The Valley of the Shadow

Christian makes it through the Valley of Humiliation, only to be confronted with another danger: the journey takes him through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, a very lonely place which Bunyan describes as being much worse than the Valley of Humiliation. Two men tried to persuade him to go back. They had looked into the valley, and what they saw of 'hobgoblins, satyrs and dragons' as well as 'a continual howling and yelling as of a people under unutterable misery' (59) kept them from going further. Christian kept going, however, knowing that the way to the celestial city lay beyond this valley. As he walked, he saw a ditch on the one side, into which the blind lead the blind, and 'a dangerous quag' on the other side, into which David once fell and would have been choked had he not been rescued.

Bunyan's description of the valley is vivid. The way through it was narrow and dangerous; Bunyan says of Christian that 'when he sought, in the dark, to shun the ditch on the one hand, he was ready to tip over into the mire on the other; also when he sought to escape the mire, without great carefulness he would be ready to fall into the ditch' (60).

It is clear that in Bunyan, the place described as 'the valley of the shadow of death' is not to be understood to mean death itself, nor to refer merely to an experience in which we come close to death or to losing loved ones. Bunyan understands it to refer to circumstances and situations in which the horrors of spiritual wickedness manifest themselves to the Christian so that the way that is difficult anyway becomes excessively so. It is a place where the Christian is exposed to particular dangers which call for resources of extraordinary strength. Charles Overton comments:

This land of darkness, into which our pilgrim now entered, seems to represent the dark and unhappy frame of mind into which a true believer may fall ... The absence of all sensible comfort, the trouble that is caused by the hiding of the Lord's face, the inability to find any spiritual communion with God in the use of ordinances, a dark and desponding feeling pervading the mind, bodily languor and Satan's temptations, may all unite to make this region of darkness. Very frequently in the holy Scriptures, and especially in the psalms and the book of Job, we read the sorrowful complaints that have been uttered by the Lord's people on such occasions. When I looked for good, says Job, then evil came unto me; and when I waited for light, there came darkness. I went mourning without the sun. I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls. My harp also is turned to mourning and my organ into the voice of them that weep.

(Lectures on Pilgrim's Progress, p91)

The interesting thing in Pilgrim's Progress at this point is that the weapons which helped Christian against Apollyon are of no help to him now. The Valley seemed to mock at his sword. Bunyan says that Christian 'was forced to put up his sword, and betake himself to another weapon, called All-prayer" (60). The noises around him in the valley are mingled with Christian's ceaseless prayer to God. As he prayed, so a company of fiends met him; he cried out 'I will walk in the strength of the Lord God', so they went back. This is a striking illustration of how prayer must be informed by Scripture.

It is an interesting point that prayer is the only weapon which is capable of fortifying Christian in this valley. The more dangerous the journey, the more spiritual our resources need to be. Yet the Scripture demonstrates to us that the more spiritual the duty, the more taxing it is on flesh and blood. In a sermon on Moses and Joshua against the Amalekites, in which Joshua prevails when Moses' arms are raised up in the act of supplication and prayer, Spurgeon comments that Moses needed help to keep his arms raised -- which Joshua did not. Similarly, in the garden of Gethsemane, the request Jesus made of his disciples was that they watch and pray -- but it was precisely there that they let the Lord down. We need to have the spirit of grace and supplications given to us, so that we will engage with God in prayer when all our resources are gone and we are forced to use the weapon of All-prayer as Christian was.

Another difficulty was that wicked ones crept up behind him, "and, whisperingly, suggested many grievous blasphemies to him, which he verily thought had proceeded from his own mind" (61). This troubled Christian: not merely because such thoughts were suggested to him, but 'to think that he should now blaspheme him that he loved so much before'; to which Bunyan adds the telling comment that Christian did not have the discretion to close his ears, or to know what the source of these blasphemies was.

Christian was comforted by what he thought to be the voice of a man saying 'Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil'. This gave him comfort; first, because he realised that others who feared God passed through this valley, second, because he reasoned that if God had been with others in the valley, he would be with Christian even though Christian could not perceive this to be the case; and, third, because if he overtook them, he might enjoy their company and fellowship.

When the sun rose, Christian was thankful for God's presence and guidance and keeping of him through the darkness, especially when he saw in the daylight what lay ahead of pits, nets, traps and snares. Bunyan has an interesting reference to two giants who sat in a cave and were responsible for entrapping many pilgrims and crushing their bones. One was called Pagan, who, Bunyan says, rather strangely, 'has been dead many a day' (63); the other was called Pope, whom Bunyan describes in the following terms: 'though he be yet alive, he is, by reason of age, and also of the many shrewd brushes that he met with in his younger days, grown so crazy and stiff in his joints, that he can now do little more than sit in his cave's mouth, grinning at pigrims as they go by, and biting his nails because he cannot come at them' (63). The image seems strange, not least in the implication that Bunyan considered the power of the Pope to be a thing of the past; as far as the Puritan mentality was considered, the Pope was the Antichrist.

The reference, however, is not to the general power of the Papacy, but to the persecutions which the Christian church endured in our nation both under paganism, and then under papal influence. When Bunyan says that Pagan is dead, he means that in his day paganism had long ceased to be responsible for putting Christians to death, but refers to the fact that Roman Catholic persecution of the martyrs of the faith continued until (to Bunyan) comparatively recently, when the Reformation took effect. But it is striking that as Christian passes the Pope's cave, the words the Pope shouts at him are 'You will never mend till more of you be burned'. Let us never forget what our faithful martyrs secured for us, and how far they were willing to go for Christ.

Christian comes out of the valley with another song on his lips, once of Bunyan's better known compositions:

O world of wonders (I can say no less)
That I should be preserved in that distress
That I have met with here! O blessed be
That hand that from it hath delivered me!
Dangers in darkness, devils, hell and sin,
Did compass me, while I this vale was in;
Yea, snares and pits, and traps and nets did lie
My path about; that worthless, silly I
Might have been catch'd, entangled and cast down;
But since I live, let Jesus wear the crown. (63)

ŠIain D. Campbell 2004