John Bunyan went to prison repeatedly over a period of twelve years, for refusing to stop preaching. As an unlicensed and non-conforming preacher he was a serial offender, described in Court as a "pestilent fellow." On his charge sheet he is described as one who "devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to church to hear divine service" and that he is "a common upholder of several unlawful meetings and conventicles, to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom".
During his second imprisonment he started to write Pilgrim's Progress, and in one of the later sections appeared a poem which became the hymn, "Who Would True Valour See."
It is a hymn about stubbornness on points of biblical principle, faithfulness to spiritual conviction, refusal to be threatened into compliance or silence, and resilience through the hard times and painful consequences of fulfilling 'avowed intent'.
I remember sitting beside Gordon Wakefield, one of Bunyan's biographers, during a conference on Evangelical spirituality. Gordon was a fine scholar of Puritan spirituality and Methodist theology. We talked about this hymn, and those weird words 'hobgoblins or foul fiends.' Interestingly both of us understood those 17th Century scary words as a mixture of spiritual warfare terminology and code words for a Puritan pathology of mental ill health by people who understood depression, acute anxiety, guilt and inner emotional climates, with far more insight and honesty than our more sophisticated and often reductionist 21st Century terminology.
Bunyan wrote these words having been harried and threatened with everything from endlessly recurring cycles of imprisonment, to banishment from the Kingdom, and even hanging. He was not immune to fear, over-anxious sleeplessness, depression and despair of ever hoping again. Any careful reading of Bunyan's writings reveals a man for whom spiritual experience, emotional climate, physical health, psychological states and changing moods, are to be understood as the inevitable struggles of everyone trying to live an obedient Christian life, 'come wind or weather.'
I mention all this because this hymn was used at the Thanksgiving Service for our special friend yesterday. We were unable to sing it due to public health restrictions, so I was asked to read it. Three and a half centuries on, Bunyan's words retain their realism and hopefulness for those who have tried throughout their lives 'to be a pilgrim', following after Jesus. Courage is not the absence of anxiety, but the enduring of it; and anxiety is not a negation of faith, it is the context within which we eventually discover God's hold is stronger than our own.
This hymn is defiant, confrontational, truculent even, in the face of contrary wind and weather. Bunyan is describing for us a dynamic of resistance to all that gets us down. But this is not mindless triumphalism, or a denial of real experiences of doubt, days of despair, periods of acute or chronic low-grade anxiety and the ache of longing for the return of hope. Presupposed in this hymn is the invasive and pervasive presence of the God of grace, and the reality of a divine love displayed in all its redeeming power on the cross, and demonstrated as God's new creation in the ultimate display of triumph, the resurrection of Christ.
It is the accompanying presence of the crucified and risen One who inspires in Christian hearts the avowed intent to be a pilgrim, and to follow faithfully after Jesus. We knew our friend a long time, and we knew her well. These old words by Bunyan describe so well the varied inner landscapes and changing climates of each human journey - the oscillations of doubt and trust, the ebb and flow of anxiety and courage, and fluctuating moods of sadness and gladness. And for those of us privileged to be fellow pilgrims in her life, they describe well that underlying determination, 'to be a pilgrim'.
On yesterday's hymn sheet we made the words gender specific, a tribute to a woman who 'was constant, come wind or weather.'
Who would true valour see,
Let her come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather;
There’s no discouragement
Shall make her once relent
Her first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim.
Whoso beset her round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound;
Her strength the more is,
No lion can her fright;
She’ll with a giant fight;
But she will have a right
To be a pilgrim.
Hobgoblin nor foul fiend
Can daunt her spirit;
She knows she at the end
Shall life inherit,
Then fancies fly away,
She’ll fear not what men say;
She’ll labour night and day
To be a pilgrim.
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