Greetings from Me and My House,
While we’re on the topic of old books, I’ll go back a nearly a couple more centuries – over 325 years ago, to the last half of the 1600’s. In our studies of Providential History (yes, the subject is His Story!), I’ve desired to go back to the Reformation period through the Founding of our nation, America, and study the writings of particularly the Puritans, those who shaped our nation upon God. Although, the author I’ve chosen to focus on this fall did not come to America, he, like the Pilgrims and Puritans that did shape our nation, was a dissenter/non-conformist, a Puritan. He preached, and he wrote. Much of both was done while he was in prison for preaching the gospel.
One of the first books of John Bunyan’s that I purchased, several years ago, was The Fear of the Lord. If you know me well, you know that this is a favorite topic of mine, for “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, and “wisdom is the principal thing”.
But, Bunyan is most well known for The Pilgrim’s Progress, an allegory of Christian life, the story of Christian and his salvation and journey to the Celestial City. This book is second only to the Bible in number of copies sold, and number of lives impacted by it. It was through this book that we, too, were introduced to John Bunyan many years ago. Our children have had a couple different videos of Pilgrim’s Progress that they have enjoyed over the years, and our favorite children’s adaptation of the book is the beautifully illustrated, Dangerous Journey, (which is the only adaptation I recommend, and only for a shortened retelling for young children, and its beautiful pictures).
But for your own personal reading, or family read aloud, I highly recommend reading the complete book, and not in an “updated”, “edited”, or “abridged” version. The classic is quite readable and very beautiful language. The modern rewrites lose much of what makes it a timeless enjoyable classic. In fact, if you have trouble reading classic English, I very highly recommend getting the audios and listening to it as a family. Our favorite set of audios are from Blackstone Audiobooks. I love the English accent of the reader, that helps to authenticate it. This version from Answers in Genesis sounds OK too, but I don’t like it near as well as Blackstone’s.
But don’t stop at Pilgrim’s Progress in your reading of John Bunyan. He wrote many great books of Christian teaching, that have also survived the test of time, including our Fear of the Lord, although it is lesser known than many others. Grace Abounding: to the Chief of Sinners is probably his next most well known book. This book is Bunyan’s autobiography. It is said to be, “one of the best and greatest autobiographies in the English language.” Perhaps that is because you learn about so much more than just Bunyan in this book. You learn of life, Christianity, and probably even see yourself somewhere.
The Holy War is an allegory like Pilgrim’s Progress, this one on spiritual warfare. I’m just getting into it, wanting to finish Grace Abounding first.
To do these classics justice, a new collector’s volume has been published, a beautiful anniversary edition put out by New Leaf Press/Master Books that contains not only Pilgrim’s Progress, but also several of Bunyan’s other writings too, including The Holy War, and Grace Abounding. I can’t wait to get it.
This is only the tip of the iceburg of Bunyan’s books that have stood the test of time and remain great reading for us today. But it is a good place to start. Many others can be found by entering John Bunyan into our search box on our Resource page (link below). You can see several other editions of Pilgrim’s Progress there too.
There are also entire websites devoted to John Bunyan, and many of his works are available on the internet, to either be read online, or downloaded, some even for your pda, to be read with Bible Reader that I mentioned earlier this week, and some to be listened to.
The “Complete Set” of Bunyan’s works is online here and here.
I use this site quite often for Christian and classic books online. They have all 3 of the most popular books by Bunyan in several formats, including mp3 and pdb (for Palm/pda).
Here’s another Bunyan site.
This site, Hall of Church History, isn’t particularly “Bunyan” but has great info and links to many of the Puritan’s writings and information. Phil’s tagline for this site is “Theology from a Bunch of Dead Guys”. Gotta love it.
Enjoy your reading! You will be greatly enriched! I promise!
At Jesus’ feet,
Lisa @Me and My House
Order Christian and Home Ed Resources Here
