Bunyan did not live to see the Revolution.  Four months after he had witnessed the delirious joy which hailed the acquittal of the seven bishops, the Pilgrim’s earthly Progress ended, and he was bidden to cross the dark river which has no bridge.  The summons came to him in the very midst of his religious activity, both as a preacher and as a writer.  His pen had never been more busy than when he was bidden to lay it down finally.  Early in 1688, after a two years’ silence, attributable perhaps to the political troubles of the times, his “Jerusalem Sinner Saved, or a Help to Despairing Souls,” one of the best known and most powerfully characteristic of his works, had issued from the press, and had been followed by four others between March and August, the month of his death.  These books were, “The Work of Jesus Christ as an Advocate;” a poetical composition entitled “The Building, Nature, and Excellency of the House of God,” a discourse on the constitution and government of the Christian Church; the “Water of Life,” and “Solomon’s Temple Spiritualized.”  At the time of his death he was occupied in seeing through the press a sixth book, “The Acceptable Sacrifice,” which was published after his funeral.  In addition to these, Bunyan left behind him no fewer than fourteen works in manuscript, written at this time, as the fruit of his fertile imagination and untiring pen.  Ten of these were given to the world soon after Bunyan’s death, by one of Bunyan’s most devoted followers, Charles Doe, the combmaker of London Bridge (who naively tells us how one day between the stairhead and the middle of the stairs, he resolved that the best work he could do for God was to get Bunyan’s books printed and sell them—­adding, “I have sold about 3,000"), and others, a few years later, including one of the raciest of his compositions, “The Heavenly Footman,” bought by Doe of Bunyan’s eldest son, and, he says, “put into the World in Print Word for Word as it came from him to Me.”

At the time that death surprised him, Bunyan had gained no small celebrity in London as a popular preacher, and approached the nearest to a position of worldly honour.  Though we must probably reject the idea that he ever filled the office of Chaplain to the Lord Mayor of London, Sir John Shorter, the fact that he is styled “his Lordship’s teacher” proves that there was some relation more than that of simple friendship between the chief magistrate and the Bedford minister.  But the society of the great was never congenial to him.  If they were godly as well as great, he would not shrink from intercourse, with those of a rank above his own, but his heart was with his own humble folk at Bedford.  Worldly advancement he rejected for his family as well as for himself.  A London merchant, it is said, offered to take his son Joseph into his house of business without the customary premium.  But the offer was declined with what we may consider an overstrained independence.  “God,” he said, “did not send me to advance my family but to preach the gospel.”  “An instance of other-worldliness,” writes Dr. Brown, “perhaps more consistent with the honour of the father than with the prosperity of the son.”