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.

And it is here, that, for purposes of art, not for purposes of truth, the real failing of “The Holy War” lies.  The drama of Mansoul is incomplete, and whether individually or collectively, must remain incomplete till man puts on a new nature, and the victory, once for all gained on Calvary, is consummated, in the fulness of time, at the restitution of all things.  There is no uncertainty what the end will be.  Evil must be put down, and good must triumph at last.  But the end is not yet, and it seems as far off as ever.  The army of Doubters, under their several captains, Election Doubters, Vocation Doubters, Salvation Doubters, Grace Doubters, with their general the great Lord Incredulity at their head, reinforced by many fresh regiments under novel standards, unknown and unthought of in Bunyan’s days, taking the place of those whose power is past, is ever making new attacks upon poor Mansoul, and terrifying feeble souls with their threatenings.  Whichever way we look there is much to puzzle, much to grieve over, much that to our present limited view is entirely inexplicable.  But the mind that accepts the loving will and wisdom of God as the law of the Universe, can rest in the calm assurance that all, however mysteriously, is fulfilling His eternal designs, and that though He seems to permit “His work to be spoilt, His power defied, and even His victories when won made useless,” it is but seeming,—­that the triumph of evil is but temporary, and that these apparent failures and contradictions, are slowly but surely working out and helping forward

   “The one unseen divine event
   To which the whole creation moves.”

“The mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation leaves unsolved are made tolerable by Hope.”  To adopt Bunyan’s figurative language in the closing paragraph of his allegory, the day is certainly coming when the famous town of Mansoul shall be taken down and transported “every stick and stone” to Emmanuel’s land, and there set up for the Father’s habitation in