One of my new-found pleasures has been the discovery of John Bunyan’s less known writings. Towards the end of his life, when he was out of prison, and Pastor of the Bedford Church that still bears his name, he wrote a set of poems for Boys and Girls.
They aimed at teaching children of all ages – not without some humour, he says that some will be boys with beards, or girls that be big as grown women. He includes a literacy guide, so part of his intention is to encourage people to read. This was a common aim among non-conformists, a high proportion of whom would be able to read the Bible, or devotional literature. But he also encourages them to pay mindful attention to the ordinary world around them, seeing in the living world and domestic life, lessons or warnings from God.
This could make the poems dull, or pretentious – the sort of thing satirized in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ‘How doth the little crocodile’, which is a skit on Isaac Watts’s children’s hymn: ‘How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour’.
But the difference is that Bunyan’s poems pay serious attention to the details of the natural or domestic world, before moving on to the moral lesson. The poem invites us to look, and look again at the example, so that the message comes to us through careful observation. The environment is allowed to speak in its own voice.
Here is part of the poem, ‘Upon a snail’.
She goes but softly, but she goeth sure,
She stumbles not, as stronger creatures do.
. . .
She makes no noise, but stilly seizeth on
The flower or herb appointed for her food,
The which she quietly doth feed upon.
Bunyan brings us into the world of the snail. She is not caricatured as a quasi-human being, but observed in the normal pursuit of her life. Most literature of this kind moves very quickly away from the natural world to the message, but we get the sense that John Bunyan had spent time watching and valuing the creatures with whom he shared his environment.
The second half of the poem draws a comparison with the human quietly seeking Christ.
Although they seem not much to stir, less go,
For Christ that hunger, or from wrath that flee, . . .
We might admire the vigorous, active Christian, the dramatic conversion, the person that is always on the go. We might feel that our faith is not vivid enough, our witness not active enough. But
. . . let none faint, nor be at all dismayed
That life by Christ do seek, they shall not fail
To have it; let them nothing be afraid;
The herb and flower are eaten by the snail.
You can find the whole poem online. Read it slowly; let your imagination enter into that quiet, still world; and let God feed and nurture your soul.
Janet Wootton
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