For years I have, like so many Christians, loved ‘A Pilgrim’s Progress’ and have marveled at the insights and message of ‘The Holy War’ and ‘Mansoul’. I have visited some of the places in and around Bedford associated with their author but, I confess, I knew very little of the man himself so it was with a real sense of anticipation that I picked up Frank Mott Harrison’s ‘John Bunyan‘ as my latest book of the week, trying to learn more about preaching from the lives of preachers. At the end of it I was both warmed in my heart and frustrated.

I was warmed because Harrison paints an intimate picture of a truly godly man who after a long period of growing conviction came to a deep faith in Christ and went on to be a faithful pastor, prolific writer of some of the most amazing spiritual works ever written and who also suffered intensely for his faith. Living at a time when nonconformity to the established Church was punishable under the law, Bunyan spent several long periods in prison, during which times a great deal of his unique writing work was done. It’s a story told with a difference since, as the publishers’ ‘blurb’ on the back cover puts it, “Harrison has used, in presenting the bare facts, a legitimate degree of imaginative reconstruction”. That made me a little nervous at first but it was extremely well done and helped bring to life the ‘bare facts’ that are know abut Bunyan and his family. Harrison certainly knows the times in which Bunyan lived very well and sets his subject in his context, giving the necessary background to his experiences. I really feel now that I know Bunyan and am much the better for knowing him.

However, the frustration lies in something that I have discovered to be common in many of he preachers’ lives that I have read in recent weeks - the scant attention paid to the practice and philosophy of their preaching ministry. I recognise that this is a self-imposed discipline. I am not reading these biographies just for the sake of it; my goal is to learn what made these men effective preachers, but time and again I have closed the book disappointed and little the wiser. I don’t want to read to much into that but I can’t help thinking that it suggests that the preaching aspect of their ministries is of comparatively little consequence and importance.

In Harrison’s case he makes but a few comments about Bunyan the preacher. We sometimes forget that Bunyan the writer and prisoner was also, for many years, a much loved and respected pastor. He was obviously an able and gifted preacher, much sought after, and the likes of John Owen “on every possible occasion heard the tinker when in town”. However, only tantalising insights are given; comments like, “His preaching, too, is not dependent upon what may be uttered at the moment: his sermons are studied, thought out and tested by experience. Well has it been said of Bunyan: “He in the pulpit preached Truth first, and then he in his practice preached it o’er again.”

Looking for lessons to learn from Bunyan’s life and example, the two that stand out the clearest for me have been the consistency between life and lip, as referred to above, and also Bunyan’s amazing knowledge of and intimacy with Scripture. That, of course, would not come as a surprise to anyone who has read any of his writings, they are saturated with Scriptural references and allusions. Harrison says, “Bunyan based all he wrote and said on the Bible as he had it, and as it still exists for those whose hearts and minds are attuned to Evangelical Truth……..Bunyan’s knowledge of the Bible was extraordinary. He literally breathed the Word of God, and his expositions, Spirit-guided, are founded on what the Scriptures themselves say.”