JOHN BUNYAN.—­Among the curious religious outcroppings of the civil war, none is more striking and singular than John Bunyan.  He produced a work of a decidedly polemical character, setting forth his peculiar doctrines, and—­a remarkable feature in the course of English literature—­a story so interesting and vivid that it has met with universal perusal and admiration.  It is at the same time an allegory which has not its equal in the language.  Rhetoricians must always mention the Pilgrim’s Progress as the most splendid example of the allegory.

Bunyan was born in Elston, Bedfordshire, in 1628.  The son of a tinker, his childhood and early manhood were idle and vicious.  A sudden and sharp rebuke from a woman not much better than himself, for his blasphemy, set him to thinking, and he soon became a changed man.  In 1653 he joined the Baptists, and soon, without preparation, began to preach.  For this he was thrown into jail, where he remained for more than twelve years.  It was during this period that, with no other books than the Bible and Fox’s Book of Martyrs, he excogitated his allegory.  In 1672 he was released through the influence of Barlow, Bishop of Lincoln.  He immediately began to preach, and continued to do so until 1688, when he died from a fever brought on by exposure.

In his first work, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, he gives us his own experience,—­fearful dreams of early childhood, his sins and warnings in the parliamentary army, with divers temptations, falls, and struggles.

Of his great work, The Pilgrim’s Progress, it is hardly necessary to speak at length.  The story of the Pilgrim, Christian, is known to all English readers, large and little; how he left the City of Destruction, and journeyed towards the Celestial City; of his thrilling adventures; of the men and things that retarded his progress, and of those who helped him forward.  No one has ever discoursed with such vivid description and touching pathos of the Land of Beulah, the Delectable Mountains, the Christian’s inward rapture at the glimpse of the Celestial City, and his faith-sustaining descent into the Valley of the Shadow of Death!  As a work of art, it is inimitable; as a book of religious instruction, it is more to be admired for sentiment than for logic; its influence upon children is rather that of a high-wrought romance than of godly precept.  It is a curious reproduction, with a slight difference in cast, of the morality play of an earlier time.  Mercy, Piety, Christian, Hopeful, Greatheart, Faithful, are representatives of Christian graces; and, as in the morality, the Prince of Darkness figures as Apollyon.

Bunyan also wrote The Holy War, an allegory, which describes the contest between Immanuel and Diabolus for the conquest of the city of Mansoul.  This does not by any means share the popularity of The Pilgrim’s Progress.  The language of all his works is common and idiomatic, but precise and strong:  it is the vigorous English of an unpretending man, without the graces of the schools, but expressing his meaning with remarkable clearness.  Like Milton’s Paradise Lost, Bunyan’s allegory has been improperly placed by many persons on a par with the Bible as a body of Christian doctrine, and for instruction in righteousness.