dealt with successfully. 'Deus aut
non vult tollere mala, aut nequit. Si non vult non est bonus. Si
nequit non est omnipotens.' It is wiser to confess with Butler that
'there may be necessities in the nature of things which we are not
acquainted with.'

CHAPTER IX.

THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.

If the 'Holy War' is an unfit subject for allegorical treatment, the
'Pilgrim's Progress' is no less perfectly adapted for it. The 'Holy
War' is a representation of the struggle of human nature with evil,
and the struggle is left undecided. The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is a
representation of the efforts of a single soul after holiness, which
has its natural termination when the soul quits its mortal home and
crosses the dark river. Each one of us has his own life battle to
fight out, his own sorrows and trials, his own failures or successes,
and his own end. He wins the game, or he loses it. The account is
wound up, and the curtain falls upon him. Here Bunyan had a material
as excellent in itself as it was exactly suited to his peculiar
genius; and his treatment of the subject from his own point of
view--that of English Protestant Christianity--is unequalled and never
will be equalled. I may say never, for in this world of change the
point of view alters fast, and never continues in one stay. As we are
swept along the stream of time, lights and shadows shift their places,
mountain plateaus turn to sharp peaks, mountain ranges dissolve into
vapour. The river which has been gliding deep and slow along the
plain, leaps suddenly over a precipice and plunges foaming down a
sunless gorge. In the midst of changing circumstances the central
question remains the same--What am I? what is this world in which I
appear and disappear like a bubble? who made me? and what am I to do?
Some answer or other the mind of man demands and insists on receiving.
Theologian or poet offers at long intervals explanations which are
accepted as credible for a time. They wear out, and another follows,
and then another. Bunyan's answer has served average English men and
women for two hundred years, but no human being with Bunyan's
intellect and Bunyan's sincerity can again use similar language; and
the 'Pilgrim's Progress' is and will remain unique of its kind--an
imperishable monument of the form in which the problem presented
itself to a person of singular truthfulness, simplicity, and piety,
who after many struggles accepted the Puritan creed as the adeq