Our family has been reading through Douglas Bond’s wonderful book, Mr. Pipes and the British Hymn Makers and today we finished it. Bond’s book is historical fiction. Two American children spend a summer in England, bump into an elderly man who has been nicknamed “Mr. Pipes”. They travel around together, eating at pastry shops, taking tea times, visiting ‘Dragon’s Grotto’, learning how to sail and herd sheep and all along, getting disabused of the notion that old things are dead and lifeless. Mr. Pipes tells them stories of Thomas Ken, William Williams, Isaac Watts (one of our two favorite chapters!), John Newton, William Cowper and other great hymn writers from church history. Since this book focused on British hymn writers, they were able to walk through parts of town, pick flowers from the same gardens, sing in the old buildings in which one or another great hymn-writer could’ve been found in days gone by.
In the last chapter, as the kids finally get to take their sailing voyage down The Great Ouse River to Bedford, they discover that had they come down river in 1655, they might have witnessed John Bunyan’s baptism. They get to hear Bunyan’s great hymn, which was a musical summation of Pilgrim’s Progress:
Who would true valour see, let him come hither;
One here will constant be, come wind, come weather.
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avow’d intent to be a pilgrim.
Whoso beset him round with dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound, - his strength the more is.
No lion can him fright, he’ll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right to be a pilgrim.
Hobgoblin nor foul fiend can daunt his spirit;
He knows he at the end shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away; he’ll fear not what men say;
He’ll labor night and day to be a pilgrim.
Arriving in Bedford, where Bunyan ministered, they stood before a large bronze statue and Mr. Pipes explains:
“John Bunyan preached his last sermon in London before he died in 1688,’ said Mr. Pipes. ‘Many years later Bedford raised this statue in his honor. Notice well his posture - eyes lifted to heaven; the best of books - the Bible - open in his hands; the law of truth on his lips; and his back against the world.’ … ‘Remember,’ Mr. Pipes continued, ‘on your own, you will always fail - every time - but God has given his children armor and weapons to fight all the enemies of your souls. Use the means of grace, all-prayer, the key of promise, your sword - God’s Word, worship, and the singing of hymns. And with God before you, live as pilgrims with your back to the world - they’ll follow better that way - and your eyes on the heavenly kingdom.’”
