INTRODUCIORY NOTICE OF THE AUTHOR. 17

if joy did make him write,” he flings from his graphic and fluent pen those vivid, brilliant pictures,
over which, after his persecutors have perished, and his prison walls have crumbled into dust, and
the painful circumstances of his earthly life have receded into the dim and distant past,—in many
lands and throughout all generations—in the closet and the chamber—in the solitary hut and the
crowded city—young and old, rich and poor, learned and illiterate, shall bend with ever fresh
delight.

Without question Bunyan’s imprisonment was made conducive for the furtherance of the gospel.
The providence which controls the wrath of man, and makes it contribute to its own purposes, so
overruled the malice of his persecutors, as to make it serve the cause which they sought to destroy.
Not only may we see the Divine hand, in the fact that Bunyan’s imprisonment afforded him leisure
for the composition of those works which have made his name immortal; but an overruling Provi-
dence is specially seen in some of the circumstances which facilitated his work. Cruelties such as
were perpetrated in other prisons would probably have shortened his days, or at least have rendered
writing and study impossible; but in the gaol at Bedford where he was confined, though the place
was loathsome in the extreme, the jailor treated the prisoners with such humanity that he incurred
the displeasure of the Justices. Bunyan was allowed to visit his family occasionally, and it was on
one of his visits that the circumstance occurred which most people would consider peculiarly provi-
dential. A neighboring priest heard of his absence from prison, and immediately despatched a
messenger that he might bear witness against the jailor. Meanwhile Bunyan, feeling uneasy at home,
had returned to prison sooner than was intended, so that when the messenger demanded, “ Are all
the prisoners safe?” the jailor could answer “Yes.” “Ts John Bunyan safe?” “ Yes.” Bunyan,
on being called, appeared ; and, said the jailor afterwards, “You may go out when you will, for you
know much better when to return than I can tell you.” Thus were his health and life preserved,
and the man who was forbidden to speak to a few assembled in a peasant’s cottage, furnished with
facilities for writing a book by which he speaks to millions in every land, and through all succeeding
generations ; while the men who sought to silence him have been all but forgotten. So do the
enemies of the gospel frustrate their own schemes. So does the right live on, emerging into ever-
increasing splendor, while the wrong sinks into merited oblivion.

The acceptance which his “ Pilgrim’s Progress” has met with is altogether unparalleled.
During the Author’s lifetime many copies are said to have been circulated in England—and that
was at a time when books and readers were comparatively scarce. Several editions—some of them
got up, as booksellers would say, in very superior style—were published in North America, and
translations were issued in French and Flemish, Dutch, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish. Nor does time
show any abatement of its popularity. Among all the competitors for public favor which have since
issued from the press, it retains its pre-eminence. There is scarcely a known language into which
+t has not been rendered. Wherever English is spoken it is familiar as a household word. Not-
withstanding the millions in circulation, and the new editions which are constantly appearing,
publishers can still reckon on a sale of hundreds of thousands for one edition alone. It appears in
all forms, and is read by all classes. Richly illustrated and elegantly bound, it adorns the drawing-
room tables of the wealthy. Well-thumbed and sometimes tattered, as if from constant, if not
careless, usage, it lies on the shelf or the window-sill of the poor. Children are entranced with the
interest of the story; its tranquil or gloomy scenes, its pictures of danger and conflict—of triumph
and despair. Men too illiterate to account for the fascination, are attracted to its pages. And
learned men, who have little sympathy with its religious purpose, feel the spell of its genius, and
are compelled to admire it for the beauty or the awfulness of its creations, its vivid embodiments,

its clear insight and keen satire, its terse Saxon style. The young Christian, just starting on his
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