John Bunyan's New Eyes
By
Alexander Whyte

From the beginning to the ending of his Grace Abounding, Bunyan describes to us the successive eyes with which he read his Bible from first to last. When Bunyan first began to read his Bible it was with the eyes of a child. As a child he greatly delighted in the enthralling stories of the Bible. The garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Noah and his ark, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. Then through the native strength and the native originality of his mind (though he never went to the schools of the Fathers or to the early Councils) he began to look into his Bible with the eyes of a student. And then, after that, the eyes of a sinner intent on seeking his own salvation were given of God to Bunyan. And as we go on through his wonderful book we rejoice to trace how the eyes of a true saint are more and more given him of God – the eyes of his understanding being enlightened that he might know the hope of God's calling and the riches of His inheritance in the saints.

After Bunyan had once got his new eyes, this was how he immediately began to read his Bible, and especially his New Testament. “Methought I was as if I had seen Him born; as if I had seen Him grow up; as if I had seen Him walk through this world from His cradle to His cross; to which also when he came, I saw how gently He gave Himself to be hanged and nailed upon it for my sins and wicked doings. Also, as I mused upon this His progress, that scripture dropped upon my spirit – He was ordained for the slaughter.” Let us learn to read our New Testaments in that way. For reading in that way is not only a sure evidence to us that we have got new eyes from God, but as we go on to read in that way our eyes will become more and more new every day. Scale after scale will fall from off our eyes till we shall see deeper and deeper into the Word of God every time we open it. This is what has been called reading with “the eye on the object,” which is the only true and fruitful way of reading the Bible and everything else. “Especially the Epistles of the Apostle were sweet and pleasant to me,” says Bunyan. If Dr. Thomas Goodwin is right when he says that reconciliation is the main argument of the Bible, then that argument comes to its consummation and its crown in Paul's Epistles. That was Paul's own conviction and assurance about his Epistles and about his whole apostleship, for he claims in every Epistle that to him above all other men had been committed the word of reconciliation. And, if that is so, then Bunyan is entirely right in his immense indebtedness to Paul, and in his immense enjoyment of Paul.

When you sit down at night for a little heart-sweetening reading after another heart-embittering day, to what part of the Bible do you turn your eyes? Luther said that since he was always sinning so he was always reading the Romans and Galatians. Now since you are always sinning, what are you always reading? Well for myself, I often sweeten my heart at the end of the day with this passage out of Paul: “Being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, who God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.” Now, if you know any thing in all the world more sweet to the sin-embittered heart than that, I would like you to tell me where I can find it. Many of our new eyes have been fastened, like mine, upon this also: “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” And on this: “Who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification.” and on this: “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.”

“And, indeed, I was then never out of the Bible,” our author goes on. Just so. When once any man has really got his new eyes from God, and once he has fairly gone into his Bible with his new eyes, that man will never again be long out of his Bible. His daily life will not let him be long out of his Bible. And especially his evil heart will not let him be long out of his Bible. His house may be full of books, and not bad books either; but his Bible is the only book of them all that wholly answers to his life around him, and especially to his life within him. “I was then never out of the Bible.” Have you ever had a time when your whole life of which you could so speak? Was it when you first got your new eyes from God? Or was it when some great sin of yours threatened to find you out? Or again, was it in some great shipwreck of desire and hope, when all your other books, on which you had fed your desire and your hope, had suddenly become so much dust and ashes in your mouth? A time of a great bereavement also sends some people back in a hurry to their deserted Bible. Or when they sat solitary, and when no man cared for their soul, then their Bible began to come to its own again in their broken hearts, and then the forsaken soul rose up out of the dust of death, and said: “I will go and will return to my first Husband for then it was better with me than now.”

“And now I began to look into the Bible with new eyes, and read as I never did before. And especially the Epistles of the Apostle Paul were sweet and pleasant to me. And indeed, I was then never out of the Bible either by reading or meditation.” Delightful! Delightful! But what is this? For I turn the leaf of my Grace Abounding and I find this: “I am convinced that I am an ignorant sot; and that I lack those blessed gifts that other good people have: the blessed gifts of spiritual knowledge and spiritual understanding. For I am tossed continually between the devil and my own ignorance, and am so perplexed, especially at some times, that I cannot tell what to do.” Now, are you not – some of you – secretly glad to hear that? Does that not immensely comfort you? I am sure it does. At any rate, it immensely comforts me. To know that John Bunyan with all his new eyes and with all his rapturous love for Paul's Epistles, yet at some times felt himself to be an sot of a man; and to be tossed about by the devil and by his own ignorance of divine things – does that not comfort you? At any rate, I say, I for one get great comfort and great hope out of all that – as well as out of such corresponding Scriptures as these: “I am dust and ashes,” said Abraham; “I am a worm and no man,” said one of the psalmists; “I am as a beast before thee,” said another psalmist; “I was shapen in iniquity,” said the greatest and best of all the psalmists; “I am a man of unclean lips,” said the most evangelical of all the prophets; “I abhor myself,” said Job; “I am sold under sin,” said Paul; “I am an ignorant sot, tossed about by the devil at his will,” said Bunyan. And so on – in every sincere and genuine saint of God who is undergoing a great sanctification for a great service on earth and in heaven.

Dear sin tormented people of God! Do not be too much cast down! You are in good company. You are in the best of company. Angels envy you and your company. They would exchange all their glory for such an experience and for such a prospect as yours. Therefore, comfort your hearts with these words, and with a thousand more words like them that you will find in Paul's so sweet and so pleasant Epistles.