" There was too much love in Bunyan for a satirist of
that kind; he had just enough for a humourist.
Born in another class, he might have been, he would have been, a
writer more refined in his strength, more uniformly excellent, but
never so universal nor so popular in the best sense of the term.
In the change of times and belief it is not impossible that Bunyan
will live among the class whom he least thought of addressing--
scholars, lovers of worldly literature--for devotion and poverty are
parting company, while art endures till civilisation perishes.
Are we better or worse for no longer believing as Bunyan believed,
no longer seeing that Abyss of Pascal's open beside our armchairs?
The question is only a form of that wide riddle, Does any
theological or philosophical opinion make us better or worse? The
vast majority of men and women are little affected by schemes and
theories of this life and the next. They who even ask for a reply
to the riddle are the few: most of us take the easy-going morality
of our world for a guide, as we take Bradshaw for a railway journey.
It is the few who must find out an answer: on that answer their
lives depend, and the lives of others are insensibly raised towards
their level. Bunyan would not have been a worse man if he had
shared the faith of Izaak Walton. Izaak had his reply to all
questions in the Church Catechism and the Articles.
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