A Scathing Review of a Book Nobody Has Read Yet

I cannot recommend this book.

After careful examination, I have discovered that it contains ideas.

The author expresses these ideas with alarming confidence. In utter defiance of fashionable opinion, the publisher has made no attempt to suppress or update them. On the contrary, modern typography and explanatory footnotes have been employed to make these ideas more accessible to the general public. Some archaic words have even been explained, which may, unfortunately, lead to learning.

Most disturbing of all, neither the author nor the publisher appears the least bit apologetic. The publisher even boasts of fully restoring the original 1686 text—which was apparently so dangerous that for centuries editors prudently kept it abridged, while the complete text languished in the British Museum. One is naturally led to wonder whether such neglect might have been a mercy.

Above all, it might make you think. The danger is obvious.

Of course, ideas are only dangerous to those who are afraid to face them.

John Bunyan certainly was not.

In the preface to A Book for Boys and Girls, Bunyan critiques society by observing that many of his contemporaries, despite appearing to be adults, spent their lives playing with toys. Some toys are made of wood and string. Others are made of pride, fashion, vanity, and folly. The years had passed, but the childishness remained.

Rather than calling for everyone to rise to his level, Bunyan declared that he would cast his "very beard behind the bush" and join the "artificial babes" of his age. He wrote of candles, birds, butterflies, snails, and other ordinary things in the hope of rousing his audience from lethargy and indifference. Yet beneath these playful emblems, he explores themes of mortality, spiritual conviction, the Christian life, the love of Christ, and the nature of true beauty. Bunyan reminds us that even the simplest rhymes can carry the sublimest truths.

More than three centuries later, the strategy remains surprisingly effective.

For all our sophistication, we are not so different from Bunyan's audience. We still love distractions. We still chase trifles. We still need someone to interrupt us long enough to make us think.

Beware: You just might learn something.