John Bunyan and Women

By JOHN BERESFORD. 4, AND in this I admire the wisdom of God, that he made me shy of women from my first conversion till now." So Bunyan wrote in his memorable auto- biography, whose very title rings like a chime of sweet bells—Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners ; or, a brief relation of the exceeding mercy of God in Christ, to his poor servant, John Bunyan.

Perhaps, because he was shy of women, he was able the better to understand them, like an artist who steps back from his portrait in order to criticize, and make perfect with some finishing strokes of the brush. At any rate it is clear that he had a peculiar reverence for women, which is revealed in his works, the chief of which contains the supreme praise spoken by Gaius, the Innkeeper, who was a Lover of Pilgrims.

If you compare the weaknesses and wickednesses per- sonified in the two parts of The Pilgrim's Progress you will find very few assigned to women. True, there is Wanton who promised Faithful all carnal content, so that he had to shut his eyes to save himself from bewitchment we meet her again in the second part as Madame Wanton in company with Mrs. Light-Mind, Mrs. Love-the-Flesh, and Mrs. Filth. Then there is my Lady Faining, Mrs. Know-Nothing, Mrs. Bats-Eyes, Mrs. Bubble, Mrs. Inconsiderate, Mrs. Diffidence and Mrs. Timorous. But what are they compared with the men—Mr. By-ends, Lord Carnal-Delight, Lord Oldman, Lord Luxurious, Lord Desire of Vain Glory, my old Lord Lechery, Sir Having Greedy, Mr. Cruelty, Messrs. Discontent, Pride, Arroganey, Self-Conceit, Worldly Glory, Giant Despair, Lord Fairspeech, Mr. Fearing, Mr. Feeble-Mind, Mr. Formalist, Mr. Hypocrisy, Lord Hate-Good, Mr. Hate- Light, Mr. Heady, Mr. Hold-the-World, Mr. Ignorance, Mr. Implacable, Mr. Linger-after-Lust, Mr. Liar, Mr. Money-Love ? But this is only half-way through the alphabet and the list is long.

The cynical may say that Bunyan's shyness prevented him from knowing women as well as he knew men, so that women's weaknesses escaped his vivid eye. There may be something in this, but I think the real truth is that he owed more to women than he owed to men and that he realized that they had a greater intuitive understanding of religion. On the other hand it is certainly true that in the role of the positive virtues there are more men than women, which to some extent helps to balance the scales. And yet I think Mercy outweighs them all.

Certainly his debt to women was great. It was a woman who first brought him to his senses over his inordinate swearing and cursing, so that he was silenced and put to shame, and from that time forward began to give it up. After that, when he was passing through his rather smug phase, he was shown by some poor women what religion really meant. It was in one of the streets of Bedford that he overheard these women " sitting at a door in the sun, and talking about the things of God," and how He had visited their souls with his love. And here one's mind wanders to

" The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, And the free maids that weave their thread with bones"

who sang that song in Shakespeare which " dallies with the innocence of love." And one regrets the self-con- scious, conventional age in which we live, so that one neither hears nor sees such pleasant things any longer.

He was evidently singularly happy in both his mar- riages. His first wife brought him as her dowry two books—she had nothing else, and they were so poor that they had not "a dish or spoon betwixt them both "- The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven and The Practice of Piety, which had belonged to her father. In these books he found things pleasing to him. It must have been partly due to her sympathy, we suspect, that his mind did not absolutely give way under those terrible spiritual tortures through which he passed before the grace abounding flowed into his consciousness. He certainly discussed things with her, for there is a passage in that astounding autobiography which in a" flash of light shows them talking together in their cottage. He had been very low and ill and was sitting by the fire, when suddenly some words sounded in his heart, very simple words, just "I must go to Jesus." His darkness and infidelity fled away at these words. But he was astonished and could not, on the spur of the moment, connect them with the Bible. So he turned to his wife.

Wife, said I, is there ever such a scripture, I must go to Jesus ? " She, good soul, could not tell. Never- theless it must have helped him to ask her. And soon other words " came bolting in " upon him : those lovely words " and to an innumerable company of angels,;' and then the whole passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews was set before his eyes.

How his second wife pleaded for him before the judges he has himself recorded in an account which he took down from her own mouth, an account of a court scene in 1661 worth numberless volumes of reconstructed history :

" Judge Hall : What is his calling ?

Answer : Then some of the company that stood by said, A tinker, my Lord.

Woman : Yes, said she, and because he is a tinker, and a poor man, therefore he is despised, and cannot have justice."

This was not quite true, because the judges were only acting under the law ; but it was a law contrary to the divine law, was not many years afterwards abrogated, and we love her for saying what she said.

Now when we remember these things we can under- stand why Bunyan put that superb passage about women into the mouth of Innkeeper Gaius, when he had wel- comed Greatheart and old Honest, Christiana and her children, and the Maid Mercy into his comfortable rooms : " I will say again, that when the Saviour was come, Women rejoyced in him, before either Man or Angel. I read not that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one Groat, but the Women followed him, and ministered to him of their Substance. 'Twas a Woman that washed his Feet with Tears, and a Woman that annointed his Body to the Burial. They were Women that wept, when he was going to the Cross ; and Women that followed him from the Cross, and that sat by his Sepulchre when he was buried. They were Women that was first with him at his Resurrection- morn, and. Women that brought Tiding first to his Disciples that he was risen from the Dead."

Not any progress to Calvary, nor descent from the Cross, nor visitation of the tomb, whether- painted by a -Raphael, Perugino or Michelangelo, can eqUal this tinker's masterpiece of words instinct with passion and purity and love : " They were Women that wept, when he was going-to the Cross."

No wonder that such divine painting, so solemn a music, such simple succession of words sounding all the depths of prose .and of poetry, should have been translated into almost every language under heaven !* *The Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into some 120 languages and dialects—see the tercentenary edition of Dr. Brown's definitive Life of Bunyan, ch. abr. and app. ii.