house, with a book in his hand, and a heavy burden upon his back." We will use the names Bunyan used, and though from the first he calls the man "Christian," he seems more like one in whose soul the Holy Spirit had begun to work by awakening him to a sense of need and danger. He felt the burden of his sins, but being still a stranger to the finished work of the Lord Jesus, he did not know how to get rid of them.
Once again turning homewards, he tried to hide his misery even from his wife and children, but the longer he kept silence, the heavier his burden seemed to grow. At last he told them with loving words and many tears that he had found by reading the book he carried that they were all living in a place of terrible danger; that one day, and it might be at any moment, the judgments of God would fall upon the city in which they had thought themselves so safe. "We shall all," he said, "perish, except some way of escape can be found."
Did they believe his words of warning? No, they only thought that his mind had given way and, thinking that rest and sleep might do him good, persuaded him to go to bed. But the night was worse than the day had been; he could not sleep, but spent it in tears and sighs.
When in the morning they asked how he was, he told them, "Worse and worse," and began again to tell them of their danger and begged them to seek with him some way of escape from the doomed city that could never again be a home to him.
Some of his friends tried to laugh him out of what they called "his folly," others would not even listen to his pleadings, and others met him with cruel, mocking words. Finding no comfort or help among his friends and family, he often shut himself up in his room and spent much of his time in prayer. He also began to take long, lonely walks in the fields, sometimes reading the book he still carried, at others groaning under the weight of his load, and wishing earnestly that if there were any way of escape, someone might be sent to show him in which direction to look for it.
But Christian had not far to go or long to wait for the help of which he was in such great need, for in one of his walks he met a messenger of glad tidings, a man whose name was Evangelist, who saw by his sad face that the weight of his burden was far too heavy for him and kindly asked the cause of his distress. Poor Christian, only too glad to have a friend to whom he could speak freely, replied, "Sir, I find by the book which I am reading that I am condemned to die, and I am not ready to die."