ATHEIST

   " . . . without God [literally, atheists] in the world.”—­Paul.

“Yonder is a man with his back toward Zion, and he is coming to meet us.  So he drew nearer and nearer, and at last came up to them.  His name was Atheist, and he asked them whither they were going?  We are going to the Mount Zion, they answered.  Then Atheist fell into a very great laughter.  What is the meaning of your laughter? they asked.  I laugh to see what ignorant persons you are to take upon you so tedious a journey, and yet are like to have nothing but your travel for your pains.  Why, man?  Do you think we shall not be received? they said.  Received!  There is no such place as you dream of in all this world.  But there is in the world to come, replied Christian.  When I was at home, Atheist went on, in mine own country I heard as you now affirm, and, from that hearing, I went out to see, and have been seeking this city you speak of this twenty years, but find no more of it than I did the first day I set out.  And, still laughing, he went his way.”

Having begun to tell us about Atheist, why did Bunyan not tell us more?  We would have thanked him warmly to-night for a little more about this unhappy man.  Why did the dreamer not take another eight or ten pages in order to tell us, as only he could have told us, how this man that is now Atheist had spent his past twenty years seeking Mount Zion?  Those precious unwritten pages are now buried in John Strudwick’s vault in Bunhill Fields, and no other man has arisen able to handle Bunyan’s biographic pen.  Had Bunyan but put off the entrance of Christian and Hopeful into the city till he had told us something more about the twenty years it had taken this once earnest pilgrim to become an atheist, how valuable an interpolation that would have been!  What was it that made this man to set out so long ago for the Celestial City?  What was it that so stoutly determined him to leave off all his old companions and turn his back on the sweet refreshments of his youth?  How did he do at the Slough of Despond?  Did he come that way?  What about the Wicket Gate, and the House Beautiful, and the Interpreter’s House, and the Delectable Mountains?  What men, and especially what women, did he meet and converse with on his way?  What were his fortunes, and what his misfortunes?  How much did he lay out at Vanity Fair, and on what?  At what point of his twenty years’ way did his youthful faith begin to shake, and his youthful love begin to become lukewarm?  And what was it that at last made him quite turn round his back on Zion and his face to his own country?  I cannot forgive Bunyan to-night for not telling us the story of Atheist’s conversion, his pilgrimage, and his apostasy in full.