Pilgrim's Progress

“ The Pilgrim’s Progress consists mainly of a series of infamous libels upon life and things; it is a blasphemy against certain fundamental ideas of right and wrong which our consciences most instinctively approve ”

“ Where is the scholar, the poet, the man of taste and feeling who does not with Cowper,
"Even in transitory life's late day,
Revere the man whose Pilgrim marks the road
And guides the Progress of the soul to God!"
We have just been reading, with no slight degree of interest, that simple but wonderful piece of autobiography entitled "Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners," from the pen of the author of "Pilgrim's Progress." It is the record of a journey more terrible than that of the ideal Pilgrim; "truth stranger than fiction;" ”

“ With the changed conditions of life in our own times the popularity of the Pilgrim's Progress has greatly waned. While it was formerly the first and perhaps the only story book read by thousands of children of all ages, it is now known to but few young people except by name. ”

“ Again, it would be easy to show that the doctrine is utterly subversive of the whole teaching of such tried and approved books as Pilgrim's Progress, and that if we receive it we cannot do better then put Bunyan's old book in the fire! If Christian in Pilgrim's Progress simply yielded himself to God, and never fought, or struggled, or wrestled, I have read the famous allegory in vain. But the plain truth is, that men will persist in confounding two things that differ - that is, justification and sanctification. In justification the word to address to man is 'Believe,' only believe ”

“ The wise Tinker who wrote of the Pilgrim's Progress was too true a Christian Scientist, a Christian and a Scientist, if you please, to picture his hero reaching the gate of gold by adopting Despair as his guide.
Progress means the discovery of the capable. They are our natural masters. They lead because they have the right. And everything done to keep them from rising is a blow to what we call civilization. ”

“ In the degree in which its materials are fictitious and artificial, is it poor and false. The Pilgrim's Progress is essentially better poetry than the Paradise Lost, because it contains more of the truth as it is in the divine life of man. ”

“ MAN’S WAY OF WORKS.
“Now as Christian was walking solitarily by himself, he espied one afar off come crossing over the field to meet him; and their hap was to meet just as they were crossing the way of each other. The gentleman’s name that met him was Mr. Worldly Wiseman.”—Pilgrim’s Progress.
The bright morning dawned upon Holyby, the storm had spent itself during the night, and nothing remained to mark that it had been but the greater freshness of the air, clearness of the sky, and the heavy moisture on the grass that sparkled in the sun. ”

“ One was Pilgrim’s Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn’t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. ”

“ But those by faith expell’d his soul again Clears up, and like the bow that paints the skies After a shower, (on which mankind relies As a sure pledge, the deluge shall no more Make all one boundless sea without a shore) Gives certain hopes that heaven’s anger’s past, And he his lot in a bless’d Land has cast. You write so plainly, that the weakest mind, Under similitudes may comfort find. A guide you give, that by the hand does lead Those pilgrims that the heavenly roads do tread, And tells them always where the danger is ”

“ Poor pilgrims here may eat and sleep, Whilst them in safety their good Lord will keep. Fall to, fall to, poor man, and take thy fill, In nature’s plasure there can be no ill. In vain our king’s indulgent hand supplies What peevish man his longing soul denies.
This was enough to have stagger’d a stouter man than Tender-conscience, and he himself could not have resisted so powerful a temptation, had it not been for the remembrance of the thunder and the voice: Also he called to mind that saying of the holy Jesus, To do the will of my heavenly father, is both my meat and my drink. ”

“ No sooner has he achieved his own salvation than he sets about the salvation of his fellow-men. He has little in common with the self-regarding Christian of the Pilgrim’s Progress. He is eager to be of use. ”

“ This fine incident was at once an illustration and a prophecy; it illustrated the rugged, self-centred, yet devout independence of the exiles, and it prophesied from this the twining laurels of success. The Pilgrims were invincible; and the secret of their [68] strength was religious democracy. If in their right hand they held an open Bible, signifying faith and hope, in their left they clutched tenaciously the fundamental but still crude principles of organized liberty—the now open secret of later Saxon progress. ”

“ The Christian of the Pilgrim’s Progress is a mixed character, and though we are scarcely in doubt as to the ultimate success of his adventure, this is sufficiently chequered with peril and hardship to keep our interest alert. ”

“ The Pilgrim's Progress is composed in the lowest style of English, without slang or false grammar. If you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the reality of the vision. For works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain. ”

“ Some gentlemen, abounding in their university erudition, are apt to fill their sermons with philosophical terms, and notions of the metaphysical or abstracted kind; which generally have one advantage, to be equally understood by the wise, the vulgar, and the preacher himself. I have been better entertained, and more informed by a few pages in the Pilgrim's Progress, than by a long discourse upon the will and the intellect, and simple or complex ideas. ”

“ All these men lived in faith, believing the promises, and receiving them thankfully, confessing they were pilgrims and strangers on earth; for they that say such things, declare plainly, that they seek another country. For if they had been mindful of their own country from whence they came out, they had leisure to have returned: but they desired a better, that is, an heavenly one; wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, and hath prepared for them a city.
Now, as Tender-conscience was greatly pleased, and much comforted with the sight and consideration of these things ”

“ Udal ap Rhys repeats it in his Tour through Spain and Portugal, 35-8. It is inserted in the Acta Sanctorum, vi. 45. Pope Calixtus II. mentions it among the miracles of Santiago.
Pilgrim (A Passionate) , American who visits England, as one seeks the home he has loved throughout a tedious exile. It is like the return of a weary child to his mother’s arms, as night comes on. He lingers upon each feature of the landscape as upon the face of his beloved, and counts the rest of the world but “a garish” place.—Henry James, Jr., A Passionate Pilgrim.
Pilgrim’s Progress (The) , by John Bunyan. ”

“ It seems that you got round him—that you found his weak side, young rogue! You had been talking to him of piety and repentance, and wanting to get to heaven. But I’ll give you a word of advice, my man, better than twenty sermons. You see I’m thriving and prosperous enough, and well respected, though I should not say so, and I never wronged a man in my life. ”

“ As long as they hold to the speculative side of Opinion, they cannot possibly take any practical steps towards Genuine-Culture. Do you not see that, just as much as the more practical Pilgrim, they have the opportunity of making use of the Opinions who lead out from the First Enclosure. But are not Opinions useless without a meeting with Repentance, and without the resulting conviction that the Culture which they do possess is a sham, and a trap? Being satisfied with their abode, they never progress to Salvation. ”

“ Startled as from a dream, Mark returned to his attic, disappointed, disgusted, and grieved. “Can a blessing ever rest on this house?” thought he; “can Lowe ever, even in this world, be really a gainer by such awful hypocrisy and deceit? Oh, I have been too little on my guard in this place, I have been a drowsy pilgrim on the way—blessed be God that I am awakened before too late!”
[79]
CHAPTER VIII.
DANGERS, DIFFICULTIES, AND DOUBTS.
“Fear not the lions, for they are chained, and are placed there for trial of faith where it is ”

“ The Pilgrims then, began to enquire if there was no other way to the Gate; to which they answere Yes, but there hath not any, save two, to wit, Enoch and Elijah, been permitted to tread that path, since the foundation of the World, nor shall, untill the last Trumpet shall sound. 1 Cor. 15. 51 52. The Pilgrims then, especially Christian, began to dispond in his mind, and looked this way and that, but no way could be found by them, by which they might escape the River. Then they asked the men, if the Waters were all of a depth. Angels help us not comfortably through death. ”

“ To what past and to what tradition did the Pilgrim Fathers appeal, except to that past, older than all history, that tradition, sacred from all decay, which, derived from an antiquity behind and beyond all the hoary generations, points the human soul to the God from whom it derived life, and with it the privilege of freedom and the duty of obedience? ”

“ In our praise of the Pilgrim Fathers, we often forget, I think, that there were other Pilgrims besides those at Plymouth Rock—other wanderers, who, perhaps, did not seek freedom to worship God, but who did seek better homes for their children, and who tried by their discoveries to show that we had a bigger, richer country than we knew about. ”

“ Standing thus among the graves of the pioneer dead and putting all modern life behind him, one’s thoughts go back across the centuries and grasp, with a new sense of reality, the facts of Pilgrim history. The Forefathers, who did brave deeds and suffered much, and planted in the wilderness the seeds of a free [Pg 49] nation, stand forth not as shadowy historical figures, but as living men. ”

“ To much that the Pilgrim conscientiously believed, and with his whole heart accepted, the present age has grown careless; we are lukewarm or indifferent upon some points which he esteemed vital; but it is small credit to us, if we are tolerant of error simply because we care little for truth. ”

“ The adventures of our Pilgrim Fathers must ever be a theme of absorbing interest to all their descendants. Their persecutions in England, their flight to Holland, their passage across the stormy ocean, this new world, as they found it, swept by the storms of approaching winter, their struggles with the hardships of the wilderness, and conflicts with the ferocious savage,—all combine in forming a narrative replete with the elements of entertainment and instruction. ”

“ We have before us the inspiring, the ennobling example of the Pilgrim Fathers, who, denied the right to worship God after their own manner in their home across the seas, made the perilous journey to the new world to establish here the beginning of a mighty church and a mighty pattern for all who were to come after them. ”

“ Those peculiar outward emblems, which were its badges at first, were of transient duration; like the clay and ligaments with which the graft is held in its place, made to be brushed away as soon as the scion is firmly united. The spirit of the Pilgrims was a life-giving spirit; activity, thrift, intelligence, liberty, followed in its train; and as for courage, a coward and a Puritan never went together. ”

“ The strongly protestant temper of the Pilgrim Fathers has survived in their descendants; even to-day if one alien to the community penetrates beneath the tranquil surface of things commotion may be discovered. ”

“ Now I saw in my dream, that the highway up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back.
He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. ”

“ It is not to be supposed that the Pilgrims had an adequate conception of the continent, or of the magnitude of their mission on it, or of the nation to come of which they were laying the foundations. They did the duty that lay nearest to them; and the duty done today, perhaps without prescience of its consequences, becomes a permanent stone in the edifice of the future. They sought a home in a fresh wilderness, where they might be undisturbed by superior human authority ”

“ Because if you look back into the lives of the Pilgrim Fathers, let us say, or into those of the great soldiers and statesmen of Cromwellian England, you will find that these men had a sense of personal significance, a sense of destiny, such as no one in politics or literature seems to possess to-day. They were still in touch with the old Bible. To-day if life seems adventurous and fragmentary and generally aimless it is largely because of this one thing. We have lost touch with history. We have ceased to see human affairs as one great epic unfolding. ”

“ For such an inconsequential whim as that men should be free to pray in any way they choose, the Pilgrim Fathers betook themselves to a wilderness peopled with savages, preferring to die by the tomahawk rather than submit to clerical authority. ”

“ The peculiar situation of the Pilgrims tended to increase that rugged individuality, that self-confident earnestness, that somewhat dogmatic vigor, which already characterized them, and which is still a salient trait of their descendants. ”

“ Finding themselves no better off in the republic, which had emancipated itself, simultaneously, from Spain and Rome, the Pilgrim Fathers shook the dust of the old world from their feet and sought a new hemisphere. Surely in the primeval forests men might hope to interpret Scripture and serve God each according to his own lights. ”