PETERSON'S MAGAZINE.
BUNYAN AND HIS WORKS.
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BY REV. JAMES STEVENS.
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"BUNYAN," says Macauley, "is as decidedly the first of allegorists as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakspeare the first of dramatists." In this eulogy all the great critics of English literature con cur, whatever their creed, their social rank, or the taste of their generation. The "Pilgrim's Progress" is, indeed, alike the wonder of the learned and the delight of the people. It reads like a narrative of actual occurrences, rather than a fiction, much less like an allegory. We seem to know Christian as well almost as if we had fallen into the Slough of Despond with him ; as if we had felt the weight of that awful load on our own shoulders; as if we had started back in terror at the lions in the path; as if we had fallen, foot sore, at the gate of the palace Beautiful; as if we had traversed the Valley of the Shadow of Death, seen the smoke ascending from the pit, heard the wailings, beheld Appolym darken the air, and fought at the pilgrim's side with the arch fiend. To us the Castle of Despair, and its grim giant, are no ideal creations, but substantial facts, at the mere memory of which our blood runs cold. We have, as it were, ourselves seen the Delectable Mountains; beheld the pilgrims go down into the water; and heard, though faint and far, the very harps with which the angels welcome the redeemed up into the shining city.
John Bunyan was a tinker's son, and himself, for years, a tinker. He was born at Elstow,
