T o L i V e I s c h r I s t

28 

Introduction

The journey has a dark past, a setting-out, snares and dangers along the 

way, and then a glorious end. Because the Pilgrim has not yet reached home, 

his focus remains set on the daily steps of progress. This explains Newton’s 

deep concern with the stuff of the daily Christian life and his attraction to 

John Bunyan’s classic allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. Newton read the al-

legory so frequently he claims to have nearly memorized it.

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 And for over 

six years, he delivered weekly lectures to the meager farmers and dejected 

lace makers of Olney through the text of The Pilgrim’s Progress.

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 Newton 

believed that explaining the storyline of Bunyan’s classic was essential for 

preparing youth for life.

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 As he lectured on the allegory, he traveled slowly, 

once writing to a friend of these lectures, “I find this book so full of matter, 

that I can seldom go through more than a page, or half a page at a time.”

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Newton’s love for the allegory, and his careful study of it, became known, 

and he was approached by an editor to write a preface to a 1776 edition, 

which he did. The Pilgrim’s Progress was a comprehensive map, Newton 

wrote in the preface, “a map, so exactly drawn, that we can hardly meet 

with a case or character, amidst the vast variety of persons and incidents, 

that daily occur to our observation, to which we cannot easily point out a 

counterpart in the pilgrim.”

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In Bunyan, Newton finds a like-minded model for the application of 

theology to various and comprehensive life situations, stages of maturity, 

and personality types. And while no Christian life experience is exactly 

like any other, all Christian journeys share certain similarities. This ex-

plains why The Pilgrim’s Progress is perhaps the best-selling book in church 

history, behind only the Bible. Newton published his personal letters from 

a similar conviction. In Bunyan’s classic we find the allegorical counterpart 

to Newton’s letter-writing ministry.

Biographically, Bunyan and Newton share other traits. Newton, “the 

African blasphemer,” was a monster of sin, whose debaucheries made even 

sailors blush. Bunyan, “the village rebel,” was a man who breathed obsceni-

ties and once was rebuked by a prostitute for his swearing. Said Spurgeon of 

27

 Letters (Clunie), 129.

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 Newton: “I am sure Mr. Bunyan was a plain writer. I expounded or explained the first part of his Pilgrim, 

twice during my residence at Olney; each time it employed one evening in a week for more than three 

years. And perhaps in those lectures I came nearer to the apprehension of the poor lace-makers, and 

engaged their attention more, than when I spoke from the pulpit” (Letters [More], 6). It appears after his 

pastoral transition to London, he was invited to lecture through the allegory in the Wilberforce home in 

a setting he called “parlor preaching.”

29

 Eclectic, 263.

30

 W, 6:38.

31

 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from This World to That Which Is to Come (London, 1776), preface.

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Introduction 

29

Bunyan and Newton, “Both of them had been ringleaders in sin before they 

became leaders in the army of the Redeemed,” and “no man in his senses 

will venture to assert that there was anything in Newton or Bunyan why 

they should engross the regard of the Most High.”

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Each was converted by 

free grace. Neither forgot it. Both were later called to ministry, but neither 

man was afforded academic training in theology. Both took pastorates, and 

each relied heavily on the experience of his dramatic conversion, a careful 

(but fairly simple) understanding of Scripture, a vivid imagination, and 

street smarts, to help lead others along this journey of the Christian life.

With everything else Bunyan and Newton are remembered for, they 

both expressed pastoral skill creatively via popular cultural mediums to 

help fellow believers reach Zion. Newton’s letters were written to pilgrims 

on the road because Newton thought of the Christian life in terms of pro-

gressive growth. Even with all the setbacks and disappointments along the 

way, the true believer matures from spiritual child to adolescent to adult, or 

from acorn to sapling to large oak. Newton’s letters are filled with spiritual 

progress because Newton kept the end goal of the Christian life in view. 

While letters of gossip are aimless, Newton’s letters are always aimed, and 

they are aimed because Newton was self-consciously theologically driven. 

Because his theology was cohesive, he was able to point other Christians 

forward and able to help them move away from spiritual immaturity and 

toward spiritual adulthood.

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Like Bunyan, Newton never lost sight of the pilgrim’s progress or the 

pilgrim’s end.

The Core of Newton’s Counsel

But is it possible to locate a unity in Newton’s letters? Because his great-

est written legacy on the Christian life is his mail, we are faced with this 

daunting challenge from the outset. Bruce Hindmarsh, in his valuable 

study of Newton, wrote of the letters, “It is difficult to extract a unified 

core of teaching on the spiritual life” because “most of Newton’s letters 

were by definition ad hoc compositions reflecting the particular concerns 

32

 All details and points from C. H. Spurgeon: The New Park Street Pulpit Sermons, vol. 6 (London, 

1860), 73; The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 22 (London, 1876), 102; C. H. Spurgeon’s 

Sermons Beyond: An Authentic Supplement to the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 63 (Leominster, 

UK: Day One, 2009), 195; The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons, vol. 10 (London, 1864), 76, 

639–40.

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 For the points in this paragraph, I owe a debt to J. I. Packer (personal conversation, June 2, 2012, 

Vancouver).

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