Conclusion

These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. HEBREWS 11:13

At the end of the First Part of The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan turns to his reader in a short poem. He has told his dream, he says; now see if you can interpret it, to yourself or to your neighbour. Take heed of misinterpreting it; do not play with the outside of the dream, but look within the veil. It is a fair challenge to put at the end of this book too. We have walked the road with Christian and Hopeful, and with Christiana and her company, and we have listened to Bunyan telling the story of his own soul. What is the dream about?

The road

It is about a road. The Christian life, for Bunyan, is a journey with a beginning and an end. It begins with a burden and a book and a cry: What shall I do to be saved? It passes through a narrow gate that is opened with all the heart to anyone who knocks. It goes by the cross, where the burden falls and is seen no more. And then it goes on — up hills, down into valleys, through a fair where everything is for sale, past castles and counterfeit pilgrims and pleasant meadows that lead off the way — until it comes to a river with no bridge and a city on the other side.

The Person

And it is about a Person. Everything on the road depends on Christ. Goodwill at the gate, the man with the oil behind the wall, the cross and the sepulchre, the Lord of the hill who slew him that had the power of death, the King who opens the gate at last — all are Christ. The sentence that made Bunyan was not about the road at all, but about where his righteousness was: in heaven, at God’s right hand, in Jesus Christ Himself. The road is hard because the world, the flesh and the devil are hard. But it is safe, because He walks it with us and has already arrived at the end.

Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. HEBREWS 12:2

What Bunyan offers us

Why should we still read a seventeenth-century tinker? Because he tells the truth about the Christian life. He does not pretend it is easy. His hero falls into bogs, turns aside, sleeps, loses his assurance, is beaten, imprisoned, tempted to despair and to self-destruction, and dies in terror. And yet his hero gets home. There are few more honest books, and few more hopeful.

Because he knew the fearful and the weak. Mr Fearing and Feeble-mind and Much-afraid, the man in the Slough and the man in the valley who hears blasphemies he did not choose, are drawn with a tenderness that only someone who had been there could manage. Many anxious believers have found in Bunyan the first person who seemed to understand them.

Reading him wisely

We have also tried to read him honestly. The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory, not Scripture, and not every detail of Christian’s journey will be ours. Bunyan’s own soul-history includes an anxiety so extreme that his readers need to handle it with care, especially those who are tender of conscience; the road out of it, for him and for us, was to look away from self to Christ. His polemics against Rome and his assumptions about women belong to his century. None of these things diminishes him. They make him a real man, and his book a real book, to be read under the Bible and not beside it.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21

Your own dream

The best thing this book can do is send you to Bunyan’s own pages. Read The Pilgrim’s Progress, slowly, both parts. Read Grace Abounding, perhaps with a friend if you are prone to fear. And then read your own life as a pilgrim’s road. Where did your burden fall? Where have you been beaten, imprisoned, rescued? Who was your Evangelist, your Help, your Faithful, your Hopeful, your Great-heart? What key have you found in your bosom? What river is ahead?

Bunyan ends his First Part by looking into the city as the gates close behind Christian and Hopeful, and wishing himself among them. May that be where this book leaves you: not admiring a dream, but longing for the city, and walking towards it.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Draw a simple map of your own pilgrimage so far, marking the places that correspond to Bunyan’s: gate, cross, hill, valley, castle, mountain.

2. Choose one chapter of this book that spoke most directly to you, and act this week on one of its application points.

3. Decide when you will read The Pilgrim’s Progress, or read it again, and with whom.

4. Name one weak pilgrim you could help on the road, and one strong pilgrim you could ask to help you.

5. Spend time thanking God that your righteousness is in heaven, and that He will bring you over the river.

A PRAYER

Lord Jesus, You are the way, and You are the end of the way. Thank You for Your servant John Bunyan, who walked the road before me and drew it so that I could see it.

Keep me on the narrow way. Lift me out of every slough, bring me back from every by-path, and set me free from every castle of despair.

Make me a help to weak pilgrims and a faithful companion to strong ones. Let my righteousness be in You alone.

And when I come to the river, let me feel the bottom and find it good, and bring me through the gate into the city, to see Your face. Amen.