Eyes Uplift to Heaven . . . The World Behind His Back

During the fall of 1628, Thomas and Margaret Bunyan welcomed into their tiny, Bedfordshire home their firstborn son John. Thomas was a tinker, one who made and mended metal pots and utensils. Young John often participated in his father’s trade and accompanied him on business trips to Bedford, the county seat of less than a thousand people.

Though relatively poor, John learned to read and write. He received his meager education at Sir William Harper’s Grammar School in Bedford, founded exclusively “for nourishing and educating poor boys in that place.”

As young as the tender age of nine, Bunyan worried about his soul’s salvation. During his adolescence he suffered through bouts of depression and spiritual hallucinations, haunted by Calvin’s doctrine of predestination and wondering whether he was one of God’s elect.

By his own admission, the teenaged Bunyan possessed both a violent temper and foul mouth. At sixteen, within a three month period, he lost his mother and a sister, then gained a step-mother. He, in turn, drifted farther from God. During his rebellion he joined the army and was assigned to a garrison fifteen miles from home.

Returning from the army in 1647, Bunyan married but continued through six years of inner torment. His new bride exerted a positive influence upon him spiritually. History has recorded little about her except that she came from a godly home, was pious, and brought as her dowry a Bible and two religious books: Arthur Dent’s The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven and Lewis Bayly’s The Practice of Piety. His reading of those books spurred Bunyan to attend the local Anglican church. He soon quit however, because of one of the vicar’s sermons against playing sports on the Sabbath.

Later Bunyan began to read the Bible. His behavior improved. Then one day in Bedford he saw three or four poor women discussing spiritual matters on a front porch. He listened intently and returned to their company often. They eventually introduced him to their nonconformist minister John Gifford, pastor of a small Baptist congregation in Bedford. Gifford began assuring Bunyan about spiritual matters in general and his own election in particular. Around that time Bunyan came upon a copy of Martin Luther’s Commentary on the Galatians. At last he felt his tortured quest for salvation had ended.