igh
place, priest, clerk, vestment, service, and what else belonging to
the Church, counting all things holy therein contained, and especially
the priest and clerk most happy and without doubt greatly blessed.
This conceit grew so strong in my spirit, that had I but seen a
priest, though never so sordid and debauched in his life, I should
find my spirit fall under him, reverence, and be knit to him. Their
name, their garb, and work did so intoxicate and bewitch me.'

Surely if there were no other evidence, these words would show that
the writer of them had never listened to the expositions of the
martial saints.

CHAPTER II.

CONVICTION OF SIN.

The 'Pilgrim's Progress' is the history of the struggle of human
nature to overcome temptation and shake off the bondage of sin, under
the convictions which prevailed among serious men in England in the
seventeenth century. The allegory is the life of its author cast in an
imaginative form. Every step in Christian's journey had been first
trodden by Bunyan himself; every pang of fear and shame, every spasm
of despair, every breath of hope and consolation, which is there
described, is but a reflexion as on a mirror from personal experience.
It has spoken to the hearts of all later generations of Englishmen
because it came from the heart; because it is the true record of the
genuine emotions of a human soul; and to such a record the emotions of
other men will respond, as one stringed instrument vibrates
responsively to another. The poet's power lies in creating sympathy;
but he cannot, however richly gifted, stir feelings which he has not
himself known in all their intensity.

Ut ridentibus arrident ita flentibus adflent
Humani vultus. Si vis me flere dolendum est
Primum ipsi tibi.

The religious history of man is essentially the same in all ages. It
takes its rise in the duality of his nature. He is an animal, and as
an animal he desires bodily pleasure and shrinks from bodily pain. As
a being capable of morality, he is conscious that for him there exists
a right and wrong. Something, whatever that something may be, binds
him to choose one and avoid the other. This is his religion, his
religatio, his obligation, in the sense in which the Romans, from whom
we take it, used the word; and obligation implies some superior power
to which man owes obedience. The conflict between his two dispositions
agitates his heart, and perplexes his intellect. To do wha