At some time nearly every person reads The Pilgrim's Progress, and to those who do, Christian becomes a very real person. It is a Puritan book, pure and simple, and as such, contains some things that people of other denominations may object to, but there is so much of truth, simplicity and real human nature in it, so much that touches the spiritual experiences of all human beings, that most people, regardless of creed, are helped by it.
The Pilgrim's Progress is a very plain allegory. It describes persons and things as real and material, but always gives to everything a spiritual significance. There is no room for doubt at any time, for the names are all so aptly chosen that the meaning may be seen by any reader. Yet the allegory is so significantly true that while a child may read and enjoy it as a story and be helped by its patent truthfulness and poetry, the maturer mind may find latent truths that compensate for a more careful reading.
"As I walked through the wilderness of this world," the book begins, "I lighted on a certain place where there was a den [Footnote: The Bedford jail.] and I laid me down there to sleep, and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man, a man clothed in rags, standing with his face from his own home, with a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked and saw him open the book and read therein; and, as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying, 'What shall I do?'" This man is Christian, the hero of the story.
CHRISTIAN BEGINS HIS JOURNEY
In this plight, therefore, he went home and refrained himself as long as he could, that his wife and children should not perceive his distress; but he could not be silent long, because that his trouble increased. Wherefore at length he brake his mind to his wife and children; and thus he began to talk to them:
"O my dear wife," said he, "and you, my children, I, your dear friend, am in myself undone by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me; moreover I am for certain informed that this our city will be burned with fire from heaven, in which fearful overthrow, both myself, with thee, my wife, and you my sweet babes, shall miserably come to ruin, except (the which yet I see not) some way of escape can be found, whereby we may be delivered."
At this his relations were sore amazed; not for what they believed that what he had said to them, was true, but because they thought that some frenzy distemper had got into his head; therefore, it drawing near night, and they hoping that sleep might settle his brains, with all haste they got him to bed.
But the night was as troublesome to him as the day; wherefore, instead of sleeping, he spent it in sighs and tears. So, when the morning was. come, they would know how he did. He told them, "Worse and worse." He also set talking to them again; but they began to be hardened.
They also thought to drive away his distemper by harsh and surly carriages to him; sometimes they would deride, sometimes they would chide, and sometimes they would quite neglect him. Wherefore he began to retire himself to his chamber, to pray for and pity them, and also to condole his own misery; he would also walk solitarily in the fields, sometimes reading, and sometimes praying: and thus for some days he spent his time.
Now, I saw, upon a time, when he was walking in the fields, that he was, as he was wont, reading in his book, and greatly distressed in his mind; and as he read, he burst out, as he had done before, crying, "What shall I do to be saved?"