this world. But there is in the world
to come, replied Christian. When I was at home, Atheist went on, in mine
own country I heard as you now affirm, and, from that hearing, I went out
to see, and have been seeking this city you speak of this twenty years,
but find no more of it than I did the first day I set out. And, still
laughing, he went his way."

Having begun to tell us about Atheist, why did Bunyan not tell us more?
We would have thanked him warmly to-night for a little more about this
unhappy man. Why did the dreamer not take another eight or ten pages in
order to tell us, as only he could have told us, how this man that is now
Atheist had spent his past twenty years seeking Mount Zion? Those
precious unwritten pages are now buried in John Strudwick's vault in
Bunhill Fields, and no other man has arisen able to handle Bunyan's
biographic pen. Had Bunyan but put off the entrance of Christian and
Hopeful into the city till he had told us something more about the twenty
years it had taken this once earnest pilgrim to become an atheist, how
valuable an interpolation that would have been! What was it that made
this man to set out so long ago for the Celestial City? What was it that
so stoutly determined him to leave off all his old companions and turn
his back on the sweet refreshments of his youth? How did he do at the
Slough of Despond? Did he come that way? What about the Wicket Gate,
and the House Beautiful, and the Interpreter's House, and the Delectable
Mountains? What men, and especially what women, did he meet and converse
with on his way? What were his fortunes, and what his misfortunes? How
much did he lay out at Vanity Fair, and on what? At what point of his
twenty years' way did his youthful faith begin to shake, and his youthful
love begin to become lukewarm? And what was it that at last made him
quite turn round his back on Zion and his face to his own country? I
cannot forgive Bunyan to-night for not telling us the story of Atheist's
conversion, his pilgrimage, and his apostasy in full.

At the same time, though it cannot be denied that Bunyan has lost at this
point a great opportunity for his genius and for our advantage,--at the
same time, he undoubtedly did a very courageous thing in introducing
Atheist at all; and, especially, in introducing him to us and making him
laugh so loudly at us when we are on the very borders of the land of
Beulah. A less courageous writer, and a writer