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trious Valentin, regard Life and Organization as sustained in great measure by the same laws as those which, in different degrees and modes of working, operate in the inorganic world. Declining to separate the physical and chemical phenomena of dead and living nature by a line of demarcation hitherto not definitely proved to exist, and confidently resting on the innumerable and undoubted facts which prove that such forces as heat, light, magnetism, chemical affinity, are every moment operating in the living body, it supposes that even the most peculiar and fleeting of these operations which we sum up as Life, are effected, in obedience to natural laws, by the use of forces everywhere present.

Of the theologian who should call this "Materialism," I would ask, "How does it affect revealed religion, or infringe our common creed?" Its supporters, in assuming that "the vital functions are the result of an infinitely wise plan of organization," do but modify, and indeed modify by exalting, our notions of the infinite wisdom they explicitly acknowledge. The materials, so to speak, they regard as fewer, simpler, more general, less heterogeneous, than had hitherto been imagined. Scientifically, they must only gain their position more fully by proving it more fully than they have yet done. But, theologically, if there be any difference, surely it is that the simpler the materials, the more unimaginable must be the skill and wisdom of the workmanship.-Lancet, Nov. 10, 1860.

MYSTERIES AND MIRACLES.

Mysteries are those great and hidden things of our religion, whose truth we are assured of by divine authority; but the manner of their being surpasses our understanding: such as the Plurality of Persons in the Divine Unity; God manifest in the Flesh; the operation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers; the Spiritual Presence of Christ in the Eucharist; and the uniting our scattered parts from the dust of death.-The Centaur not Fabulous, by Dr. Young.

Ignorant sceptics are accustomed to attempt to justify their doubt of Miracles by their non-occurrence in the present times. Such persons overlook, in reading the Scriptures, the striking difference between the dispensations of God in the time of our Saviour and his apostles, and in our own. Then miracles were wrought on the bodies and minds of Christians, in order to establish the truth of the Gospel. That object being effected, miracles became rare, or ceased altogether.

The Pilgrim's Progress.

IN 1858 there was published The Ancient Poem of Guillaume de Guileville, entitled "Le Pelerinage de l'Homme," compared with the Pilgrim's Progress" of John Bunyan: edited from Notes collected by the late Mr. Nathaniel Hill. De Guileville was a French monk, who was born in 1295, and died about 1360. His writings were popular in England, portions of them having been translated by Chaucer and Lydgate. That Bunyan knew directly anything of De Guileville does not appear, but it is clear that he was acquainted with those fragments of the old chivalrous literature which were still handed about in the form of cheap books. Whether any portions of De Guileville himself survived in this shape may well be doubted; but as De Guileville himself confessedly borrowed from the Romance of the Rose, nothing is more likely than that a common element may be found in De Guileville and in Bunyan.

It is, however, absurd to say this resemblance supports a charge of plagiarism between the Pelerinage and the Pilgrim's Progress. The general idea of representing the Christian's course under the figure of a pilgrimage is so obvious that it could hardly fail to occur to many minds independently, especially in days when pilgrimages were things of daily occurrence. De Guileville and Bunyan are by no means the only authors who have worked out the idea. And, besides the general similarity of idea, a certain resemblance could hardly fail to occur in the details of the story. Of any Pilgrim's Progress the groundwork must be found in certain Scriptural phrases and descriptions. The Celestial City in the Apocalypse must of necessity be the pilgrim's goal. Then much of the detail must be drawn from medieval history or romance. The fiends and personified vices against which the Christian has to contend, naturally assume the form of the giants and ogres of medieval romance of the Turks and Saracens of medieval reality. The pilgrim fought his way to Jerusalem-so the Christian fights his way to Heaven. St. Paul's parable of the Christian armour, St. John's picture of the combat between Michael and the Dragon, stood ready to be pressed into the service. There was thus a vast mass of floating material, ready to the hands of all writers of pilgrimages, and of which all writers of pilgrimages availed themselves. But we see no ground for

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supposing that Bunyan borrowed from De Guileville, or did more than draw upon a common stock of ideas and images, which, even in De Guileville's time, were not absolutely new.

But there is nothing in all this which at all derogates from originality. Granting that Bunyan borrowed his idea from De Guileville, there is nothing which lays him open to the charge of "plagiarism." Whatever Shakspeare, Eschylus, Homer, or Bunyan borrowed from anybody else, they fairly made their own. De Guileville's allegory is dead-Bunyan's is alive. De Guileville may have dug up some dry bones, and arranged them in the form of a skeleton-Bunyan is the real enchanter who gave them flesh and blood, and the breath of life. And this is even more remarkable when we consider that what was natural in the days of De Guileville had become somewhat unreal in the days of Bunyan. In Bunyan's time people no longer went on pilgrimages, least of all people of Bunyan's own way of thinking. De Guileville may well have sent more than one pilgrim on an actual journey to Jerusalem-Bunyan would doubtless have dissuaded any Bedford burgess from such an undertaking, as being little better than one of the works of the flesh. Bunyan's theology is of course Calvinistic; and one cannot but see, with Lord Macaulay, that the real battles and the real persecutions of his own time have helped to give much of their life to his descriptions of imaginary battles and persecutions. But, nevertheless, the costume of Bunyan's book is essentially Crusading and not Covenanting. This may well arise from the fact of Bunyan's drawing from the common stock of all pilgrim-mongers. But it may also have something to do with that great characteristic difference between an early and a late literature. In Palestine, in early Greece, in mediæval Europe, poetry consisted very much in describing to people what they themselves said and did every day. We, for the most part, in anything professing to be poetical or romantic, sometimes of set purpose, sometimes because we cannot help it, get as far as possible from the realities of our own life.*

The Pilgrim's Progress, in its invention and plan, is generally supposed to have been the child of John Bunyan's own fancy; and he has, in his advertisement, strongly vindicated his claim to it. The necessity of this vindication, at least, proves that the matter was called in question in his own time; and the following extract contains at once his defence, and his own account of the origin and execution of the work :

*

Some say the Pilgrim's Progress is not mine,
Insinuating as if I would shine,

In name and fame by the book of another;
Like some made rich by robbing of his brother;

Abridged from the Saturday Review, Dec. 4, 1858.

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ever saw this chevalier errant. Still there are many apparent similarities; and a manuscript note in the edition of the Wandering Knight preserved in the Grenville Library of the British Museum, bears the following note upon the inside of the cover: "There can be no doubt that this is the original of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress."

Mr. Offor says: "The foulest and most unfounded slander upon the fair fame of Bunyan has appeared in Freeman's Journal, in which it is asserted that Bunyan copied his Pilgrim's Progress nearly verbatim from an old Popish work on purgatory, called The Pilgrimage of the Soul, which commences after the body is dead, and goes through all the imaginary pains of that fraudulent invention, so profitable to the priests, called purgatory, scarcely one sentence of which has the slightest similarity to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, excepting that it is a dream."—Notes and Queries, Second Series, No. 199.

It is a curious fact, and not very generally known, that a complete design of a Pilgrim's Progress is to be found in Lucian's Hermotimus: it is not to be imagined that Bunyan could have seen it there. from the limited educational advantages he possessed; yet the obvious allegory occurred to his mind, unschooled as it was, in a similar arrangement with that suggested by Lucian. -Notes to the Pilgrim's Progress converted into an Epic Poem, Parsonstown, 1844.

Bunyan had some providential escapes during his early life. Once he fell into a creek of the sea, once out of a boat into the river Ouse, near Bedford, and each time he was narrowly saved from drowning. One day, an adder crossed his path. He stunned it with a stick, then forced open its mouth with a stick and plucked out the tongue, which he supposed to be the sting, with his fingers; "by which act," he says, "had not God been merciful unto me, I might, by my desperateness, have brought myself to an end." If this, indeed, were an adder, and not a harmless snake, his escape from the fangs was more remarkable than he himself was aware of. A circumstance, which was likely to impress him more deeply, occurred in the eighteenth year of his age, when, being a seller in the Parliament's army, he was drawn out to go to the si

pany wished with

Leicester in 1645. One of the same comis stead; Bunyan consented to exchange eer substitute, standing sentinel one day hrough the head with a musket-ball. Scott observes, was one somewhat ir Roger de Coverley, in an action at from the slaughter of that action, by field."-Southey.

en translated into Chinese, each page ocks.