E N D O R S E M E N T S, Q U O T E S A N D  V A R I O U S  R E F E R E N C E S B Y N O T A B L E  P E R S O N S

O N  T H E  V A L U EO F T H E P I L G R I M’ S P R O G R E S S

C o m p i l e d  by  J o s e p h  F a r r u g i a

 

 

 

“The Pilgrim’s Progress” ranks among the masterpieces of Christian classics. From the innumerable endorsements and testimonies to its power and value which might be quoted, it will be convenient to select some of the more notable. In reading the following we receive the perfectly just impression that “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is a work of rare originality, shining with a light unique and unreflected, and witnessing, above all, to the creative genius of its author.

Rev.  M A U R I C E  R O B E R T S  ( 1938 - )

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is unquestionably one of the greatest books ever written and is a wonderful exposition of the beginning, progression and conclusion of the true Christian life. I cannot commend it too highly as a book which God has blessed over the many years since it was first published in England. 

I wish God's favour to rest on it as it now goes out in its new dress in Maltese.

J A M E S  G.  L A W S O N (1874 - 1946)

It is not to be wondered at that John Bunyan, the author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” had a very deep inward experience of the grace of God. Without such an experience an illiterate tinker would scarcely have been able to write the book which has had a greater circulation than any other book except the Bible. Next to the Bible, “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is the world’s most popular book.  It has been translated into almost every important language, and adapted to the use of children as well as adults, and to the use of Roman Catholics and Protestants.

Dr. P E T E R  M A S T E R S

Have we ever thoughtfully read John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress? I remember at the age of about twelve that this was one of the books we had to study in English literature. I thought it was so boring as we pored over it line by line, paragraph by paragraph, noting its structure and literary devices. How we yawned and squirmed! Later when I was converted as a late teenager, someone said to me, 'You must read Pilgrim's Progress.' Why should I read that book I remembered having to toil through, equal only to Homer's Odyssey for dreariness? However, I read it again, and soon thought to myself, 'This is not the book I read years ago. This is an entirely different book.' Once one's heart is opened, and spiritual light has dawned, that old book springs to life, showing us the temptations, pitfalls and triumphs of the spiritual journey as no other book outside the Bible has ever done. Of course, the Bible is everything, but books that explain and illuminate the message of Scripture have helped thousands upon thousands of Christians.

Dr. R O S A L I E de R O S S E T

At one time Pilgrim's Progress was the book most read by Christians with the exception of the Bible. Even up until about seventy-five years ago it was part of the common stock of our culture, one of the handful of books that bound generation to generation, a book alluded to everywhere in sermons, advertising, and as the title of a prominent and very secular magazine. Sadly, today it is more

well known than well read; in fact, it is now one of the world's least-read books. It is hard to understand why it has suffered such neglect, for right from the opening sentence the tale is charged with the dynamic of a great narrative:

I seldom pass a day in which I do not visualize some scene out of Pilgrim's Progress; I never teach a course without referring to it, and when I speak publicly, it is always in the back of my mind as the source of an illustration, quote, or injunction. It has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother, who loved the book and had a large, beautifully illustrated nineteenth-century version of it, read it to me before I could talk clearly and taught it to me in Sunday school (complete with craft projects based on it). I studied it as part of an English literature class in college and again more than a decade later in a Christian classics course in seminary. As a professor, I have, of course, taught it. With each reading, its narrative has become more compelling, its characters, despite their simple-sounding names more recognizable, more psychologically sophisticated, its theology more vivid and profound.

J O S H U A  G I L P I N  ( 1765 - 1841 )

Few religious books have obtained so much celebrity, or passed through so great a number of editions, as that which is here presented anew to the public. In early childhood, I perused this allegory with great delight, as an entertaining story: but, since that time, it has often excited my admiration, as an able and interesting delineation of the Christian’s progress from earth to heaven. The genius, the judgment, and the piety, of Bunyan, are everywhere visible throughout this excellent performance: and though these eminent qualifications may be passed over without notice by inaccurate observers, they cannot do otherwise than minister to the intelligent reader unexpected matter of satisfaction and surprise. This instructive volume has been the frequent companion of my solitary and social hours, for more than forty years past: and if I have not studied it with an equal degree of profit, I may at least safely assert, that I have not been less charmed with its excellencies than the warmest of its applauders. 

Dr. J O H N  M a c A R T H U R ( 1939 - )

You know, in PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, John Bunyan has written a masterful picture of the Christian life.

John Bunyan wrote, Pilgrim's Progress. Next to the Bible, that book has affected more lives than any book ever written.

I suppose many of you have read The Pilgrim's Progress. If you haven't, you should read it. I can remember reading it several times when I was a young boy, then again in college. It's tremendous .... it's Bunyan's great view of the Christian's life.

By the time you finish reading Pilgrim's Progress, and I've been reading it to my children now for about six months, by the time you finish reading Pilgrim's Progress, if you learned on thing, you learned you'd better stay on the way of the king. You'd better walk with exactness and you'd better walk with accuracy, and care. You can't just flip flop in the Christian life. A wise man walks looking at every step.

Well, if you haven't read Pilgrim's Progress, it's not too late. Find an edition of it and read it.

G E O R G E   H A M L I N   F I T C H - ( 1852 - 1925 )

Bunyan's Story - Full of the Spirit of the Bible – The Simple Tale of Christian's Struggles and Triumph Appeals to Old and Young. 

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.

Rev. E D M U N D  V E N A B L E S  M.A. (1819 - 1895)

The secret of this universal acceptableness of "The Pilgrim's Progress" lies in the breadth of its religious sympathies. Rigid Puritan as Bunyan was, no book is more completely free from sectarian narrowness. Its reach is as wide as Christianity itself, and it takes hold of every human heart because it is so intensely human.

R. C. S P R O U L (1939 - )

It's time once more for the Christian community to follow the Pilgrim's Progress.

Rev. L. M.  Z I M E R M A N N

The book, and the only book, next to the Bible is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. "That book brought me to the true light," is doubtless the experience of many of the followers of God to-day.

W I L L I A M   A R T H U R (1819 - 1901)

If we turn from Religion in her own person, as viewed in holy writ, to look at a reflection of her in one of the best mirrors, the "Pilgrim's Progress," how would Bunyan have handled pilgrims who would stiffly or prudently close up their bosom? Banish from the "Pilgrim's Progress" the social element, the fellowship of hearts, the free recital of the Lord's dealings with each pilgrim, and yon would cool its interest down to a point which, doubtless, would be decorous in the eyes of some, but would never touch the many.

W. B.  F I T Z G E R A L D

It is impossible to read the Pilgrim's Progress and not feel that it breathes a spirit which is of the essence of religion in every age. Its watchwords are Earnestness and Eternity. 

The earnestness of the book is tremendous. 

In the things that matter most, we still need those vital principles which give permanent worth to the Pilgrim's Progress.

A L E X AN D E R  W H Y T E  (1837 - 1921)

But far better for you than all Plato and all Aristotle taken together, like Mr. Spurgeon, to read “The Pilgrim’s Progress” a hundred times.

J. G R E S H A M  M A C H E N  (1881-1937) 

That tenderest and most theological of books, “The Pilgrim's Progress” of John Bunyan….pulsating with life in every word.

The Christian life is a warfare after all. John Bunyan rightly set it forth under the allegory of a Holy War; and when he set it forth, in his greater book (“The Pilgrim’s Progress”), under the figure of a pilgrimage, the pilgrimage too, was full of battles.

A R T H U R  T.  P I E R S O N  (1837- 1937)

The greatest work of John Bunyan, and perhaps the greatest religious book except the Bible, that was ever given to men, we call “The Pilgrim's Progress.

A L E X A N D E R  M.  W I T H E R S P O O N

The two parts of “The Pilgrim's Progress” in reality constitute a whole, and the whole is, without doubt, the most influential religious book ever written in the English language.

A U G U S T U S  M.  T O P L A D Y  (1740 - 1778)

“The Pilgrim’s Progress” is the finest allegorical work extant; describing every stage of a Christian’s experience, from conversion to glorification, in the most artless simplicity of language; yet peculiarly rich with spiritual unction, and glowing with the most vivid, just, and well-conducted machinery throughout. It is, in short, a masterpiece of piety and genius; and will, we doubt not, be of standing use to the people of God, so long as the sun and moon endure.

In the evening I read Bunyan’s “Pilgrim.” What a stiff, sapless, tedious piece of work is that written by Bishop Patrick! How does the unlearned tinker of Bedford outshine the Bishop of Ely! I have heard that his lordship wrote his Pilgrim by way of antidote against what he deemed the fanaticism of John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim.” But what a rich fund of heavenly experience, life, and sweetness, does the latter contain! How heavy, lifeless, and unevangelical, is the former! Such is the difference between writing from a worldly spirit and under the influence of the Spirit of God!

J O N I  E A R E C K S O N  T A D A  (1941 - )

This classic has refreshed my spirit time and again when my soul has longed for Christ-centered guidance through a maze of modern detours and diversions.  I’m so grateful this special edition of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is now available to not only a new generation of Christians but to believers like myself who need direction and refreshment along our journey toward Home.

S A M U E L  C O L E R I D G E  (1772 - 1834)

I know of no book, the Bible excepted, as above all comparison, which I, according to my judgment and experience, could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the whole saving truth according to the mind that was in Christ Jesus, as in “The Pilgrim's Progress”.  It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best Summa Theologiae Evangelicae [Summary of Evangelical Doctrine] ever produced by a writer not miraculously inspired.

This wonderful work is one of the very few books which may be read over repeatedly at different times, and each time with a new and a different pleasure.

J O H N  A N G E L L  J A M E S  (1785 – 1859)

Bunyan, in his matchless allegory, the "Pilgrim's Progress," after representing the rejection of a false professor, called Ignorance, who had knocked at the portals of heaven, and asked admission, concludes his book with these solemnly impressive words, "Then I saw that there was a way to hell, even from the gates of heaven—as well as from the city of destruction!"

A M Y   C A R M IC H A E L  (1867 - 1961)

In her copy of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” Amma (as she was called) had marked these words concerning Christiana. The extract goes on, “At her departure her children wept. But Mr. Great-heart and Mr Valiant played upon the well-tuned cymbal and harp for joy.” Amma had characteristically underlined the word “BUT”.

I never get to the end of it’s (an oil painting) mysterious beauty, and the snowy mountains have become my Delectable Mountains, whence one may see the Gate of the Celestial City. Gone from me is the thought of the woods, vineyards, fruits of all sorts, flowers also, with springs and fountains, as in Bunyan’s lovely story (“The Pilgrim’s Progress”).

J A M E S  B A L D W I N  (1924 -1987)

For two hundred years or more no other English book was so generally known and read as “The Pilgrim’s Progress”.

J O H N  G.  P A T O N (1824 - 1907)

How my father would parade across and across our flag-floor, telling over the substance of the day's sermons to our dear mother, who, because of the great distance and because of her many living "encumbrances," got very seldom indeed to the church…..and how he would entice us to help him to recall some idea or other, rewarding us when we got the length of " taking notes " and reading them over on our return ; how he would turn the talk ever so naturally to some Bible story, or some martyr reminiscence, or some happy allusion to the "Pilgrim's Progress"!

R O G E R  S H A R R O C K 

So much of the theological writings of the seventeenth-century English Puritans exists for us across an immeasurable divide, the divide created by the seventeenth-century revolution in favour of rationality, brevity, and the equation of words to things; yet “The Pilgrim’s Progress” bridges this divide, makes passionate religious commitment seem a sober, matter-of-fact affair, and equates its words to things with more success than the fashionable would-be rational preachers of the Restoration, Tillotson and South.

A R T H U R  W.  P I N K  (1886 - 1952)

“The Pilgrim’s Progress” is a very fine, helpful, spiritual book, which I would earnestly advise you to read and re-read.

When we were little all our toys were put away on Saturday night and pictorial editions of “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, etc were brought out.

My father did not lie in bed Sabbath mornings, but took his children to hear God’s Word preached.  He did not send them to ‘Sunday school’ while he took a nap in the afternoon, but gathered us around him and spent a couple of hours in reading to us from the Scriptures, Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” etc.

J O H N  N E W T O N  (1725 - 1807)

Soon after I returned from Yorkshire, I began to expound the Pilgrim's Progress in our meetings on Tuesday evenings; and, though we have been almost seven months traveling with the pilgrim, we have not yet left the house Beautiful; but I believe shall set off for the Valley of Humiliation in about three weeks. I find this book so full of matter, that I can seldom go through more than a page, or half a page at a time. I hope the attempt has been greatly blessed among us; and for myself, it has perhaps given me a deeper insight into John Bunyan's knowledge, judgment, and experience in the Christian life, than I would ever have had without it. 

D. R. T H O M A S O N 

Such books as Robinson Crusoe, and Bunyan's “The Pilgrim's Progress”, may with advantage be put into the hands of a child as soon as he is able to read them. The excitement and stimulus which the infant mind will derive from such productions, is harmless in itself, and beneficial in its results.

V A N C E  H A V N E R   (1901 - 1986)

The memory which lingers most clearly and which, doubtless, means most is that of a few good books. I can remember reading “The Pilgrim's Progress” to mother on winter nights.  Christian and Christiana and Greatheart and Faithful and all that immortal host that Bunyan gave to the world, how we grew tense over their tribulations and thrilled over their triumphs!  How we enjoyed seeing the saints get safely over the river and into the Celestial City!  In this day of peanut-butter-sandwich theology, what a price we have paid for passing up the moral beefsteak of books that are books indeed! Forget the sawdust and shavings of modern best-sellers and read “The Pilgrim's Progress” again; then read Alexander’s Whythe’s “Bunyan Characters” and add iron to your soul and muscle to your spiritual biceps!

Long ago when I was a little boy, I carved an inscription on the old-fashioned chimney of our house in the country among the hills.  That inscription read, “Heaven I Hope to Win.”  I had been told about this beautiful city, both at home and in the little country church Sunday school. I had read about Pilgrim’s progress through all his trials and tribulations until he crossed over the river into his heavenly home. I used to swing beneath the oak tree in our yard, looking toward the distant mountains singing;

There’s a land that is fairer than day,And by faith I can see it afar.

I can now (at 80 years of age) see His hand in why I grew upon the Carolina hilltop, a happy little boy, tramping the woods with his shepherd dog, fed on Pilgrim’s Progress”, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs.

N.  H.  K E E B L E

No other seventeenth-century text save the King James Bible, nothing from the pen of a writer of Bunyan’s social class in any period, and no other Puritan, or, indeed, committed Christian work of any persuasion, has enjoyed such an extensive readership as “The Pilgrim's Progress”.

H E N R Y  C.  F I S H  (1820 - 1877) 

We hazard little, remarks an authority, in saying that for doctrinal, practical, and experimental religious instruction and authorship, it (the seventeenth century) was the golden age. What other age has produced so many volumes full of the marrow of the gospel and indited as it were so close on the verge of heaven? What thousands have been guided in the Way of Life by Bunyan's “The Pilgrim's Progress”!

J A M E S  M O N T G O M E R Y  (1771- 1854) 

It has been the lot of John Bunyan, an unlettered artisan, to do more than one in a hundred millions of human beings, even in civilized society, is usually able to do. He has produced a work of imagination, (“The Pilgrim’s Progress”) of such decided originality, as not only to have commanded public admiration on its first appearance, but amidst all changes of time and style, and modes of thinking, to have maintained its place in the popular literature of every succeeding age; with the probability that, so long as the language in which it is written endures, it will not cease to be read by a great number of the youth of all future generations, at that period of life when their minds, their imaginations, and their hearts are most impressible with moral excellence, splendid picture, and religious sentiment. The happy idea of representing his story under the similitude of a dream enabled him to portray, with all the liveliness of reality, the scenes which passed before him. It makes the reader himself, like the author, a spectator of all that occurs; thus giving him a personal interest in the events, an individual sympathy for the actors and sufferers. It would be difficult to name another work of any kind in our native tongue of which so many editions have been printed, of which so many readers have lived and died; the character of whose lives and deaths must have been more or less affected by its lessons and examples, its fictions and realities.

D.  M A R T Y N  L L O Y D - J O N E S  (1898 - 1981)

But what are the things which thus differentiate us? Let me give you John Bunyan's answer to my question. I am saying that the Christian, because he is a Christian, is altogether unlike the man of the world and that he and the man of the world are aware of it. Let John Bunyan say it in his “The Pilgrim's Progress”.

A.  C.  D  I  X O N  (1854 - 1925) 

The chief books in my father’s small library were the Bible, Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, a “Scripture Text Book”, Coleridge’s Poems, and Spurgeon’s Sermons.  I had read “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, and had the imagery of Bunyan pretty clear in my boyish mind. Conversion meant a heavy load upon you, leaving you all of a sudden so that you could go on your way rejoicing…but I must confess that my experience was not identical.

A L B E R T  N.  M A R T I N

John Bunyan was right on target when he wrote that section in his immortal  “The Pilgrim’s Progress” which describes how Christian and Faithful come into contact with a man named Talkative.  I urge you to read it carefully. It shows that Bunyan recognized that there is such a thing as having an intellectual conviction that only God can save sinners, and that salvation is a work in which God saves sinners, but the real issue is this, has there been an experimental application of that truth with power to my own heart and to my own life?

R O B E R T  S T E V E N S O N 

The Bible is the spring of the truth and charm of “The Pilgrim's Progress”, just as it had already been the spring of all that was true and noble in Bunyan's own religion. While, therefore, from one point of view “The Pilgrim's Progress” ranks among the most original of English works of genius, from another standpoint there is no book so little original, or so dependent throughout on a higher source.

The claim of “The Pilgrim's Progress” to stand in the very first rank of imaginative literature finds an important part of its justification in the possession by the book of two very opposite qualities. It is a first-rate story of adventure; brimful of incident; but it is also a first-rate gallery of character, alive with rich and varied portraiture. Most works of fiction tend to depend for their interest upon one or other of these often unconnected spells. Either they aim at keeping us breathless with exciting incident, or they charm us by the fidelity and variety of their studies of the manifold types of human nature. When we make the rare discovery of a writer who has both these spells at his command, then we feel that he is at least on his way to rank with the immortals; if he wields the spells with magic power, we consider his position assured. Such a writer, by universal consent, is Bunyan. One side of his gift has already claimed, and will often claim our attention — the vivid and natural progress of the story, so that we feel with Mr. Froude that ‘we too, very one of us, are travelers on the same road.’ But it has been held, not without good ground, that in the wealth of character in “The Pilgrim's Progress” we have the most surpassing evidence of its author's genius.

D R.  B A R R Y  E.  H O R N E R

The ongoing world-wide esteem that history has accorded John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is certainly unsurpassed by any other English work of fiction. The closest contenders in this regard would be the acclaimed writings of Thomas À

Kempis, John Milton and William Shakespeare, yet no title from these authors has achieved the sustained universal popularity which the Bedford tinker’s allegory continues to maintain.

And outside of the Bible itself, no other book can rank with The Pilgrim’s Progress in being such a faithful interpreter of essential doctrine, and especially the gospel of Sovereign grace and the resultant life of a Christian.

D R.  G E O R G E  B.  C H E E V E R

Perhaps no other work could be named which, admired by cultivated minds, has had, at the same time, such an ameliorating effect on the working classes in society as “The Pilgrim’s Progress”. It is a work so full of native good sense, that no mind can read it without gaining in wisdom and vigour of judgment. It is one of the books that, by being connected with the dearest associations of childhood, always retain their hold on the heart: and it exerts a double influence when, at a graver age, and less under the despotism given to imagination in childhood, we read it with a serene and thoughtful perception of its meaning. How many children have become better citizens of the world through life, by the perusal of this book in infancy! How many pilgrims, in hours when perseverance was almost exhausted, and patience was yielding, and clouds and darkness were gathering, have felt a sudden return of animation and courage from the remembrance of Christian’s severe conflicts, and his glorious entrance at last through the gates into the city! 

The form of his work, (“The Pilgrim’s Progress”) the nature of the subject, and its creation so completely out of the depths of his own soul, unaided by learning or art, place it before every other uninspired production. Without the teaching of the Spirit of God, the genius of the poet, though he were Shakespeare himself, could no more have portrayed the inward life of the soul by external images and

allegories, than a man born blind could paint the moon and the stars, the flowers, the forests, and the foliage.

R O B E R T  L O U I S  S T E V E N S O N  (1850 – 1894)

Lastly, I must name “The Pilgrim's Progress”, a book that breathes of every beautiful and valuable emotion.

G E O R G E  W H IT E F I E L D  (1714 - 1770)

Perhaps next to the first publishers of the gospel of the blessed God, these sayings were never more strongly exemplified in any single individual (at least in this, or the last century) than in the conversion, ministry and writings of that eminent servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. John Bunyan, who was of the meanest occupation, and a notorious sabbath-breaker, drunkard, swearer, blasphemer, &c. by habitual practice. And yet, through rich, free, sovereign, distinguishing grace, he was chosen, called, and afterwards formed, by the all-powerful operations of the Holy Spirit, to be a scribe ready instructed to the kingdom of God.  The two volumes of his works formerly published, with the success that attended them in pulling down Satan’s strong-holds in sinners’ hearts, when sent forth in small detached parties, are pregnant proofs of this. Some of them have gone through a great variety of editions.  His “Pilgrim’s Progress” in particular, has been translated into various

languages, and to this day is read with the greatest pleasure, not only by the truly serious, of different religious persuasions, but likewise by those, to whom pleasure is the end of reading.  Surely it is an original, and we may say of it, to use the words of the great Doctor Goodwin in his preface to the Epistle to the Ephesians, that it smells of the prison.  It was written when the author was confined in Bedford jail. And ministers never write or preach so well as when under the cross: the spirit of Christ and of glory then rests upon them.

D A V I D  d u P L E S S I S  (1905-1987)

At age twelve, I had a profound encounter with Jesus as my Savior. From then on, I wanted to be like him. His earthly father, like mine, was a carpenter. But mine was also a reader, and in his bookshelf I soon found Pilgrim's Progress. Here in simple story language were the truths of the Bible. They rooted my life more firmly in the Word of God.

C H A R L E S  H.  S P U R G E O N  (1834-1892)

There are many other valuable books that have been written, but, as a rule, however valuable they may be, when you have read them half-a-dozen times, you may be quite satisfied that you need not read them anymore. Next to the Bible, the book that I value most is John Bunyan’s, “The Pilgrim's Progress”, and I imagine I

may have read that through perhaps a hundred times. It is a book of which I never seem to tire, but then the secret of that is, that John Bunyan’s, “The Pilgrim's Progress”, is the Bible in another shape. It is the same heavenly water taken out of this same well of the Gospel, yet you would tire even of that book at last. You would say, “I know all that this volume contains and I need something more. Here is the experience of the Christian pilgrim—I know it is true, and I delight in it, but I want to go somewhat further.” The mind would crave for something else. But read the Bible and, strange to say, the more you read it, the more satisfied you will be with it.

 Now, there are very few minds that can make parables. The fact is, I do not know of but one good allegory in the English language, and that is, “The Pilgrim's Progress”.  Parables, pictures, and analogies are not as easy as some think; most men can understand them, but few can create them. 

R O B E R T  B O Y D  M U N G E R

This book's a classic for a reason. I find it so practical. Obviously Bunyan had suffered spiritually and personally, and he was able to shed light on all kinds of problems. One example is the dungeon in which Pilgrim finds himself beaten by doubts and hopelessness. I've been there! But both of us have the key: trust. I return to this book time and again.

J. C. P H I L P O T  (1802-1869)

How much the "Pilgrim's Progress" has been owned and blessed!John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" is known wherever the English language is

spoken. No, it has become known beyond those limits, by means of translation into most of the European, and into some Oriental tongues. A great critic and historian has said that the seventeenth century, so prolific in writers, produced but two thoroughly original works, which would be handed down to posterity; and it was noteworthy that both these were produced by the pens of Dissenters—Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and Milton's "Paradise Lost." Here might have lived in the seventeenth century preachers as powerful as Bunyan, and ministers as deeply led into the mysteries of truth as Owen; but they have left behind no "Pilgrim's Progress," or "Communion with God," to instruct and edify the church of Christ for succeeding generations.

R E V.  R O G E R  H A Y D E N

John Bunyan in Bedford jail produced the spiritual epic, Pilgrim's Progress, which would fuel the fires of faith for Christians in generations yet to come.

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J.  I.  P A C K E R ( 1926 - )

For two centuries “The Pilgrim’s Progress” was the best-read book, after the Bible, in all Christendom, but sadly it is not so today. When I ask my classes of young and youngish evangelicals, as I often do, who has read “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, not a quarter of the hands go up. Yet our rapport with fantasy writing, plus our lack of grip on the searching, humbling, edifying truths about spiritual life that the

Puritans understood so well, surely mean that the time is ripe for us to dust off “The Pilgrim’s Progress” and start reading it again. Certainly, it would be great gain for modern Christians if Bunyan’s masterpiece came back into its own in our day. Have you yourself, I wonder, read it yet?

God communicates with us, to our soul’s health. If we now ask what exactly it is that he communicates, the short answer is, knowledge of ourselves, and of Christ, as set forth in the Westminster Confession and in Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”.

The Bible is, from one standpoint, a book of spiritual experience, and the Puritans explored this dimension of it with unrivalled depth and insight. “The Pilgrim’s Progress” serves as a kind of pictorial index to the themes which they handled under this head – faith, doubt, temptation, despair, fear, hope, the fight with sin, the attacks of Satan, the peaks of spiritual joy, the dry wastes of spiritual desertion.

In the middle of the 19th century, a great deal of new devotional literature began to be produced, and it was quite simply easier to buy and read those little books than the large, antiquated Puritan volumes. Evangelical piety had become more superficial and simplistic than had been the case before. Puritans were fairly demanding. The only bit of the Puritan literary heritage that went on being printed, sold, and read was Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, which is an amazing piece of work. It's brilliant from a literary as well as from a spiritual standpoint.

D R.  T H O M A S  A R N O L D  (1795 - 1842)

I have left off reading our divines, because, as Pascal said of the Jesuits, if I had spent my time in reading them fully, I should have read a great many indifferent books.  But if I could find a great man among them, I would read him thankfully

and earnestly.  As it is, I hold John Bunyan to have been a man of incomparably greater genius than any of them, and to have given a far truer and more edifying picture of Christianity.  His “Pilgrim’s Progress” seems to be a complete reflection of Scripture, with none of the rubbish of the theologians mixed up with it.

And I have always been struck by its piety; I am now (having read it through again, after a long interval) struck equally, or even more, by its profound wisdom.

L O R D  J O H N  C A M P B E L L  ( 1779 – 1861 )

Little do we know what is for our permanent good. Had Bunyan than been discharged, and allowed to enjoy liberty, he no doubt would have returned to his trade, filling up his intervals of leisure with field-preaching; his name would not have survived his own generation, and he could have done little for the religious improvement of mankind. The prison doors were shut upon him for twelve years. Being cut off from the external world, he communed with his own soul; and inspired by Him who touched Elijah’s hallowed lips with fire, he composed the noblest of allegories, ( “The Pilgrim’s Progress”) the merit of which was first discovered by the lowly, but which is now landed by the most refined critics; and which has done more to awaken piety, and to enforce the precepts of Christian morality, than all the sermons which have been published by all the prelates of the Anglican church. 

A N O N Y M O U S  (The Gentleman’s Magazine -1741)

There never was an Allegory better designed, or better supported than “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” The Wits may perhaps take Offence at the Respect I pay to this religious Romance; but if we consider the Universal good reception it hath met

with both at home and abroad, we must either allow that it has Merit, or that ourselves and our neighbours are void of Penetration and true Judgement.

B I S H O P  J.  C.  R Y L E  ( 1816 - 1900)

But, after all, it is one thing to admire the brilliant composition of this parable, and quite another to understand the spiritual lessons it contains. The eye of the intellect can often see beauties while the heart remains asleep, and sees nothing at all. Hundreds read “The Pilgrim's Progress” with deep interest, to whom the struggle for the celestial city is foolishness. Thousands are familiar with every word of the parable before us today, who never consider how it applies to their own situation. Their conscience is deaf to the cry, which ought to ring in their ears as they read, "You are the man!" Their heart never turns to God with the solemn question, "Lord, is this my picture? Lord, is it me?"

Read John Bunyan's immortal work, the Pilgrim's Progress. Read it again and again, if you wish to attain simplicity in preaching.

I do not doubt that the one volume of Pilgrim's Progress, written by a man who knew hardly any book but his Bible, and was ignorant of Greek and Latin, will prove in the last day to have done more for the benefit of the world, than all the works of the schoolmen put together. 

Wise and beautiful is the comparison made by that master of allegory, John Bunyan, in the "Pilgrim's Progress." 

B E N J A M I N  J O W E T T (1817-1893)

Richard Baxter published 168 volumes; and among them one book which, with the single exception of the Pilgrim’s Progress, has had a wider diffusion and found a nearer way to the hearts of religious men in England than any other devotional writing, and may still be read for its style as well as for its high merits with a deep interest, The Saints Everlasting Rest.

F R A N K  W.  B O R E H A M  (1871 – 1959)

When in England recently, I spent a good deal of my time with John Bunyan. He is great company. If ever I am shipwrecked, Robinson-Crusoe-fashion, on a desert island, I hope that the misadventure will not deprive me of his delightful society. If, as the ship heels to and fro upon the reef, I am able to save only one book in addition to my Bible, it will certainly be Bunyan. I have not yet decided whether, in that hour of tumult and agitation, I shall select “The Pilgrim's Progress”" or “Grace Abounding”.  Probably the latter. Perhaps, in the sudden crisis, the mind will automatically make the wisest choice. And, anyhow, it does not much matter. So long as I have either one or the other, I shall, in my isolation, be far from poor. 

J.  R.  M I L L E R  (1840 – 1912)

Hence, while everybody reads, few read the really profitable books. Modern culture knows all about the spectacular literature that flashes up and dies out again--but knows nothing of history or true poetry or really great fiction. Many people who have not the courage to confess ignorance of the last novel, regard it as no shame to be utterly ignorant of the majestic old classics. In the floods of ephemeral literature, the great books are buried away. “The Pilgrim's Progress”" is only known from being referred to so often, while the thousand summer volumes on sentimental religion are eagerly devoured by pious people!

P RO F E S S O R   J O H N  R.  M U E T H E R

"Read any new books lately?" Visitors to the Reformed Theological Seminary library often ask this, eager to learn what to add to their reading lists. Before introducing them to what's new, though, I remind them of what's old that they should be reading. High on that list, yet often overlooked, is “The Pilgrim's Progress,” the all-time best-selling Protestant devotional book, though that might be hard to imagine after visiting most Christian bookstores or church libraries. Even in abridged and modern versions (which I don't recommend), John Bunyan's classic has been crowded out by "left behind" novels, purpose-driven how-to books, and Jabez-inspired prayer manuals.

Read any old books lately? How about “The Pilgrim's Progress?” "This book will

make a traveler of thee," Bunyan wrote in his introduction. It will reorient us to see the Christian life as one of gradual progress through a dangerous journey - a sojourn that works out salvation with fear and trembling, relying on the provisions of a gracious God through every step. So read - or re-read – “The Pilgrim's Progress.” Only be sure to continue past page 35.

R O D N E Y  ‘G Y P S Y’  S M I T H  (1860 - 1947)

Soon my father was talking about the condition of his soul. Said he to Woodlock and Bartholomew, “Brothers I have a great burden that I must get removed. A hunger is gnawing at my heart. I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep. If I do not get this want satisfied I shall die!” And then the brothers said, “Cornelius, we feel just the same. We have talked about this to each other for weeks.” They drove their wagon to a beer-shop and told the land-lady how they felt. When the brothers spoke to her she began to weep, and said, “I am somewhat in your case, and I have a book upstairs that will just suit you, for it makes me cry every time I read it.” She brought the book down and lent it to the brothers to read. It was "The Pilgrim's Progress".  A young man who came out of the public house offered to read from the book to them. When he got to the point where Pilgrim’s burden drops off as he looks at the cross, Bartholomew cried, “That is what I want, my burden removed. If God does not save me I shall die!” All the brothers at that moment felt the smart of sin, and wept like little children. That night my father dreamt a dream. In the dream he was travelling through a rugged country over rocks and boulders, thorns and briars. His hands were bleeding and his feet torn. Utterly exhausted and worn out, he fell to the ground. A person in white rainment appeared to him, and as this person lifted upon his hands my father saw the mark of the nails, and then he knew it was the Lord. The figure in white said to my father, showing him His hands, “I suffered this for you, and when you give up all and trust Me I will save you.” Then

my father awoke. This dream shows how much the reading of "The Pilgrim's Progress” had impressed him. This was the beginning of a new life for my father. 

F R E D E R I C K  B.  M E Y E R  (1847 – 1929)

Let us therefore sit down and let that thought permeate the heart. Have your pencil, if you will, and begin to put down all the manifestations in your life of God's love to you, and methinks the more you write, like Bunyan's  “The Pilgrim's Progress”, the more it will grow on you, and you will fill one sheet of paper and want another, and then another and another.  

B E N J A M I N  F R A N K L I N  (1706-1790)

From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with "The Pilgrim's Progress," my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.

In crossing the bay, we met with a squall that tore our rotten sails to pieces, prevented our getting into the Kill and drove us upon Long Island. In our way, a drunken Dutchman, who was a passenger too, fell overboard; when he was sinking, I reached through the water to his shock pate, and drew him up, so that we got him in again. His ducking sobered him a little, and he went to sleep, taking first out of

his pocket a book, which he desir'd I would dry for him. It proved to be my old favorite author, Bunyan's “The Pilgrim's Progress”, in Dutch, finely printed on good paper, with copper cuts, a dress better than I had ever seen it wear in its own language. I have since found that it has been translated into most of the languages of Europe, and suppose it has been more generally read than any other book, except perhaps the Bible. Honest John (Bunyan) was the first that I know of who mix'd narration and dialogue; a method of writing very engaging to the reader, who in the most interesting parts finds himself, as it were, brought into the company and present at the discourse.

D R.  J.  V E R N O N  M c  G E E  (1904-1988)

We should note that our knowledge of it ( Heaven) brings courage and comfort to the heart, and I am sure that one of the reasons so many of God's people have become discouraged along life's pathway is because they've lost sight of the place where they are going. If you've read John Bunyan's "The Pilgrim's Progress "  (which, by the way, was Bunyan's masterful expression of his own experience) you will find that this man Christian, though he went down into the Slough of Despond or went down into Doubting Prison, always could come out and face the future and move upward on the pilgrim pathway because, as he says, "I am on the way to the Celestial City.”

D R.  S A M U E L  J O H N S O N  (1709- 1784) 

Was there ever anything written by mere man that was wished longer by its readers, excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the “The Pilgrim’s Progress”?

His Pilgrim’s Progress has great merit, both for invention, imagination, and the conduct of the story; and it has had the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind. Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale. It is remarkable, that it begins very much like the poem of Dante; yet there was no translation of Dante when Bunyan wrote.

This is the great merit of the book, that the most cultivated man cannot find anything to praise more highly, and the child knows nothing more amusing.

E L I S A B E T H   E L L I O T  (1926 -)

And I want to ask you, have you ever heard another story of lions that turned out to be chained? Yes, it was in that wonderful book Pilgrim's Progress. I hope you've read that book..... In closing I want to read just a short passage from Pilgrim's Progress, which is a very clear picture of what the cross is about.

G E O R G E  C R A B B E  (1754 - 1832) Caroline, ( his eldest daughter ) now six years old, reads incessantly and insatiably. She has been travelling with John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’, and enjoying a pleasure never, perhaps, to be repeated. The veil of religious mystery, that so beautifully covers the outward and visible adventures, is quite enchanting. The dear child was caught reading by her sleeping maid at five o’clock this morning, impatient – ‘tis our nature – to end her pleasure.

J O N A T H A N  S W I F T  D. D.  (1667 - 1745)

Some gentlemen, abounding in their university erudition, are apt to fill their sermons with philosophical terms and notions of the metaphysical or abstracted kind; which generally have one advantage, to be equally understood by the wife, the vulgar, and the preacher himself.  I have been better entertained, and more informed, by a few pages in “The Pilgrim's Progress”, than by a long discourse upon the will and the intellect, and ample or complex ideas.

G E O R G E  K U L P  (1845-1939)

Brother, sister, God has a plan for every life -- for yours, for mine, not one left out. There are no accidents with God. ‘ALL things work together for good to them that love God.’ Trials are a part of your life as God planned it; trials which try your

faith are more precious than gold that perisheth -- not the faith is more precious, but the trials of your faith. Bedford jail was a part of God's plan for John Bunyan for twelve long years, but out of that trial of his faith came "The Pilgrim's Progress " to bless the world; honey out of the lion to nourish travelers along life's pathway.

H O R A T I U S  B O N A R  (1808-1889)

Nowhere out of Scripture do we find it (the Christian life as warfare) better described than by Bunyan in his “The Pilgrim's Progress.” He knew the reality, and has painted it well. Our life is then a warfare; a warfare which enters into everything; because at every step our great adversary stands to bar our progress, and to prevent us glorifying God in each portion and transaction of life. You complain of the power of sin. Well, fight! Of the difficulty of believing. Well, fight!

E I F I O N  E V A N S

Wouldest thou see a Truth within a Fable? Then read my fancies, they will stick like Burs come hither, And lay my Book, thy head, and Heart together. So wrote John Bunyan in his "Apology" to “The ilgrim's Progress” at its first appearance in 1678. Time has proven him right. Few books, even of the powerful Puritan era, make as lasting an

impression on head and heart as his. God's truth is onveyed effectively by Bunyan's fiction.

C.  S.  L E W I S  (1898-1963)

There are books which, while didactic in intention, are read with delight by people who do not want their teaching and may not believe that they have anything to teach. This is the class to which “The Pilgrim’s Progress” belongs. Most of it has been read and re-read by those who were indifferent or hostile to its theology, and even by children who perhaps were hardly aware of it. 

The greater part of it (“The Pilgrim’s Progress”) is enthralling narrative or genuinely dramatic dialogue.

Anyone who is honestly trying to be a Christian will soon find his intelligence sharpened: one of the reasons why it needs no special education to be a Christian is that Christianity is an education itself. That is why an uneducated believer like Bunyan was able to write a book that has astonished the whole world.

A L B E R T  B A R N E S (1798 – 1870)

The best sustained allegory of any considerable length in the world is, doubtless, Bunyan’s Pilgrim's Progress ; and yet this is among the most popular of all books.

G E O R G E  M a c D O N A L D  LL. D. (1824 – 1905)

For there dawned upon his ( Robert Falconer) mind the vision of one Sunday afternoon. Betty (his mother ) had gone to church, and he was alone with his grandmother, reading The Pilgrim's Progress to her, when, just as Christian knocked at the wicket-gate, a tap came to the street door, and he went to open it.

Besides The Pilgrim's Progress there were several books which shone moon-like on his darkness, and lifted something of the weight of that Egyptian gloom off his spirit.

G E O R G E  S A M P S O N  (1873 – 1950)

There is no need to say anything about the book by way of criticism; for its characters, its scenes and its phrases have become a common possession. Of course in every age there has been, and there always will be, the kind of superior person who disdains it. Such people are naught.

“The Pilgrim’s Progress” goes on forever. Creeds may change and faith may be wrecked; but the life of man is still a pilgrimage, and in its painful course he must encounter the friends and the foes, the dangers and the despairs that Bunyan’s inspired simplicity has drawn so faithfully that even children know them at once for truth.

H E N R Y  D R U M M O N D (1786 – 1860)

Is there no guide-book upon the subject, no chart or table of the logical history of the spiritual life, no chair of Spiritual Diagnosis?....... But when these works are put into the hands of the Christian teacher or minister, their utility is beyond all praise. He, as spiritual adviser, should be thoroughly acquainted with the rationale of conversion. He should know it as a physician his pharmacopoeia. He should know every phase of the human soul, in health and disease, in the fullness of joy and the blackness of despair. He should know the “Pilgrim’s Progress” better than Bunyan.

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature - Volume VII.

F. H. Ranke tells us that, as a young man at Nürnberg, he met with a copy of an edition of 1703, translated from the Dutch, which made such an impression upon him that he formed classes of young men for the study of the book.

Jung-Stilling records with what pleasure he read the book; Wieland, too, after telling an English traveler at Weimar how “The Pilgrim’s Progress” had delighted him, went on to say, “In that book I learned to read English; English literature had great influence upon me, your puritan writings particularly.

J O E L  R.  B E E K E

In my family growing up, we would pray before and after the meal. My father would also read "The Pilgrim's Progress” with us on Sunday evenings. However, we would never discuss or engage each other in family worship. So when I was asked once to speak on family worship, I was convicted that I had not been leading my family in worship how I ought. My siblings and I all have agreed that we are most grateful for my mother’s prayer life and my father’s reading of "The Pilgrim's Progress” and teaching us from it. Family worship time is the most important thing I do in my life. I wouldn’t miss it for anything in the world. It isn’t perfect but it is critical.

Joel Beeke was asked what three books have been most helpful to him as a Christian and as a minister. He replied; "….The second book was Pilgrim's Progress. It has had a profound effect on me since childhood, when my father used to read part of it every Sunday evening after church. After I was converted in my late teens, I would ask him numerous questions about the various characters in this amazing allegory. The many spiritual lessons that I learned from Dad's answers, and from my later study of this justly famous book, I simply cannot put into words."

D R.  D E R E K  W.  H.  T H O M A S  (1953 - )

 Some of you have been reading Bunyan since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, and others of you, I’ve heard in recent days, have never read Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”.  So let me urge you to read one of the greatest Christian classics of all time!

Why Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”?  Well, because next to the Bible, John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress” is the best-selling Christian book of all time.

L O R D  M A C A U L A Y  T H O M A S  B A B  I  N G T O N (1800 - 1859)

That wonderful book ( The Pilgrim’s Progress” ) while it obtains admiration from the most fastidious critics, is loved by those who are too simple to admire it.

P H I L I P  S C H A F F (1819 – 1893)

The real object precedes the picture of the artist; the hero, the epic. Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” presupposes the Christian experience of which it is a beautiful allegory.

The Pastor of Hermas was one of the most popular books, if not the most popular book, in the Christian Church during the second, third, and fourth centuries. It occupied a position analogous in some respects to that of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s  Progress in modern times; and critics have frequently compared the two works.

E L L E N  G. W H I T E (1827-1915)

Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners have guided many feet into the path of life.

A L E X A N D E R  B.  B R U C E (1831-1899)

Witness that wondrous book the Pilgrim’s Progress, which contains more wine in it than may be found in the ponderous folios of some wordy authors, whose works are but huge wine-casks with very little wine in them, and sometimes hardly even the scent of it.

J O H N  R I C H A R D  G R E E N  (1837 – 1883)

It ("The Pilgrim's Progress ") is now the most popular and the most widely known of all English books. In none do we see more clearly the new imaginative force which had been given to the common life of Englishmen by their study of the Bible. Its English is the simplest and the homeliest English which has ever been used by any great English writer; but it is the English of the Bible. The images of the "Pilgrim's Progress" are the images of prophet and evangelist; it borrows for its tenderer outbursts the very verse of the Song of Songs, and pictures the Heavenly City in the words of the Apocalypse. But so completely has the Bible become Bunyan's life that one feels its phrases as the natural expression of his thoughts. He has lived in the Bible till its words have become his own. He has lived among its visions and voices of heaven till all sense of possible unreality has died away. He tells his tale with such a perfect naturalness that allegories become living things, that the Slough of Despond and Doubting Castle are as real to us as places we see

every day, that we know Mr. Legality and Mr. Worldly Wiseman as if we had met them in the street. It is in this amazing reality of impersonation that Bunyan's imaginative genius specially displays itself. But this is far from being his only excellence.

In its range, in its directness, in its simple grace, in the ease with which it changes from lively dialogue to dramatic action, from simple pathos to passionate earnestness, in the subtle and delicate fancy which often suffuses its childlike words, in its playful humour, its bold character-painting, in the even and balanced power which passes without effort from the Valley of the Shadow of Death to the land "where the Shining Ones commonly walked, because it was on the borders of heaven," in its sunny kindliness unbroken by one bitter word, "The Pilgrim's Progress " is among the noblest of English poems.

J I M  D.  G A B L E S

Pilgrim’s Progress is the greatest book in the world next to the Bible. It’s not just my opinion, but many people hold to this persuasion who are critics and give book reviews. If you really want to know what Christianity really is, read  Pilgrim’s Progress.  If you haven’t read  Pilgrim’s Progress, then you haven’t read the greatest book next to the Bible.  It’s the Bible with pictures.   As you open  the book and begin reading it,  you will see the Bible begin coming out at you in pictorial form and language.   It is experimental in nature.   

A Pastor gave the book to a business friend of his one time and he read through just a couple of chapters and came and gave it back and said, “You can have it, that’s the most depressing thing I have ever read. I want nothing to do with it.” It upsets people, and there’s a reason for it. Because it gets down to searching the human heart.  

So why has this book enjoyed such great and tremendous success? Because of its truth to the form of the Bible. It reveals the heart of the true Christian. Christians of all denominations enjoy this book because of this experience. If you have truly been born again, you are going to love the presentation of Pilgrim’s Progress. But if you have not been born again, you will be miserable before it’s over and I would only hope that it would be a sign of God’s grace working in your heart.  

J AM E S  F.  F O R R E S T  P H. D

It is consequently hardly surprising that The Pilgrim’s Progress should have met so early with “good acceptation among the people,” as publisher Nathaniel Ponder happily observed in an appendix to the fourth edition of 1680. Furnishing as it did much counsel, caution and consolation amid the toilsome traffic of daily life, it bore a message that was at once both useful and agreeable. What is more remarkable is the degree of its success as a best-seller.  -  Nowhere, it seems, has the scheme of salvation been set forth more attractively and with such force and clarity. -  It is this concrete quality of the work, founded as it is upon the bedrock of human need and aspiration, that grounds our experience of it in reality and accounts in large measure for its permanence.  -  Like all classics, The Pilgrim’s Progress asserts values that are of a timeless validity, and what remains from our experience of it is a vision of human life and destiny which far transcends any other consideration. Through its emphasis on the worth of the individual soul, its forceful expression of a life beyond the present and the meaning this gives to the here-and-now, the dream can yet deliver a message supremely relevant to our nuclear age. For still the cry remains: “What shall I do to be saved?”

The late Dr. Frank Gacbelein in his lecture-essay “Encounter with Greatness” relates a comment made to him by Dr. Emile Caillet of Princeton University. Caillet said:In my own estimation, next to the Bible which is in a class by itself, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress rates highest among all classics … the reason I have to put The Pilgrim’s Progress next only to the Bible is that as I proceed along the appointed course, I need not only an authoritative book of inspiration and instruction; I need a map. We all do. My considered judgment … is that Bunyan’s

masterpiece has provided us with the most excellent map to be found anywhere. Why, having read and reread the book some fifty times, I see that map most vividly unfold under my gaze, in whatever place or situation I find myself. What clearer answer could one find to his basic questions, “What kind of place is this?” and “What should I do in the situation?” What more adequate climax to the human quest for truth?

P H I L I P  Y A N C E Y

For several centuries, The Pilgrim's Progress sold more copies annually than any book except the Bible. Rereading it recently, I was struck by how John Bunyan's version of the Christian life differs from what I read in most Christian books today…. The Pilgrim's Progress proved a reliable guidebook for millions of Christians over the years. Cheery, problem-solving books offer a much more attractive road map today, but I cannot help wondering what we have lost along the way.

Prof.  C Y N T H I A  W A L L 

The Pilgrim’s Progress has been many things to many people over the last three centuries. From a small advisory tale dropped tentatively into a local, working class, seventeenth-century Baptist community (where its author was not sure of a

welcome for this strange new fanciful genre), the book rippled wider and wider across class, gender, race, religion, nation and age. It inflected literary genres from ballad to epic, parody to imitation, drama to novel. It is haunting and comforting, strange and familiar, funny and terrible, simple and powerful.

E R N E S T  C.  R E I S I N G E R (1919 – 2004)

Next to the Bible I think Pilgrim’s Progress is one of the five most valuable books I have ever read. I have read it eighteen times and get new Biblical insight each time I read it.

To point out the dangers that accompany the defense of truth, I refer to Mr. Valiant-for-Truth, a character from The Pilgrim's Progress, my favorite book next to the Bible. In John Bunyan's metaphor can be found some heart lessons.

Prof.  H E N R I   A.  T A L O N

If there existed a technician in allegory stupid enough to judge “The Pilgrim’s Progress” solely by the rigid rules of the art, he would certainly declare it defective. But genius is not the slave of rules and Bunyan’s story is a superb allegory in spite of everything….His slightest flick of the brush is more suggestive than another man’s full stroke.

R O G E R  S C R U T O N  (1944- )

Although my father was a teacher, books did not play a large part in our home. Those that could be found in the house were of a useful or improving kind: encyclopedias, the Bible,  Paigrave's Golden Treasury, some gardening books, the Penguin Odyssey, and memoirs of the Second World War. By way of shielding herself from my father's gloom, my mother dabbled a little in exotic religions, which meant that pamphlets by Indian gurus would from time to time occupy the front room table. But neither she nor my father had any conception of the book, as a hidden door in the scheme of things that opens into another world.

My first inkling of this experience came from Bunyan. The year was 1957. I was 13, a day boy at our next-door grammar school, where I learned to distinguish books into two kinds: on the syllabus; and off it. Pilgrim's Progress must surely have been off the syllabus; nothing else can account for the astonishment with which I turned its pages. I was convalescing from flu, sitting in the garden on a fine spring day. A few yards to my left was our house a plain whitewashed Edwardian box, part of a ribbon development that stretched along the main road from High Wycombe halfway to Amersham. To the right stood the neo-Georgian Grammar School with its frontage of lawn. Opposite was the ugly new housing estate that spoiled our view. I sat in a nondescript corner of post-war England; nothing could conceivably happen in such surroundings, except the things that happen anywhere: a bus passing, a dog barking, football on the wireless, shepherd's pie for tea. 

And then suddenly I was in a visionary landscape, where even the most ordinary things come dressed in astonishment. In Bunyan's world words are not barriers or defences, as they are in suburban England, but messages sent to the heart. They jump into you from the page, as though in answer to a summons. This, surely, is

the sign of a great writer, that he speaks to you in your voice, by making his voice your own. 

I did not put the book down until I had finished it. And for months afterwards I strode through our suburb side by side with Christian, my inner eye fixed on the Celestial City.

F .  R.   L E A V I S  (1895-1978)

For what makes “The Pilgrim’s Progress” a great book, one of the great classics, is its humanity – its rich, poised and mature humanity.  

D R.  T H O M A S  K.  A S C O L

It was in Greek class that I first learned to love Pilgrim’s Progress. Dr. Vaughan opened the first several classes of that course by reading to us from Bunyan’s classic work. One Wednesday, he paused from his reading long enough to ask the class, “How many of you have never read Pilgrim’s Progress?” Just as my honesty was overcoming my embarrassment and my hand began to lift off the desk, he mercifully added, “Don’t raise your hands. I would be too discouraged to see how many of you are in that category. But if you have not, then you absolutely must read it …” His words were very slow and punctuated at this point, and I was already writing down the title to make sure that it got put on my “to read some day” list when he finished his sentence, “… before the end of the week!” That class full of preacher boys was absolutely silent. I think we expected—or at least hoped—that he would add some kind of qualifier to his exhortation (like, “I’m just

kidding” or “but if you can’t do that, then make sure you get to it before you graduate”). But he simply let his words hang in the air for several weighty moments before resuming his reading. I have no idea if anyone else in that class took his words seriously, but by the grace of God and out of respect for my professor I went that day to the bookstore (actually I went to two—the Baptist bookstore did not have it) and bought my first copy of Pilgrim’s Progress. By the end of that week Bunyan’s book became one of my favorites. Twenty-five years and several editions later, it remains one of the most helpful and valuable books I have in my library.

L O U I S A  M A Y  A S C O T T  (1832 – 1888)

“Pilgrim's Progress,” Krummacher's " Parables," Miss Edgeworth, and the best of the dear old fairy tales made the reading hour the pleasantest of our day. On Sundays we had a simple service of Bible stories, hymns, and conversation about the state of our little consciences and the conduct of our childish lives which never will be forgotten.

His ( my father Bronson Alcott) favorite books in boyhood, and, for that matter, in manhood, were the Bible and Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," which he read and reread and commented upon. Years later he mentions in his journal that he made it a practice to read "Pilgrim's Progress" every year, which is a remarkable record to the modern boy and girl who find it difficult to struggle through that wonderful allegory even once.

Prof.  M I C H A E L  S C H M I D T  O.B.E

What makes this story, predictable in its outcome, passage by passage derivative of the Bible, so compelling, so durable, is the reality of its allegorical figuration, and its humour. It is the best fruits of Puritan culture, setting out to include every person among its readers.…. Bunyan is a most uncommon common man, a man of the people and of a demanding, democratic, accountable faith……..His book does not limit itself to a scholarly or cultured class, nor to the rich and powerful. Yet it is figurative, it plays constantly between the Bible and allegory, it is more complex in conception and consistent in execution than any English prose work that precedes it. It is original without meaning to be; it entertains even the pagan heart.  

G R A C E  C O L L I N S  H A R G I S. Ph.D.

In most of the world, only the Bible has been more widely read than John Bunyan’s story of The Pilgrim’s Progress. This classic allegory of the Christian life has appeared in well over four thousand English-language editions and has been translated into scores of other languages. Generation after generation has found blessing and help in its pages. …. One might think that all believers have somewhat the same religious experience, but John Bunyan saw variety. A pastor and a close observer of individuals, Bunyan gave his three main characters—Christian, Faithful, and Hopeful—different weaknesses, different strengths, and certain different experiences. Surely everyone, believer or not, can find elements of himself somewhere in this story. 

Prof.  I S A B E L  H O F M E Y R 

With its riveting plot, memorable tableaux, and powerful images, the story provides readers with a language to talk about the emotional and personal experience of religion. It was indeed a book of ‘heart power,’ ‘branded in imagination,’ a text ‘suited to every season of human life.’

H A R R I E T  B E E C H E R  S T O W E  (1811 – 1896)

But of all the books that I read at this period, there was none that went to my heart like Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress.' I read it and re-read it night and day; I took it to bed with me and hugged it to my bosom while I slept; every different edition that I could find I seized upon and read with as eager a curiosity as if it had been a new story throughout; and I read with the unspeakable satisfaction of most devoutly believing that everything which ‘Honest John' related was a real verity, an actual occurrence. Oh that I could read that most inimitable book once more with the same solemn conviction of its literal truth, that I might once more enjoy the same untold ecstasy!

W I L L I A M  C O W P E R  (1731 – 1800)

‘Oh thou, whom, borne on fancy’s eager wingBack to the season of life’s happy spring,

I pleased remember, and, while memory yetHolds fast her office here, can ne’er forget.Ingenious Dreamer! In whose well-told taleSweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail;

Whose humorous vein, strong sense, and simple style,May teach the gayest, make the gravest smile;Witty, and well employed, and like thy Lord,

Speaking in parables his slighted Word.I name thee not, lest so despised a name

Should move a sneer at thy deserved fame.Yet e’en in transitory life’s late day,

That mingles all my brown with sober gray,Revere the man, whose Pilgrim marks the road,

And guides the Progress of the soul to God.’Twere well with most, if books that could engage

Their childhood pleased them at a riper age;The man, approving what had charmed the boy,

Would die at last in comfort, peace, and joy.

J O H N  P I P E R

John Piper was asked; "What are two or three classics that you would recommend to just about anyone?" He replied; "The Bible, the most proven and most useful book, should be in your reading list every day. Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan.

Everybody, I think, who can read English can benefit from working their way through that."

E D W A R D  E V E R E T T  H A L E   Jr. Ph.d (1863 - 1932)

The "Pilgrim's Progress" is a book which many have read with the greatest interest and delight, with no knowledge of the author, except perhaps that his name was John Bunyan, and no knowledge at all of the period in which the book was written. You may read it so yourself, and you like it, and understand it. It is one of the great things about this book, that it makes its appeal to all, young and old, ignorant as well as learned. It speaks of things that everybody feels, in a way that everybody understands. The "Pilgrim's Progress," then, is made up of thoughts and ideas that are familiar to all, and the story is told in homely and familiar language. And yet everybody has read it and will read it for a long time to come. No other book written by an Englishman has been so widely read, and probably none has taken such a hold of the memory and imagination of those who have read it.

Rev. J. O. P E C K, D.D

The Pilgrim's Progress is the most suggestive and spiritual guide for the young Christian.

Rev. J A M E S  R O D G E R S, D.D (1800 – 1868)

This book possesses one quality which, while it proves the genius of the writer, excites a most happy influence upon its readers, and prevents them from becoming

fatigued and keeps up their interest in it to the end. I refer to its pleasing variety. Instead of being wearied with a dull monotony, you find yourself in reading this book like a traveler passing through a country of surpassing beauty and ever varying scenery. He has scarcely time to admire the beauty and grandeur of one scene until another opens to his view, differing from the last in other characters of beauty, and then another and another until he comes to the last and then his only regret is that his journey is ended. And so it is in reading this book. There is not a scene through which the reader is conducted that does not possess some striking beauty, while each scene differs from the last, and thus from the beginning to the end of the book he is constantly passing through scenes of ever varying beauty. And then in addition to all there is another feature of the book which adds to its variety, that is, the different characters which our pilgrims meet with on their journey. These characters are drawn to the life. You can hardly help, when reading them, but be reminded of some persons whom you have seen as you passed along the journey of life. These are not mere creatures of fancy, but men with whom Bunyan was acquainted and whose characters he had carefully studied, and the generation of them has not died out, for they are all to be met with at the present day.

Rev. G E O R G E  B U R D E R

It is somewhat surprising that the Pilgrim's Progress should be universally esteemed, seeing that it condemns the far greater part of those who read it. To instance in this character only: Does not Ignorance speak the language of most nominal Christians? Do we not hear them say with him, "They hope well, for their hearts are always full of good motions: - they have very good hearts, and they believe in Christ for justification?" but let their condition be truly examined, and it will appear, "that they never had one good or right thought of themselves in their lives; that their faith is false, fantastical and deceitful, and that they do not trust in

Christ, but in themselves." How many deceive their own souls in this matter? They say they believe in Christ, and trust in him, though they never saw their lost condition, and consequently their need of him; are unacquainted with the nature of his righteousness, and ridicule the idea of its imputation to the believer. Their dependence is on what they do, or (which is nearly the same) on what is done in them. They despise Christian experience as enthusiasm, and think that trusting to the righteousness of Christ, leads to licentiousness. Such is the language, both of the parlour and the pulpit of this day; and yet, though it here so justly exposed, everybody admires the Pilgrim's Progress!

S A M U E L  B A M F O R D ( 1788 – 1872 )

The first book which attracted my particular notice was "The Pilgrim's Progress," with rude Woodcuts; it excited my curiosity in an extraordinary degree. There was "Christian knocking at the strait gate," his "fight with Apollyon," his "passing near the lions," his "escape from Giant Despair," his perils at "Vanity Fair," his arrival in "the land of Beulah," and his final passage to "Eternal Best" ; all these were matters for the exercise of my feeling and my imagination. And then, when it was explained to me, as it was by my mother and my sister, how that Christian was a godly man, who left his wife, and his children, and all he had in the world, to go forth and seek the blessed land afar off; and that, through many trials, and perils, and hardships, he arrived at that land, and entered another life, never to return; that his wife and family, in hopes of joining him, also left their home and journeyed the same weary and perilous way, my heart was filled with pleasing, yet melancholy impressions. The whole pilgrimage was to me a story mournfully soothing, like that of a light coming from an eclipsed sun.

J. H U D S O N  T A Y L O R (1832-1905)

Mother's sweet voice made hymn-singing a delight. No talks were like her talks over the Bible, not to speak of Pilgrim's Progress and other books that only appeared that day.......Yes, home was home indeed and the nearest place to heaven, because it held that mother in whose heart was shed abroad the very love of God.

J. R.  B R O O M E

A meeting at a carpenter's bench at Ramsgate about 1895 was the means of the call by grace of my late grandfather, John William Walley. Working beside him for three months was Robert Brooker, later pastor of the Gospel Standard (GS) chapel at Hastings. My grandfather was the only one of eleven brothers and sisters to be converted. He had been brought up in a Congregational Church, but had never heard the truth. He offered Mr Brooker a Congregational magazine. Mr Brooker declined to take it and said to him, 'This is more in my line,' and gave him Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. It was the means in the Lord's hand of opening his eyes.

Rev. J A M E S  B L A C K  D. D. (1826 - 1968)

The Pilgrim's Progress is the word of God translated into Christian experience. By the pious, it has therefore ever been reckoned a valuable companion to the Bible and, next to it, has been placed above every other religious book.

J O H N  K E L M A N (1864 - 1929)

The Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe are perhaps the two best-known stories in the world, and they are not so far remote from one another as they seem.

Rev. E R N E S T  W.  B A R N E S (1874 - 1953)

In the greatest allegory the world has seen, Bunyan showed how a single soul could triumph over temptation and reach the heavenly city.

B I L L  H O B B S

What sort of companion do you want? Frequently chosen over the years have been John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress - you can't go wrong if you get the story of your life from the pen of the tinker, for we are all pilgrims on our way to the heavenly city.

Rev. I S L A Y  B U R N S D.D.

I do not remember, at that time, any books which greatly interested my brother ( William C. Burns; Hudson Taylor's mentor ) except these two — one of which

was the Pilgrim's Progress, which he read over and over again during a time of confinement occasioned by an accident.

W I L L I A M  C.  B U R N S (1815 – 1868)

In the great mercy and by the gracious and constant aid of the Lord and Saviour I was enabled on the 10th to complete the last revised copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim (1st part) in Chinese, which has occupied us from June 1st, 1852, until now, with the exception of a month at the end of last summer, when through feverish sickness I was obliged to lay it aside. "

J O H N  K E L M A N (1864 - 1929)

The Pilgrim's Progress and Robinson Crusoe are perhaps the two best-known stories in the world, and they are not so far remote from one another as they seem.

Prof. A R N O L D  K E T T L E (1916 - 1986)

Almost every household in eighteenth-century England in which any member was literate must have possessed a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress. Lady Wishfort in The Way of The World might be cynical about Bunyan but her cynicism was in itself a tribute to the universality of his book, even apparently among that small,

fashionable section of London society that had arrogated to itself the title of the 'world'.

R O B E R T  B L A T C H F O R D (1851 - 1943)

Bunyan was the friend and teacher of my childhood; the Pilgrim's Progress was my first book. It was for me one of the books to be "chewed and digested," and in my tenth year I knew it almost all by heart . . . . . I know I used to sit by the hour to rock the baby's cradle, and that I used to study the Pilgrim's Progress as I rocked . . . . . . I used at times, when the baby was restless, to ride it upon my knee, and recite to it passages out of Bunyan, or sing to it the verses - they are but feeble poetry - from that wonderful book, to tunes of my own composing. Every word that Bunyan wrote he believed, every incident of his great allegory was real to him. And it was all as real and true to me. Armed with two feet of broken stage sword-blade, and wearing a paper helmet and breastplate, I went out as Greatheart and did deeds of valour and puissance upon an obsolete performing poodle, retired from Astley's Circus, who was good enough to double the parts of Giant Grim and two lions. The stairway to the bedroom was the Hill Difficulty, the dark lobby was the Valley of the Shadow, and often I swam in great fear and peril, and with profuse sputterings, across the black River of Death which lay between kitchen and scullery. Well, all things considered, I cannot be expected to review the Pilgrim's Progress as I should review a new novel by Beatrice Harraden or Thomas Hardie. Criticism of Bunyan's work is beyond me. I might as well try to criticise the Lord's Prayer…

Prof.  D A V I D  F.  W E L L S  (1939 - )

The Pilgrim’s Progress is now a Christian classic, read devotionally even, so it is hard for us to understand how its ideas once landed its author in prison! Bunyan was a Puritan and the kind of serious, biblical faith he advocated was not welcome at the time in England.  Today, his book is just as radical but not in the way in which it once was. It is radical because it sets out the biblical understanding of Christian life with power and great insight and it does so at a time when this kind of understanding has faded a bit even in the churches.

The journey does not even start for Pilgrim until his burden of sin has been dropped at the foot of the Cross.  Entering the Christian life is easy; it is the journey that is hard.  And the river of death at the end is not there to cleanse the soul - as many moderns imagine - but to sweep some into unfathomable depths and others into the presence of the King.  It is, then, a book that is all about living in the world with all of its pressures, allure, temptations, sorrows, and trials.  And this is all viewed with a clear-eyed way that is insightful and wonderfully realistic.  No wonder this book has endured across the centuries.

May it find many new readers today!

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