Divine Guidence and Poetry

Without stopping to say what poetry is, or on what principles it operates, every one knows that its influence has been very great. But it is to be regretted, that, like history, it has been employed, for the most part, in immortalizing deeds of cruelty, and in giving luster to crime. Or, if it should be said in modification of this statement, that it has given a larger share of its attention to love than history has, it ought to be added that the love which it celebrates has not always been that refined and pure love, which receives the sanction of Christianity.

The Prisoners of God

Along the streets of the city of Bedford, in England, the poor and illiterate preacher, John Bunyan, is conducted to prison. Years roll on; to human appearance all his earthly prospects are cut off; he has no books with the single exception of the Bible and the Lives of the Martyrs. Had he not been imprisoned, he would have lived and died, as do many other men, known perhaps, and useful, within the limits of a single town, and for a single generation. But, shut up in prison, and cut off from worldly plans, God was enabled to work in him, in his own wonderful way, and to guide his mind to other and higher issues. It was there he wrote that remarkable work, the Pilgrim’s Progress. Had his enemies not been allowed to prevail against him, it probably would not have been written. It was thus that God turned that which was designed for evil into good. It was a wisdom higher than man's wisdom, which shut up the pilgrim himself in prison. The Pilgrim's Progress, which was the result of the imprisonment of the pilgrim whose progress it describes, free as the winds of heaven, goes from house to house, knocks at every heart, teaches all classes, visits all nations.