by

Jennifer Cuthbertson

The title caught my eye. I glimpsed One Thing is Needful in Offor’s table of contents - surprised because I was not expecting to encounter poetry in my search through John Bunyan’s minor works. A much longer title, One Thing is Needful, or Serious Meditations Upon the Four Last Things - Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, stared at me as I located the correct page. The title now became another riddle for me to solve along with my quest to begin unraveling, what is for me, the alien subject of seventeenth century literature with its King James English. Much as Jews are wont to ask Christians how Father, Son and Holy Spirit can be one, I’m wondering how one can become four in the space of a title! In this paper I will briefly discuss the structure and content of this work as a whole, that is, the solution to this riddle, Bunyan’s personal life and the immediate religious atmosphere that might have precipitated the writing of this specific poem at this particular time, and finally, some observations of style and usage that thoroughly delighted me as I perused this text as an untrained reader.

One Thing is Needful is a moderately long poem constructed in five parts beginning with a general introduction which outlines for us the contents, or the next four sections of the poem: death and judgment, two events that will overtake everyone, and heaven and hell. Conversion is the determining factor as to whether heaven or hell will be the eternity experienced by the individual. To this end, the author employs fourteen stanzas to exhort, cajole, logically convince, and warn his readers that conversion is the "one thing needful!" However, to drive home his point, Bunyan embarks on a picturesque "meditation" of all four last events, linking the sections by use of passages that neatly conclude one and introduce the next. Death and Judgment are contingent on one another and are almost identical in length, while Heaven and Hell are counterposed and longer - Hell the lengthiest.

Ballads were a popular form of literature in the general population of seventeenth century England, and a large body of religious balladry was also available to and directed at the Puritan reader. Hence, Bunyan wasn’t writing a new form of literature when he began writing similar works. In fact, he was probably writing in a form he had enjoyed before he became a Christian. However, in his first poem, Profitable Meditations, Bunyan alerts his readers to the fact that his ballads are presented for the truth they speak ("Tis not the Method but the Truth alone..."[6]), not for "profit and delight" as were "at the root of poetic theory." No matter how adamant his defense and how much truth his poems contained, he probably was writing for profit, albeit modest, and One Thing is Needful is quite a delightful read!

Even though his first poetry was written in the ballad form found in the cheap broadsides and chapbooks of the time, by the time he authored this poem he had abandoned the strict closed quatrain of the ballad and developed a more refined style of open quatrain where clauses and sentences began running on into the next line or stanza. This freedom in structure gave Bunyan’s poetry more natural speech rhythms, thereby reducing the tedium. This is not the poetry of the educated elite, but Bunyan did not leave the form where he found it. Bunyan "should be seen and judged... as the developer and refiner of a much humbler poetry which has its roots among the common folk...."

One Thing is Needful was published in 1665, a year before Grace Abounding, and is one of four long poems Bunyan wrote while in prison. George Offor believes that the poems Bunyan wrote during this time may have been published separately in small tracts to be sold by his wife to help allay the family’s need while he was otherwise unable to support them. The very somber tone apparent from the beginning of this poem appears to be a reflection of Bunyan’s imprisoned status and the difficult financial position of a man stripped of his occupation and concerned for his family now left on their own. But even more than these physical difficulties, it is indicative of the emotional condition of a man separated from his loving family, church affiliation, and life as he has known it. Bunyan repeatedly speaks of both the physical and emotional aspects of a person’s "state" in his references to heaven and hell. In the section on heaven there are two examples of both perspectives expressed in one line: "Heaven is a place, also a state...(1)" and "This is the place, this is the state...(73)." He draws the parallel between hell and prison as physical places in such lines as, "Wherefore, hell in another place/Is call’d a prison too...(25)." And, at other points, we glimpse his emotional disposition:

4. Hell is beyond all thought a state

So doubtful and forlorn,

So fearful, that none can relate

The pangs that there are born.

Beside the physical and emotional factors that contributed to this writing, there were religious catalysts involved. John Bunyan was a "committed and zealous evangelist" concerned for the salvation of his countrymen and this poem is a powerful evangelistic treatise. He describes the work as such in his introduction:

13. Let all therefore that read my lines

Apply them to the heart:

Yea, let them read, and turn betimes,

And get the better part.

A second religious factor contributing to such eschatological writing may have been Bunyan’s millenarian studies. There was great fervor among some Christian groups leading up to the year 1666 that the millennium spoken of in Revelation 20 would be ushered in with this calendar change. If this indeed was his belief, it would have fostered an urgency in the evangelistic call as illustrated in the first stanza of his introduction where Bunyan says "...Convert with speed(1)." It would also partially account for Bunyan’s adoption of the apocalyptic language of Daniel, Mark 13, and the Revelation in his descriptions of the judgment. We can’t rule out the influence of his scriptural knowledge.

7. He comes with head as white as snow,

With eyes like flames of fire;

In justice clad from top to toe,

Most glorious in attire.

This would be comparable to language usage and urgency found in documents of our own time as some Christian sects and many authors played on the coming of the Christian calendar millennium of 2000 AD.

There are many devices and expressions used by Bunyan in this work that are absolutely glorious and completely engaging. "He believes in the unique power of imaginative literature... and has the capacity to teach, to give pleasure, to move, and to refer to webs of meaning beyond the literal text." I would like to point out three that caught my attention and imagination during my initial readings of the text before I began my research.

The first figure of speech that enchanted me was Bunyan’s personification of death. "Death as a king rampant and stout/The world he dare engage...(1)." To not have a mental image of Death as this king who conquers all no matter if weak or strong, rich or poor, bound or free, is impossible. Bunyan’s descriptions are too rich to disregard. He turns "beauty to rottenness" and "youth to wrinkles", "the wild he tames" and "spoils the mirth." This man, Death, runs roughshod over everyone as he destroys - nothing is sacred. The language is fast-paced, colorful, and strong. Then, just when convinced that Death is the victor, the atmosphere and pace shift and we are confronted with "the man death cannot kill." This is the man of God clothed in the armor of the Lord, the One who conquers death! King Death, in all his stout pomp and circumstance, simply flees. What a picture! To the reader Bunyan presents a Hobson’s choice - the only way not to give one’s life over to Death is to give it over to God.

In his section on hell, Bunyan plays on the words life and death and uses repetition of them to emphasize the gravity of a life of sin and the eternity thus inherited. He instinctively understands that "moral and theological focus is no enemy of imaginative literature." The irony portrayed by his word usage and construction in demonstrating the concept of eternal damnation is masterful.

51. They are all dead, yet live they do,

Yet neither live nor die.

They die to weal, and live to woe,

This is their misery.

This is the second death, "Instead of life, a living death... Dyings will be in every breath...(7)." It is a state beyond understanding - "To live, and yet be dead."

Another device he uses heightens the drama of this second death, or hell. In the poem’s first death section, Bunyan briefly speaks of the worms that will eat away at the dead body "... And will thereof dispose." In the last section, a major part of the living death is also a worm. However, this is the figurative worm, a guilty conscience because of a life of sin - a worm that eats away at one’s insides.

42. This worm Ôtis said shall never die,

But in the belly be

Of all that in the flames shall lie,

O dreadful sight to see!

43. This worm now needs must in them live,

For sin will still be there,

And guilt, for God will not forgive,

Nor Christ their burden bear.

He tells us that this worm is fed by memory. Because of this, the damned, in first person, say:

80. A block, a stock, a stone, a clot,

Is happier than I;

For they know neither cold nor hot,

To live nor yet to die.

After absorbing the language and content of this poem, it is probably inevitable that one might see our own age and Christian speech as altogether whitewashed. Heaven and hell are concepts quite out of style on their own, much more so in the context of fire, worms, mansions and eternity. John Bunyan says nothing to make the unbeliever comfortable. He is not "seeker friendly" or politically correct! Nevertheless, One Thing is Needful is engaging and thought provoking to me, a modern reader. I can’t help but think it fulfilled its role as an evangelistic tool in its own time. Whether people converted "with speed" because they thought the end was near or thoughtfully deliberated because they recognized eternal consequences, it matters not. It was to their profit and delight!