Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

He soon learned bad habits from the men or boys around him. "From a child," he says, "I had but few equals (considering my years, which were then but tender and few) for cursing, swearing, lying, and blaspheming the holy name of God. Yea, so settled and rooted was I in these things, that they became as a second nature to me."

In the plain home he must have been taught some religious truths by his parents, for at ten years of age he was greatly disturbed on account of his sins. These "did so offend the Lord that even in my childhood he did scare and affright me with fearful dreams, and did terrify me with dreadful visions.... These things did so distress my soul, that then in the midst of my many sports and childish vanities, amidst my vain companions, I was often cast down and afflicted in my mind therewith; yet could I not let go my sins."

Books the lad did not read, except the not very edifying life of Sir Bevis of Southampton, because the poor tinker's home afforded none.

In the midst of his reckless living—he himself protests that he was never immoral—several remarkable preservations from death had a strong influence on his mind. Twice he narrowly escaped drowning, once in the river Ouse at Bedford, and again in "a creek of the sea." At another time, he says, "Being in the fields with one of my companions, it chanced that an adder passed over the highway; so I, having a stick in my hand, struck her over the back, and having stunned her, I forced open her mouth with my stick, and plucked her sting out with my fingers; by which act, had not God been merciful to me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to my end."

When John Bunyan was about seventeen, he was for a time engaged in the civil wars of the reign of Charles I. Whether he fought for the king or with the Parliamentary forces will never be known. Dr. John Brown, minister at Bedford, thinks he was drafted to fight against the Royalist party.

Here again he was marvellously preserved. "When I was a soldier, I, with others, was drawn out to go to such a place to besiege it; but when I was just ready to go, one of the company desired to go in my room; to which, when I had consented, he took my place; and coming to the siege, as he stood sentinel, he was shot in the head and died. Here were judgment and mercy; but neither of them did awaken my soul to righteousness."

Before Bunyan was twenty, a most important matter came into his life. He met a poor girl, an orphan, whose name even is not known, and married her. "I lighted on a wife," he says, "whose father was counted godly. She also would be often telling me what a godly man her father was, and how he would reprove and correct vice, both in his house and amongst his neighbors; what a strict and holy life he lived in his day, both in word and deed....

"This woman and I came together as poor as poor might be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or spoon betwixt us both. But she had for her portion two books, 'The Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven,' and 'The Practice of Piety,' which her father had left her when he died. In these two books I sometimes read with her. I found some things pleasing to me, but all this while I met with no conviction." However, they created in him "some desire to religion."

"The Practice of Piety," by Dr. Lewis Bayley, Bishop of Bangor in King James's time, was translated into several languages, and passed through more than fifty editions during a century. The other book was written by the Rev. Arthur Dent, the Puritan pastor of Shoebury in Essex.

Young Bunyan changed his outward life after his marriage. He says, "I fell in with the religion of the times, to go to church twice a day, very devoutly to say and sing as the others did, yet retaining my wicked life."