nt was idle trifling in a life so short as man's,
and with issues so far-reaching depending upon it. To understand, and
to make others understand, what Christ had done, and what Christ
required men to do, was the occupation of his whole mind, and no
object ever held his attention except in connection with it. With a
purpose so strict, and a theory of religion so precise, there is
usually little play for imagination or feeling. Though we read
Protestant theology as a duty, we find it as dry in the mouth as
sawdust. The literature which would please must represent nature, and
nature refuses to be bound into our dogmatic systems. No object can be
pictured truly, except by a mind which has sympathy with it.
Shakespeare no more hates Iago than Iago hates himself. He allows Iago
to exhibit himself in his own way, as nature does. Every character, if
justice is to be done to it, must be painted at its best, as it
appears to itself; and a man impressed deeply with religious
convictions is generally incapable of the sympathy which would give
him an insight into what he disapproves and dislikes. And yet Bunyan,
intensely religious as he was, and narrow as his theology was, is
always human. His genius remains fresh and vigorous under the least
promising conditions. All mankind being under sin together, he has no
favourites to flatter, no opponents to misrepresent. There is a
kindliness in his descriptions, even of the Evil One's attacks upon
himself.

The 'Pilgrim's Progress,' though professedly an allegoric story of the
Protestant plan of salvation, is conceived in the large, wide spirit
of humanity itself. Anglo-Catholic and Lutheran, Calvinist and Deist
can alike read it with delight, and find their own theories in it.
Even the Romanist has only to blot out a few paragraphs, and can
discover no purer model of a Christian life to place in the hands of
his children. The religion of the 'Pilgrim's Progress' is the religion
which must be always and everywhere, as long as man believes that he
has a soul and is responsible for his actions; and thus it is that,
while theological folios once devoured as manna from Heaven now lie on
the bookshelves dead as Egyptian mummies, this book is wrought into
the mind and memory of every well-conditioned English or American
child; while the matured man, furnished with all the knowledge which
literature can teach him, still finds the adventures of Christian as
charming as the adventures of Ulysses