ind favour.
Bunyan, however, reverses the inference. He will have all guilty
together, those who do well and those who do ill. Even the elect are
in themselves as badly off as the reprobate, and are equally included
under sin. Those who are saved are saved for Christ's merits and not
for their own.

Men of calmer temperament accept facts as they find them. They are too
conscious of their ignorance to insist on explaining problems which
are beyond their teach. Bunyan lived in an age of intense religious
excitement, when the strongest minds were exercising themselves on
those questions. It is noticeable that the most effective intellects
inclined to necessitarian conclusions: some in the shape of Calvinism,
some in the corresponding philosophic form of Spinozism. From both
alike there came an absolute submission to the decrees of God, and a
passionate devotion to his service; while the morality of Free-will is
cold and calculating. Appeals to a sense of duty do not reach beyond
the understanding. The enthusiasm which will stir men's hearts and
give them a real power of resisting temptation must be nourished on
more invigorating food.

But I need dwell no more on a subject which is unsuited for these
pages.

The object of Bunyan, like that of Luther, like that of all great
spiritual teachers, was to bring his wandering fellow-mortals into
obedience to the commandments, even while he insisted on the
worthlessness of it. He sounded the strings to others which had
sounded loudest in himself. When he passed from mysticism into matters
of ordinary life, he showed the same practical good sense which
distinguishes the chief of all this order of thinkers--St. Paul. There
is a sermon of Bunyan's on Christian behaviour, on the duties of
parents to children, and masters to servants, which might be studied
with as much advantage in English households as the 'Pilgrim's
Progress' itself. To fathers he says, 'Take heed that the misdeeds for
which thou correctest thy children be not learned them by thee. Many
children learn that wickedness of their parents, for which they beat
and chastise them. Take heed that thou smile not upon them to
encourage them in small faults, lest that thy carriage to them be an
encouragement to them to commit greater faults. Take heed that thou
use not unsavoury and unseemly words in thy chastising of them, as
railing, miscalling, and the like--this is devilish. Take heed that
thou do not use them to many