Bunyan Characters (3rd Series)

Alexander Whyte

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. John Bunyan's Holy War was first published in 1682, six years before its illustrious author's death. Bunyan wrote this great book when he was still in all the fulness of his intellectual power and in all the ripeness of his spiritual experience. The Holy War is not the Pilgrim's Progress- there is only one Pilgrim's Progress. At the same time, we have Lord Macaulay's word for it that if the Pilgrim's Progress did not exist the Holy War would be the best allegory that ever was written: and even Mr. Froude admits that the Holy War alone would have entitled its author to rank high up among the acknowledged masters of English literature. The intellectual rank of the Holy War has been fixed before that tribunal over which our accomplished and competent critics preside; but for a full appreciation of its religious rank and value we would need to hear the glad testimonies of tens of thousands of God's saints, whose hard-beset faith and obedience have been kindled and sustained by the study of this noble book

Informations

• Publié par: Pub One Info
• Date de parution: 06 novembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9782819938637
• Langue: English

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BUNYAN CHARACTERS—THIRD SERIES
Lectures Delivered in St. George’s Free ChurchEdinburgh
By Alexander Whyte, D. D.
CHAPTER I—THE BOOK
‘— the book of the wars of the Lord. ’— Moses .
John Bunyan’s Holy War was first published in1682, six years before its illustrious author’s death. Bunyan wrotethis great book when he was still in all the fulness of hisintellectual power and in all the ripeness of his spiritualexperience. The Holy War is not the Pilgrim’sProgress — there is only one Pilgrim’s Progress . At thesame time, we have Lord Macaulay’s word for it that if the Pilgrim’s Progress did not exist the Holy War wouldbe the best allegory that ever was written: and even Mr. Froudeadmits that the Holy War alone would have entitled itsauthor to rank high up among the acknowledged masters of Englishliterature. The intellectual rank of the Holy War has beenfixed before that tribunal over which our accomplished andcompetent critics preside; but for a full appreciation of itsreligious rank and value we would need to hear the glad testimoniesof tens of thousands of God’s saints, whose hard-beset faith andobedience have been kindled and sustained by the study of thisnoble book. The Pilgrim’s Progress sets forth the spirituallife under the scriptural figure of a long and an uphill journey.The Holy War , on the other hand, is a military history; itis full of soldiers and battles, defeats and victories. And itsdevout author had much more scriptural suggestion and support inthe composition of the Holy War than he had even in thecomposition of the Pilgrim’s Progress . For Holy Scripture isfull of wars and rumours of wars: the wars of the Lord; the wars ofJoshua and the Judges; the wars of David, with his and many othermagnificent battle-songs; till the best known name of the God ofIsrael in the Old Testament is the Lord of Hosts; and then in theNew Testament we have Jesus Christ described as the Captain of oursalvation. Paul’s powerful use of armour and of armed men isfamiliar to every student of his epistles; and then the whole Bibleis crowned with a book all sounding with the battle-cries, theshouts, and the songs of soldiers, till it ends with that city ofpeace where they hang the trumpet in the hall and study war nomore. Military metaphors had taken a powerful hold of our author’simagination even in the Pilgrim’s Progress , as his portraitsof Greatheart and Valiant-for-truth and other soldiers sufficientlyshow; while the conflict with Apollyon and the destruction ofDoubting Castle are so many sure preludes of the coming HolyWar . Bunyan’s early experiences in the great Civil War hadtaught him many memorable things about the military art; memorableand suggestive things that he afterwards put to the most splendiduse in the siege, the capture, and the subjugation of Mansoul.
The Divine Comedy is beyond dispute thegreatest book of personal and experimental religion the world hasever seen. The consuming intensity of its author’s feelings aboutsin and holiness, the keenness and the bitterness of his remorse,and the rigour and the severity of his revenge, his superbintellect and his universal learning, all set ablaze by hissplendid imagination— all that combines to make the DivineComedy the unapproachable masterpiece it is. John Bunyan, onthe other hand, had no learning to be called learning, but he had astrong and a healthy English understanding, a conscience and aheart wholly given up to the life of the best religion of hisreligious day, and then, by sheer dint of his sanctified andsoaring imagination and his exquisite style, he stands forth thepeer of the foremost men in the intellectual world. And thus it isthat the great unlettered religious world possesses in John Bunyanall but all that the select and scholarly world possesses in Dante.Both Dante and Bunyan devoted their splendid gifts to the noblestof services— the service of spiritual, and especially of personalreligion; but for one appreciative reader that Dante has had Bunyanhas had a hundred. Happy in being so like his Master in so manythings, Bunyan is happy in being like his unlettered Master in thisalso, that the common people hear him gladly and never weary ofhearing him.
It gives by far its noblest interest to Dante’snoble book that we have Dante himself in every page of his book.Dante is taken down into Hell, he is then led up through Purgatory , and after that still up and up into the veryParadise of God. But that hell all the time is the hell that Dantehad dug and darkened and kindled for himself. In the Purgatory,again, we see Dante working out his own salvation with fear andtrembling, God all the time working in Dante to will and to do ofHis good pleasure. And then the Paradise, with all its sevenfoldglory, is just that place and that life which God hath prepared forthem that love Him and serve Him as Dante did. And so it is in the Holy War . John Bunyan is in the Pilgrim’s Progress ,but there are more men and other men than its author in that richand populous book, and other experiences and other attainments thanhis. But in the Holy War we have Bunyan himself as fully andas exclusively as we have Dante in the Divine Comedy . In thefirst edition of the Holy War there is a frontispiececonceived and executed after the anatomical and symbolical mannerwhich was so common in that day, and which is to be seen at itsperfection in the English edition of Jacob Behmen. The frontispieceis a full-length likeness of the author of the Holy War ,with his whole soul laid open and his hidden heart ‘anatomised. ’Why, asked Wordsworth, and Matthew Arnold in our day has echoed thequestion— why does Homer still so live and rule without a rival inthe world of letters? And they answer that it is because he alwayssang with his eye so fixed upon its object. ‘Homer, to thee I turn.’ And so it was with Dante. And so it was with Bunyan. Bunyan’s Holy War has its great and abiding and commanding power overus just because he composed it with his eye fixed on his ownheart.
My readers, I have somewhat else to do,
Than with vain stories thus to trouble you;
What here I say some men do know so well
They can with tears and joy the story tell . . .
Then lend thine ear to what I do relate,
Touching the town of Mansoul and her state:
For my part, I (myself) was in the town,
Both when ’twas set up and when pulling down.
Let no man then count me a fable-maker,
Nor make my name or credit a partaker
Of their derision: what is here in view
Of mine own knowledge, I dare say is true.
The characters in the Holy War are not as arule nearly so clear-cut or so full of dramatic life and movementas their fellows are in the Pilgrim’s Progress , and Bunyanseems to have felt that to be the case. He shows all an author’sfondness for the children of his imagination in the Pilgrim’sProgress . He returns to and he lingers on their doings andtheir sayings and their very names with all a foolish father’s fonddelight. While, on the other hand, when we look to see him in hisconfidential addresses to his readers returning upon some of themilitary and municipal characters in the Holy War , to ourdisappointment he does not so much as name a single one of them,though he dwells with all an author’s self-delectation on theoutstanding scenes, situations, and episodes of his remarkablebook.
What, then, are some of the more outstanding scenes,situations, and episodes, as well as military and municipalcharacters, in the book now before us? And what are we to promiseourselves, and to expect, from the study and the exposition of the Holy War in these lectures? Well, to begin with, we shall doour best to enter with mind, and heart, and conscience, andimagination into Bunyan’s great conception of the human soul as acity, a fair and a delicate city and corporation, with itssituation, surroundings, privileges and fortunes. We shall thenenter under his guidance into the famous and stately palace of thismetropolitan city; a palace which for strength might be called acastle, for pleasantness a paradise, and for largeness a place socopious as to contain all the world. The walls and the gates of thecity will then occupy and instruct us for several Sabbath evenings,after which we shall enter on the record of the wars and battlesthat rolled time after time round those city walls, and surged upthrough its captured gates till they quite overwhelmed the verypalace of the king itself. Then we shall spend, God willing, oneSabbath evening with Loth-to-stoop, and another with old Ill-pause,the devil’s orator, and another with Captain Anything, and anotherwith Lord Willbewill, and another with that notorious villainClip-promise, by whose doings so much of the king’s coin had beenabused, and another with that so angry and so ill-conditioned churlold Mr. Prejudice, with his sixty deaf men under him. Dear Mr.Wet-eyes, with his rope upon his head, will have a fit congregationone winter night, and Captain Self-denial another. We shall haveanother painful but profitable evening before a communion seasonwith Mr. Prywell, and so we shall eat of that bread and drink ofthat cup. Emmanuel’s livery will occupy us one evening, Mansoul’sMagna Charta another, and her annual Feast-day another. HerEstablished Church and her beneficed clergy will take up oneevening, some Skulkers in Mansoul another, the devil’s last prankanother, and then, to wind up with, Emmanuel’s last speech andcharge to Mansoul from his chariot-step till He comes again toaccomplish her rapture. All that we shall see and take part in;unless, indeed, our Captain comes in anger before the time, andspears us to the earth when He finds us asleep at our post or inthe act of sin at it, which may His abounding mercy forbid!
And now take these three forewarnings andprecautions.
1. First:— All who come here on these coming Sabbathevenings will not understand the Holy War all at once, andmany will not understand it at all. And little blame to them, andno wonder. For,