Works of John Bunyan —BUNYAN IS BAPTIZED, AND ENTERS INTO COMMUNION WITH A CHRISTIAN CHURCH AT BEDFORD- 4th Period

 

'And when I have done the exercise, it hath gone to my heart, to think the Word should now fall as rain on stony places; still wishing from my heart, O! that they who have heard me speak this day, did but see as I do, what sin, death, hell, and the curse of God is; and also, what the grace, and love, and mercy of God is, through Christ, to men in such a case as they are who are yet estranged from him.

'For I have been in my preaching, especially when I have been engaged in the doctrine of life by Christ, without works, as if an angel of God had stood by at my back to encourage me.'

Such feelings are not limited to Bunyan but are most anxiously felt by all our pious ministers. How fervently ought their hearers to unite in approaches to the mercy-seat, that the Divine blessing may make the Word fruitful.

In those days it was not an uncommon thing for the hearers, at the close of the sermon, to put questions to the preacher, sometimes to elicit truth, or to express a cordial union of sentiments, or to contradict what the minister had said. Upon one occasion, Mr. Bunyan, after his sermon, had a singular dispute with a scholar. It is narrated by Mr. C. Doe, who was a personal friend and great admirer of our author, and who probably heard it from his own mouth, and will be found in the Struggler, inserted vol. iii., p. 767.

It is the common taunt of the scorner, and sometimes a stone of stumbling to the inquirer, that, while the Christian believes in the intensity of the Saviour's sufferings, and that God was made flesh that he might offer himself as an atonement to redeem mankind, yet few are saved, in comparison with those who are lost—broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many walk therein, while few attempt the narrow way to life; that four sorts of hearers are described by the Saviour, only one receiving the truth; as if the doleful realms of darkness and misery would be more thickly peopled than those of light and happiness, and Satan prove stronger than Christ. Such cavilers forget that the far greater portion of mankind die in infancy, purified by the Saviour's sufferings, and enter heaven in the perfection of manhood. As Mr. Toplady justly observes, what a vista does this open to the believer through the dreary gloom of the infidel! They forget, also, that all those who gain the narrow path, once helped to throng the road to destruction; and that the hearers, whose hardened deceitful hearts rejected the gospel under one sermon, may, by mercy, have them opened to receive it under another. And who dares to limit the Almighty? The power that prepared the spirit of the thief, when upon the cross, even in his last moments, for the pure enjoyments of heaven, still exists. Is the arm of the Lord shortened so that he cannot save? The myriads of heaven will be found countless as are the sands upon the seashore, and the harmony of their worship shall swell like the voice of many waters and mighty thundering, saying, 'Alleluia, for the Lord God omnipotent, reigned.' What! Satan stronger than the Almighty Redeemer? Perish the thought. Still how common is the question, which one of the disciples put to his master, 'Lord, are there few that be saved?' How striking the answer! 'Strive to enter in at the strait gate' (Luke 13:23). Encumber not thy mind with such needless inquiries but look to thine own salvation.

Another very singular anecdote is related, which proves that the use of the churches was not then limited to any one sect. 'Being to preach in a church in a country village (before the restoration of king Charles) in Cambridge shire, and the people being gathered together in the church-yard, a Cambridge scholar, and none of the soberest of 'em neither, enquired what the meaning of that concourse of people was, it is upon the week day, and being told, That one Bunyan, a tinker, was to preach there, he gave a boy two pence to hold his horse, saying, He was resolved to hear the tinker prate; and so went into the church to hear him. But God met with him there by his ministry, so that he came out much changed, and would, by his good will, hear none but the tinker for a long time after, he himself becoming a very eminent preacher in that county afterwards. This story I know to be true, having many a time discoursed with the man, and, therefore, I could not but set it down as a singular instance of the power of God that accompanied his ministry.'