"Giants, dragons, and angelic champions carry us into a spurious fairyland 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." With the acknowledged shortcomings of the Second Part of "The Pilgrim's Progress," we may be well content that Bunyan never carried out the idea hinted at in the closing words of his allegory: "Shall it be my lot to go that way again, I may give those that desire it an account of what I am here silent about; in the meantime I bid my reader - Adieu."Bunyan's second great allegorical work, "The Holy War," need not detain us long. Being an attempt, and in the nature of things an unsuccessful attempt, to clothe what writers on divinity call "the plan of salvation" in a figurative dress, the narrative, with all its vividness of description in parts, its clearly drawn characters with their picturesque nomenclature, and the stirring vicissitudes of the drama, is necessarily wanting in the personal interest which attaches to an individual man, like Christian, and those who are linked with or follow his career. In fact, the tremendous realities of the spiritual history of the human race are entirely unfit for allegorical treatment as a whole. Sin, its origin, its consequences, its remedy, and the apparent failure of that remedy though administered by Almighty hands, must remain a mystery for all time. The attempts made by Bunyan, and by one of much higher intellectual power and greater poetic gifts than Bunyan - John Milton - to bring that mystery within the grasp of the finite intellect, only render it more perplexing. The proverbial line tells us that -"Fools rush in where angels fear to tread."
Bunyan and Milton were as far as possible from being "fools"; but when both these great writers, on the one hand, carry us up into the Council Chamber of Heaven and introduce us to the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity, debating, consulting, planning, and resolving, like a sovereign and his ministers when a revolted province has to be brought back to its allegiance; and, on the other hand, take us down to the infernal regions, and makes us privy to the plots and counterplots of the rebel leaders and hearers of their speeches, we cannot but feel that, in spite of the magnificent diction and poetic imagination of the one, and the homely picturesque genius of the other, the grand themes treated of are degraded if not vulgarized, without our being in any way helped to unravel their essential mysteries. In point of individual personal interest, "The Holy War" contrasts badly with "The Pilgrim's Progress." The narrative moves in a more shadowy region.
We may admire the workmanship; but the same undefined sense of unreality pursues us through Milton's noble epic, the outcome of a divinely-fired genius, and Bunyan's humble narrative, drawing its scenes and circumstances, and to some extent its DRAMATIS PERSONAE, from the writer's own surroundings in the town and corporation of Bedford, and his brief but stirring experience as a soldier in the great Parliamentary War. The catastrophe also is eminently unsatisfactory. When Christian and Hopeful enter the Golden Gates we feel that the story has come to its proper end, which we have been looking for all along. But the conclusion of "The Holy War"is too much like the closing chapter of "Rasselas" - "a conclusion in which nothing is concluded." After all the endless vicissitudes of the conflict, and the final and glorious victory of Emmanuel and his forces, and the execution of the ringleaders of the mutiny, the issue still remains doubtful. The town of Mansoul is left open to fresh attacks. Diabolus is still at large. Carnal Sense breaks prison and continues to lurk in the town. Unbelief, that "nimble Jack," slips away, and can never be laid hold of. These, therefore, and some few others of the more subtle of the Diabolonians, continue to make their home in Mansoul, and will do so until Mansoul ceases to dwell in the kingdom of Universe. It is true they turn chicken-hearted after the other leaders of their party have been taken and executed, and keep themselves quiet and close, lurking in dens and holes lest they should be snapped up by Emmanuel's men. If Unbelief or any of his crew venture to show themselves in the streets, the whole town is up in arms against them; the very children raise a hue and cry against them and seek to stone them. But all in vain. Mansoul, it is true, enjoys some good degree of peace and quiet. Her Prince takes up his residence in her borders. Her captains and soldiers do their duties. She minds her trade with the heavenly land afar off; also she is busy in her manufacture. But with the remnants of the Diabolonians still within her walls, ready to show their heads on the least relaxation of strict watchfulness, keeping up constant communication with Diabolus and the other lords of the pit, and prepared to open the gates to them when opportunity offers, this peace can not be lasting. The old battle will have to be fought over again, only to end in the same undecisive result. And so it must be to the end. If untrue to art, Bunyan is true to fact.
Whether we regard Mansoul as the soul of a single individual or as the whole human race, no final victory can be looked for so long as it abides in "the country of Universe." The flesh will lust against the spirit, the regenerated man will be in danger of being brought into captivity to the law of sin and death unless he keeps up his watchfulness and maintains the struggle to the end.
