Mark Rutherford and John Bunyan: A Study in Relationship

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 16; p. 52
• Main Author: Newey, Vincent
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2012
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); Bunyan, John (1628-88); English literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

In the faith of her ancestors, when, like Christian and Hopeful on the road to the Celestial City, people could 'pour out their hearts to one another ... [and were] knit together in everlasting bonds by the same Christ and the same salvation', she would have found apt companionship and 'ample room' for the development and satisfaction of all that was in her, 'heart' and 'intellect'.4 In the semifictional Autobiography of Mark Rutherford (1881) the golden age - I use the term deliberately, for that old secure world of communion and community is surely imagined rather than actual - is situated a hundred years back, when Rutherford, emotionally adrift and unfulfilled, would have directed his 'burning longing' towards 'the unseen God'.5 In the nineteenth century, on the other hand, 'when each man is left to shift for himself, to work out the answers to his own problems, the result is isolation' (CF, 190). When Zachariah, on the run in Manchester because of his radical politics, faces the 'infinite abyss' of despair not only is his predicament cast in the form of the Valley of the Shadow of Death but Bunyan's 'immortal Progress'' becomes an ingredient in his story, supplying him with two of the most potent weapons in the armoury of the Puritan pilgrim, the consolations of memory or lessons of the past and the support of the Word (both succinctly illustrated by Christian's breaking out of the dungeon of Giant Despair by remembering a 'key in my bosom, called Promise', that is the scriptural texts - notably 2 Corinthians 12:9 and John 6:35 - giving reassurance of God's redemptive grace towards the elect).10 As Christian had rested upon the Bible, so does Zachariah upon The Pilgrim 's Progress, which in any case incorporates the Word: He remembered that quagmire . . . into which, if even a good man falls, he can find no bottom; he remembered that gloom so profound 'that oftentimes, when he lifted up his foot to set forward, he knew not where or upon what he should set it next'; he remembered the flame and smoke, the sparks and hideous noises, the things that cared not for Christian's sword ... ; he remembered the voice of a man going before, saying, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death 1 will fear none ill, for Thou art with me? [...]he remembered that by and by the day broke, and Christian cried, 'He hath turned the shadow of death into the morning. [...]in reading this passage we are left with mixed feelings and an unresolved tension.