Bunyan, out of his spiritual wrestlings, imagined his conflict with the powers of evil as a journey which he made Christian take from his home town along the straight and narrow way to the Shining Gate. Reproduced from his own imaginative sufferings were the flounderings in the Slough of Despond and his experiences in the Vale of Humiliation, the Valley of the Shadow of Death and in Vanity Fair, where he lost the company of Faithful.
It is difficult, unless one is very familiar with the book, to separate the adventures in the first part from those in the second part, which deals with the experiences of Christiana and her children. It is in this second part that Great-heart, the knightly champion of the faith, appears, as well as the muck-raker, who has been given so much prominence in these last few years as the type of the magazine writers, who are eager to drag down into the dirt the reputations of prominent men. In fact, Bunyan's allegory has been a veritable mine to all literary people who have followed him. For a hundred years his book remained known only to the poor for whom it was written. Then its literary merits were perceived, and since then it has held its place as second only to the Bible in English-speaking lands.
Bunyan, in his years in prison, studied the Bible so that his mind was saturated with its phraseology, and he knew it almost by heart. Every page of Pilgrim's Progress bears witness to this close and loving study. The language of the Bible is often used, but it blends so perfectly with the simple, direct speech of Bunyan's characters that it reads like his own work. The only thing that betrays it is the reference to book and verse. A specimen of Bunyan's close reading of the Bible may be found in this list of curiosities in the museum of the House Beautiful on the Delectable Mountains:
"They showed him Moses' rod; the hammer and nail with which Jael slew Sisera; the pitcher, trumpets and lamps, too, with which Gideon put to flight the armies of Midian. Then they showed him the ox's goad wherewith Shambar slew six hundred men. They showed him also the jaw-bone with which Samson did such mighty feats. They showed him, moreover, the sling and stone with which David slew Goliath of Gath; and the sword, also, with which their Lord will kill the Man of Sin, in the day that he shall rise up to prey."
And here is a part of Bunyan's description of the fight between Apollyon and Christian in the Valley of Humiliation:
"Then Apollyon straddled quite over the whole breadth of the way, and said: 'I am void of fear in this matter; prepare thyself to die, for I swear by my infernal den that thou shalt go no further; here will I spill thy soul.' * * * In this combat no man can imagine, unless he had seen and heard as I did, what yelling and hideous roaring Apollyon made, nor what sighs and groans burst from Christian's heart. I never saw him all the while give so much as one pleasant look, till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with his two-edged sword; then, indeed, he did smile, and look upward; but it was the dreadfulest sight that I ever saw."
The miracle of this book is that it should have been written by a man who had little education and small knowledge of the great world, yet that it should be a literary masterpiece in the simple perfection of its form, and that it should be so filled with wisdom that the wisest man may gain something from its pages. Literary genius has never been shown in greater measure than in this immortal allegory by the poor tinker of Bedfordshire.