Are we better or worse for no longer believing as Bunyan
believed, no longer seeing that Abyss of Pascal's open
beside our arm-chairs ? 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



190 ESSAYS IN LITTLE.
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. Bunyan found his in the
theology of his sect, appealing more strongly than orthodoxy
to a nature more bellicose than Izaak's. Men like him, with
his indomitable courage, will never lack a solution of the
puzzle of the earth. At worst they will live by law, whether
they dare to speak of it as God's law, or dare not. They
will always be our leaders, our Captain Greathearts, in the
pilgrimage to the city where, led or unled, we must all at
last arrive. They will not fail us, while loyalty and valour
are human qualities. The day may conceivably come when
we have no Christian to march before us, but we shall
never lack the company of Greatheart.
TO A YOUNG JOURNALIST.
