Bunyan was one of those pioneers who are far in
advance of the age in which they live, and the narrative of his birth and
education adds to the innumerable contradictions which the history of man
opposes to the system of Mr. Owen and the Socialists, and to every scheme for
making the offspring of the poor follow in leading-strings the course of their
parents, or for rendering them blindly submissive to the dictates of the rich,
the learned, or the influential. It incontestably proves the gospel doctrine of
individuality, and, that native talent will rise superior to all impediments.
Our forefathers struggled for the right of private judgment in matters of faith
and worship—their descendants will insist upon it, as essential to salvation,
personally to examine every doctrine relative to the sacred objects of
religion, limited only by Holy Writ.
This must be done with rigorous impartiality,
throwing aside all the prejudices of education, and be followed by prompt
obedience to Divine truth, at any risk of offending parents, or laws, or
resisting institutions, or ceremonies which he discovers to be of human
invention. All this, as we have seen in Bunyan, was attended with great mental
sufferings, with painstaking labour, a simple reliance upon the Word of
God, and with earnest prayer. If man impiously dares to submit his conscience
to his fellow-man, or to any body of men called a church, what perplexity must
he experience ere he can make up his mind which to choose! Instead of relying
upon the ONE standard which God has given him in his Word; should he build his
hope upon a human system he could be certain only that man is fallible and
subject to err. How striking an instance have we, in our day, of the result of
education, when the mind does not implicitly follow the guidance of the
revealed Word of God.
Two brothers, named Newman, educated at the same
school, trained in the same university, brought up under the same religious
system—all human arts exhausted to mould their minds into strict uniformity,
yet gradually receding from the same point in opposite directions, but in
equally downward roads; one to embrace the most puerile legends of the middle
ages, the other to open infidelity. Not so with those who follow the teachings
of the Word of God, by which, and not by any church, they are to be
individually judged at the great day: no pontiff, no priest, no minister, can
intervene or mediate for them at the bar of God.
There it will be said, 'I know you, by your prayers
for Divine guidance and your submission to my revealed will'; or, 'I know you
not,' for you preferred the guidance of frail, fallible men, to me, and to my
Word—a solemn consideration, which, as it proved a source of solid happiness
and extensive usefulness to Bunyan in his pilgrimage, so it insured to him, as
it will to all who follow his course, a solid foundation on which to stand at
the great and terrible day, and thus enable them to live as well as die in the
sure and certain hope of a triumphant entry into the celestial city.
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