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Paradise Lost enshrines in stately verse the general scheme of Puritan theology: The Pilgrim's Progress applies that system in allegorical form to the sphere of individual life. Milton's sonorous grandeur suits the theme of God's dealing with the world and with mankind; equally well is Bunyan's language, homely yet never vulgar, simple but always adequate, racy without irreverence^ adapted to his dramatic presentation of the moral warfare waged by a human soul against the powers of evil.
One secret of the undying charm of the great Puritan allegory, is its truth to Bunyan's own nature. He describes his own experience: he paints, with vivid realism, the picture of his own inner self; the struggle of Christian is a transcript of his own spiritual conflict. He has himself been plunged into the Slough of Despond, himself fought hand-to-hand with Apollyon, himself passed through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, himself reached the Heavenly landing-place. In his Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, which bears the motto, " Come and hear all ye that fear God, and I will declare what he hath done for my soul" (Ps. Ixvi., verse 14), be has recorded, with a pen of iron and in letters of fire, his own passage from death to life. His religious autobi- ography traces his steps towards the attainment of that inward peace, which passes all human understanding because it is the Peace of God. It chronicles every fluctuation of hope and despair; it arrests and examines, with strange ingenuity of self-torture, every secret thought, every passing doubt, every momentary fear. His vivid imagination makes his feelings actors in a real drama. As a boy, he had felt the devil's claws strike into his flesh, till he all but screamed with pain. As a man, he holds soundless colloquies with Satan, whose words seem to be spoken so loudly in his ear that he almost turns round, expecting to find the tempter in bodily shape at his elbow.
The " loose, ungodly wretch " had become a " brisk talker " about religious matters, well spoken of by his neighbours before his face and even behind his back. The struggle began when he realised that he was but a "poor, painted hypocrite," ignorant of the meaning of true personal religion. Had he faith? he asked himself, and he was tempted to put his possession of the gift to the test by bidding " the puddles in the horse-pads be dry." In a vision, he saw himself shivering on the dark, frozen, snow-clad side of a high mountain, while on the other side all was bright and bathed in sunshine. At first he could find no passage in the wall which divided the two sides of the mountain; but at length he found a gap, through which, with much "sideling striving," he squeezed first his head, then his shoulders, then his whole body. The mountain was God's Church the sunshine, His merciful face the wall, the world the gap, Jesus Christ. In his vehement desire to be of the number of those who sat in the sun, he would often sing Psalm li. But new fears disquieted him. Was he elected? Was the day of grace past and gone? Would Christ call him? His heart a-flame to be converted, he yet found that his unbelief set its shoulder to the door to keep out his Lord. Then, with many a bitter sigh, he would cry, " Good Lord, break it open: Lord, break these gates of brass, and cut these bars of iron asunder " (Ps. cvii., verse 16). So convinced was he of his own inward pollution, that he was, in his own sight, loathsome as a toad. Sin and corrup- tion seemed to bubble from his heart as from a fountain. Yet at times the sense of God's love cheered him. The words, "Thou art my love, thou art my love," burned within his heart till they kindled a cheerful blaze. In his joy he could hardly refrain from telling his gladness to the crows that fed on the freshly turned plough-lands.
Once again the comfort was dashed from his lips by the thoughts are the words true? had he committed the un- pardonable sin against the Holy Ghost ? was he beyond the pale of God's mercy? He would gladly have changed his condition for that of any other living creature. A horse or a dog were happier. He prayed. But in his prayers Satan was ever at his side, chilling the warmth of his aspirations, or distracting his thoughts with wandering fancies. Though "his soul was much in prayer," he failed to pray to be kept from the temptations and the evil that were to come. Of his error, he was, he says, " made deeply sensible by the prayer of holy David, who when he was under present mercy yet prayed that God would hold him back from sin and tempta- tion to come: ' So shall I be undefiled, and innocent from the great offence'" (Ps. xix., verse 13). Even when he was consoled by the conviction of God's continued love towards him, and by the sense of his own earnest love for Christ, the struggle was renewed. He was assailed by a "yet more grievous and dreadful temptation than before," which never left him for a day. The tempter bade him exchange Christ for the things of this world. " Sell Him for this," whispered Satan, as he put a morsel of food in his mouth. " Sell Him for this," as he chopped a stick, or stooped to pick up a pin. At last he thought that he had yielded to the temptation, and had committed the " great offence " of Psalm xix., verse 13. He compared himself to Esau, who could not ransom his bartered birthright by an eternity of repentance. Like Judas, he felt his breast-bone splitting asunder. At moments the words of Psalm Ixviii., verse 18 (" Thou hast received gifts for men, yea, even for Thine enemies"), consoled him. If God had gifts for His enemies, why not for him ? Yet so despondent was he, that he thought the sun grudged him his light, and the very roof-tiles and paving-stones were banded together against him. Again happiness returned to him, as he pondered over the words, " If Thou, Lord, wilt be extreme to mark what is done amiss ; 0 Lord, who may abide it ? For there is mercy with Thee; therefore shalt Thou be feared (Ps. cxxx., verses 3, 4). But once more he felt that his own trans- gressions had left him neither foot-hold nor hand-hold "among all the stays and props in the precious word of life." For two years and a half the discouragement continued. As he was vehemently desiring to know whether there was indeed hope for him, these words came rolling into his mind ;
" Will the Lord absent Himself for ever; and will He be no more intreated ? Is His mercy clean gone for ever; and is His promise come utterly to an end for evermore? Hath God forgotten to be gracious, and will He shut up His loving- kindness in displeasure?" (Ps. Ixxvii., verses 7-9). He was not far from the end of his struggle. " One day," he says, "as I was passing into the field, and that too with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul, ' Thy righteousness is in heaven.' And methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God's right-hand; there, I say, was my righteousness ; so that wherever I was, or whatever I was doing. God could not say of me, ' He wants my right- eousness,' for that was just before Him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse; for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, 'the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever,' Heb. xiii., verse 8." He returned home rejoicing; his temptations fled away: the " dreadful Scriptures of God " ceased to trouble him; he "lived very sweetly at peace with God through Christ." He penetrated " the mystery of union with the Son of God "; realised that he was joined to Him, flesh of His flesh, bone of His bone.
A man who had gained his peace at such a cost, was not likely to surrender his convictions lightly. Yet the thought of the misery that might befall his family, and especially his blind child, made him shrink from imprisonment. The irresolution was momentary. " If I should," he says, " venture all for God, I engaged God to take care of my concernments ; but if I forsook Him and His ways, for fear of any trouble that should come to me or mine, then I should not only falsify my profession, but should count also that my concernments were not so sure, if left at God's feet while I stood to and for His name, as they would be if they were under my own tuition, though with the denial of the way of God. This was a smarting consideration, and was as spurs into my flesh. That Scripture (Ps. cix., verses 6-20) also greatly helped it to fasten the more upon me, where Christ prays against Judas, that God would disappoint him in his selfish thoughts, which moved him to sell his Master; pray read it soberly, Psalm cix., verses 6, 7, 8," etc.
The personal grip with which Bunyan had laid hold of his religion, gave him powers as a preacher which were envied by the most learned of his contemporaries. " In my preach- ing," he writes, "I have really been in pain, and have, as it were, travailed to bring forth children to God; neither could I be satisfied unless some fruits did appear in my work:
if I were fruitless, it mattered not who commended me; but if I were fruitful, I cared not who did condemn. I have thought of that, ' Lo, children and the fruit of the womb are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord. Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant, even so are the young children. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them ; they shall not be ashamed when they speak with their enemies in the gate' " (Ps. cxxvii., verses 4-6).
In the poetry of Milton, in the mental history of Bunyan, the power of the Psalms is strongly marked. Their influence is still more clearly seen in the career of Oliver Cromwell, the foremost figure in the stirring times of the Puritan revolution, the strongest type of the stern religion which raised him to the summit of fame and fortune. The spirit that he read into the Psalms governed his actions at each supreme crisis of his stormy life; the most striking stages in his career are marked by quotations from the Psalms; in his private letters, his public despatches, his addresses to' Parliatnent, the imagery, metaphors, and language of the Psalms drop from his lips, or from his pen, as if by constant meditation he had made their phraseology a part of his very life.
In January 1636, Cromwell had moved his home to Ely from St Ives, where, as a farmer, a grazier, and a notable man in parochial business, he had left his mark. At Ely, as the heir of his uncle. Sir Thomas Stewart, Knight, he lived close to St Mary's Churchyard, at the comer of the great Tithe Barn. From that house he wrote one of his first extant letters, addressed to his cousin, Mrs St John, the wife of the celebrated ship-money lawyer. In it he speaks of himself and his lot in life.
"Truly, then," he says, "this I find; that He giveth springs in a dry, barren wilderness where no water is. I live, you know where, in Meshec, which they say signifies pro- longing; in Kedar, which signifies blackness; yet the Lord forsaketh me not. Though He do prolong, yet He will, I trust, bring me to His tabernacle, to His resting-place" (Ps. cxx.).
Twenty years later, after prolonged and bitter strife, Oliver Cromwell had become Lord Protector. On the i6th of September 1656, as he sat in his Palace of Whitehall, he was reading and pondering the 85th Psalm. The following day he rode in state from Whitehall to the Abbey Church ot Westminster to open the second Parliament of the Pro- tectorate. Before his coach went " hundreds of gentlemen and officers, bareheaded, the Life Guards, and his pages and lacqueys richly clothed." The service ended, he returned to Whitehall with the same pomp and ceremony, and, entering the Painted Chamber, delivered a speech to the newly assembled members, which in part is an exposition of the 85th and 46th Psalms.
Within those twenty years had passed some of the most stirring scenes of English history. In all of them Cromwell was a principal actor, and in all, the Book of Psalms sometimes misread, sometimes grimly travestied, rarely if ever interpreted by the tender light of the New Testament . was his constant companion and guide.
Throughout the war he never ceases to speak the language of the Psalms. He relies not on men and visible helps, though no practical detail which can give success to his arms escapes his keen eye. It is God's cause in which he fights. In God is his strength. It is God who says, " Up and be doing, and I will stand by you and help you." It is Pod who makes the Royalists as " stubble " before the swords of the Puritans. In him and in his troopers bums the spirit of young Walton, who died at Marston Moor with one thing only lying heavy on his soul that " God had not suffered him to be any more the executioner of His enemies."
At Naseby fight, Cromwell had seen " the enemy draw up and march in gallant order towards us, and we, a company of poor, ignorant men, at pains to order our battle." Yet " he smiled out to God in praises, in assurance of victory, because God would, by things that are not, bring to naught things that are. Of which I had great assurance; and God did it. Oh that men would therefore praise the Lord, and declare the wonders that He doeth for the children of men!" (Ps. cvii., verse 8).
As the victory at Naseby is the "hand of God," and Fa
"to Him alone belongs the glory," so in the storming of Bristol he " must be a very atheist who doth not acknowledge God's work." The same spirit is manifested at Basing House. Old and New Basing, each fitted to make "an emperor's court," stood, as Hugh Peters described it, " in its full pride, and the enemy was persuaded that it would be the last piece ot ground that would be taken by the Parliament." It had stood siege after siege, till the Royalists called it Basting House; and truly, so long as it was held for the king, no Parliament man could travel the western roads in safety. The Marquis of Winchester, to whom it belonged, was a zealous Roman Catholic; and to Cromwell it was a nest, not only of malignants, but of papists, a stronghold of dark- ness, a place of idols.
On the 8th of October 1645, Cromwell arrived before Basing with a train of heavy artillery. On the nth his batteries were in position, and the garrison was summoned to surrender. If they refused quarter now, on their heads be it. No mercy would be shown. The summons was lightly set aside. Lord Winchester would hold " Loyalty House " to the uttermost.
At midnight on the isth, two wide breaches were effected, and it was resolved to storm the place before sunrise on the morning of the i4th. The assault was delivered. The defenders were too few to resist the storming parties. No quarter was asked, and none given. "Our muskets and swords," says a contemporary newspaper, "showed little compassion." Great was the plunder of plate and jewels, of gold and silver, tapestry and rich attire. When Cromwell's army moved away, the defenders had been put to the sword, the altars thrown to the ground, the priests killed or reserved for the knife and the gallows, and Basing House was a heap of blackened ashes. A grim comment on the power of the Psalms follows. Lieutenant-General Cromwell, Hugh Peters tells us, " had spent much time with God in prayer the night before the storm; and seldom fights without some text of Scripture to support him. This time he rested upon that blessed Word of God, written in the ii5th Psalm, verse 8, They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them. Which, with some verses going before, was now accomplished."
When the war was ended, it is still in the same strain that Cromwell speaks. Thus, in November 1648, he writes to Colonel Robert Hammond;
" We have not been without our share of beholding some remarkable providences and appearances of the Lord. His presence hath been amongst us, and by the light of His countenance we have prevailed."
It was, again, in the spirit of the sternest of the Psalms that Cromwell entered on the Irish War. He is an armed soldier of God, executing His judgements upon His enemies, terrible as death, relentless as doom. With the sword in one hand and his Acts of Parliament in the other, he offers the choice of disobedience and death, or obedience and life. And, as Drogheda and Wexford testified, his words represented deeds.
In July 1650, the war with Scotland began. Charles II. accepted the Covenant, and with Buckingham and Wilmot at his side strange instruments for such a task had crossed the seas from Breda to be the earthly representative of that theocracy which the Scottish Kirk desired to see established. Cromwell, returning from Ireland, was made Commander-in- Chief, and sent to the front to check the threatened Scottish invasion. It was with a psalm in his mind that he set out on his mission. A few days before his departure, he had a strange interview with Colonel Edmund Ludlow, one of the sternest of Republicans. Calling Ludlow aside into a private room at Whitehall, he charged him with a changed coun- tenance towards him, and with suspicions of his objects. He professed his readiness to sacrifice his life in the service of the people; he declared that he desired nothing better than a " free and equal Commonwealth "; he spoke at length of the " great providences of God now abroad upon the earth." Then he " spent at least an hour in the exposition of iioth Psalm," saying that he looked upon the design of the Lord in that day to be the freeing of His people from every burden, and that he himself was the chosen instrument for the accomplishment of the events foretold in that psalm.
So Cromwell set out, assured that the Lord would make His enemies His footstool, that " in the day of His wrath He would wound even kings," and that He would "judge among the heathen," and " fill the places with the dead bodies." At the end of July he had crossed the Border, and reached Musselburgh. Between him and Edinburgh lay General David Leslie, entrenched behind strong lines, and protected by the guns of Edinburgh and Leith. It was a crisis on which were centred mighty interests. Two hosts, each claiming to be the Lord's chosen people, were about to put their claims to the test. To which should victory be given ? All Cromwell's efforts to induce the Scots to risk a battle were vain. Affairs of outposts and skirmishes took place:
but day after day Leslie lay steady within his lines, while Cromwell's provisions were failing, and his numbers dwindling through sickness. Equally futile were Cromwell's attempts to persuade the Kirk Commissioners that their cause was unrighteous, and that Charles Stewart was unfit to rule over a godly people. He received but a curt answer to his appeal, backed though it was by the confident assertion that " before it be long, the Lord will manifest His good pleasure so that all shall see Him, and His people shall say, ' This is the Lord's work, and it is marvellous in our eyes; this is the day that the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.'"
Days passed; Cromwell's provisions ran short; the weather was wet and stormy, so that his stores could not be landed, and at the end of August he fired his huts and marched towards Dunbar, Leslie hanging on his rear and keeping on the higher ground. Taking full advantage of his superior know- ledge of the country, the Scottish commander occupied the Doon Hill, a spur of the Lammermoor Hills, standing forward from the range like a watch-tower, and, seizing the Cock- burnspath, the wild river chasm eastward of Dunbar, which forms the approach to Berwick, thrust in his army between Cromwell and the English Border. Here then was Cromwell with a force ofn,ooo opposed to 23,000, hemmed in between the hills and the sea, with Scotland in his rear and Leslie's army in his front.
Cromwell knew that he was in desperate case. <( Our condition," he says, " was made very sad." On the 2nd of September he wrote a letter, hastily folded before the ink was dry, to Sir Arthur Haslerigg, the Governor of Newcastle, asking for aid, and bidding him prepare for the worst. On the same day on which this letter was written, Leslie began to move his army down from the Doon Hill to lower ground, from which he proposed the next morning to attack the English army.
The moment that Cromwell saw this movement he re- cognised the advantage which it gave him. " The Lord hath delivered them into our hands " is the traditional exclamation that burst from his lips as he saw his antagonist " shogging " down the hill. He determined that he would himself be the assailant at sunrise on the next morning. Throughout the wet and cold night of Monday the 2nd, in the storms of rain and sleet, he made his dispositions. When at four o'clock, the moon shone out through the hail-clouds, all was not yet ready. An hour later, the trumpets pealed, the cannon roared along the line, and Cromwell's horse and foot, shouting their watchword, " The Lord of Hosts," burst upon the Scottish troops, who, stiffened by the cold and with unlighted matches, were beginning to stir themselves as the twilight crept among the shocks of corn where they had bivouacked. Here and there the fight was stubborn; Leslie's horse boldly answered back the English challenge with their shout of "The Covenant." But the position was such that the Scottish general could make no use of his superior numbers, and when, over St Abb's Head and the German Ocean, burst the rising sun, the gleam drew from Cromwell's lips the triumphant cry, "Let God arise, and let His enemies be scattered." The horse broke and fled, trampling down the undisciplined masses behind them; the rout was complete. The " chase and execution " of the fugitives lasted for eight miles, till the Lord General made a halt in his pursuit, and sang the ii7th Psalm. It was but a brief respite. Practical in his religion as in all else, Cromwell chose the shortest Psalm in the book.
A year later, on the same day of the month, September 3rd, i65X, came the " crowning mercy " of the battle of Worcester. On the enemy, writes Cromwell to Mr Cotton, of Boston, New England, the Lord (< rained snares," so that " of the whole army of the Scottish King and the Malignant party, not five men were returned. Surely," he adds, " the Lord is greatly to be feared, and to be praised."
In 1653 the Rump had been expelled, and in their place were assembled " divers persons, fearing God, and of approved fidelity and honesty," who constituted the " Barebones" Parliament. On July 4th, Cromwell, standing by the window opposite the middle of the table in the centre of the Council Chamber of Whitehall, the officers of the army ranged on his right and left, addressed that strange assembly, every member of which was a man in whom Cromwell hoped to find " faith in Jesus Christ, and love to all people and saints." His speech is loaded with references to the Psalms, especially Psalm ex. and Psalm Ixviii. He hints that their meeting may be " the door to usher in the things that God has promised, which He has set the hearts of His people to wait for and expect." They are "at the edge of the promises and pro- phecies "; and then he expounds Psalm Ixviii. God is bringing His people out of deep waters; He is setting up the glory of His Gospel Church. Kings of armies had fled, and the spoil had been divided.
" And indeed the triumph of that psalm is exceeding high and great; and God ;is accomplishing it. And the close of it that closeth with my heart, and I do not doubt with yours ' The Lord shaketh the hills and mountains, and they reel.' And God hath a hill too ; an high hill as the Hill of Bashan;
and the chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels; and God will dwell upon this hill for ever! "
On Monday, September 4th, in the following year (1654), the Lord Protector had returned in state to Whitehall from Westminster Abbey. Entering the Painted Chamber, in all the plenitude of his power, he delivered a speech to the assembly. In it he enlarged on the stupendous providences of God.
"As David," he continues, "said in the like case (Ps. xl., verse 6), (Many, 0 Lord my God, are Thy wonderful works which Thou hast done, and Thy thoughts which are to us- ward; they cannot be reckoned up in order unto Thee; if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.'"
Once more. On Tuesday, September i6th, 1656, Cromwell was reading the 85th Psalm in Whitehall. It was the day before the meeting of the second Parliament of the Pro- tectorate. The next day, with the usual ceremonies, Parlia- ment was opened, and the Lord Protector addressed a speech to the members. " Yesterday," he said, " I did read a psalm, which truly may not unbecome both me to tell you of, and you to observe. It is the 85th Psalm; it is very instructive and significant; though I do but a little touch upon it, I desire your perusal and pleasure." Then he ex- pounded to them his vision of hope God's will done on earth, and England an emblem of heaven where God's will reigns supreme. To this work he exhorted his Parliament to set their hearts.
" And," he says, " if you set your hearts to it, then you will sing Luther's Psalm (xlvi.). That is a rare psalm for a Christian! and if he set his heart open, and can approve it to God, we shall hear him say, 'God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.' ... If Pope and Spaniard, and devil and all, set themselves against us yet in the name of the Lord we should destroy them! ' The Lord of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.* "
Two years later, on Thursday, September 2nd, 1658, Cromwell lay dying. " He was very restless most part of the night, speaking often to himself," using "towards morning divers holy expressions, implying much inward consolation and peace." When the morrow's sun rose, he was speechless. By three or four in the afternoon he lay dead. Did he strengthen himself with the Psalms for the last battle of his militant life? Were the words which he spoke to himself such as these ? " Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me."