, the law of nature. Then there is that small
untoward class which knows the divine call of the spirit through the
brain, and the secret whisper of the soul in the heart, and for ever
perceives the veils of mystery and the rainbows of hope upon our human
horizons: which hears and sees, and yet turns wisely, meanwhile, to the
life of the green earth, of which we are part, to the common kindred of
living things, with which we are at one--is content, in a word, to live,
because of the dream that makes living so mysteriously sweet and
poignant; and to dream, because of the commanding immediacy of life."

There are indeed the three races. There is the pagan, which knows only
the fleshly aspect of life, and seeks nothing beyond it. There is the
spiritual, which ignores and seeks to flee from that to which its body
chains it. There is also that wise race who know that all things are
theirs, flesh and spirit both, and who have learned how to reap the
harvests both of time and of eternity.

LECTURE V

JOHN BUNYAN

We have seen the eternal battle in its earlier phases surging to and fro
between gods of the earth that are as old as Time, and daring thoughts
of men that rose beyond them and claimed a higher inheritance. Between
that phase of the warfare and the same battle as it is fought to-day, we
shall look at two contemporary men in the latter part of the seventeenth
century who may justly be taken as examples of the opposing types. John
Bunyan and Samuel Pepys, however, will lead us no dance among the
elemental forces of the world. They will rather show us, with very
fascinating _naivete_, true pictures of their own aspirations, nourished
in the one case upon the busy and crowded life of the time, and in the
other, upon the definite and unquestioned conceptions of a complete and
systematic theology. Yet, typical though they are, it is easy to
exaggerate their simplicity, and it will be interesting to see how John
Bunyan, supposed to be a pure idealist, aloof from the world in which he
lived, yet had the most intimate and even literary connection with that
world. Pepys had certain curious and characteristic outlets upon the
spiritual region, but he seems to have closed them all, and become
increasingly a simple devotee of things seen and temporal.

Bunyan comes upon us full grown and mature in the work by which he is
best known and remembered. His originality is one of the standing
wonders of history. The _Pilgrim'