istian and
Hopeful to the city to go out and take Ignorance and bind him hand and
foot, and have him away. Then they took him up and carried him through
the air to the door in the side of the hill, and put him in there.
'Then,' so Bunyan ends, 'I saw that there was a way to Hell even from
the gates of Heaven, as well as from the City of Destruction; so I
awoke, and behold it was a dream!'

Poor Ignorance! Hell--such a place as Bunyan imagined Hell to be--was
a hard fate for a miserable mortal who had failed to comprehend the
true conditions of justification. We are not told that he was a vain
boaster. He could not have advanced so near to the door of Heaven if
he had not been really a decent man, though vain and silly. Behold, it
was a dream! The dreams which come to us when sleep is deep on the
soul may be sent direct from some revealing power. When we are near
waking, the supernatural insight may be refracted through human
theory.

Charity will hope that the vision of Ignorance cast bound into the
mouth of Hell, when he was knocking at the gate of Heaven, came
through Homer's ivory gate, and that Bunyan here was a mistaken
interpreter of the spiritual tradition. The fierce inferences of
Puritan theology are no longer credible to us; yet nobler men than the
Puritans are not to be found in all English history. It will be well
if the clearer sight which enables us to detect their errors, enables
us also to recognise their excellence.

The second part of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' like most second parts,
is but a feeble reverberation of the first. It is comforting, no
doubt, to know that Christian's wife and children were not left to
their fate in the City of Destruction. But Bunyan had given us all
that he had to tell about the journey, and we do not need a repetition
of it. Of course there, are touches of genius. No writing of Bunyan's
could be wholly without it. But the rough simplicity is gone, and
instead of it there is a tone of sentiment which is almost mawkish.
Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious fairy
land, where the knight-errant is a preacher in disguise. Fair ladies
and love matches, however decorously chastened, suit ill with the
sternness of the mortal conflict between the soul and sin. Christiana
and her children are tolerated for the pilgrim's sake to whom they
belong. Had they appealed to our interest on their own merits, we
would have been contented to wish them well throug