His remarkable
experiences, however, with Adam the First, with Moses, and then with the
Man with holes in His hands, all that makes up a page in Faithful's
autobiography we could ill have spared. His encounter with Shame also,
and soon afterwards with Talkative, are classical passages in his so
individual history. Altogether, it would be almost impossible for us to
imagine two pilgrims talking so heartily together, and yet so completely
unlike one another. A very important lesson surely as to how we should
abstain from measuring other men by ourselves, as well as ourselves by
other men; an excellent lesson also as to how we should learn to allow
for all possible varieties among good men, both in their opinions, their
experiences, and their attainments. True Puritan as the author of _The
Pilgrim's Progress_ is, he is no Procrustes. He does not cut down all
his pilgrims to one size, nor does he clip them all into one pattern.
They are all thinking men, but they are not all men of one way of
thinking. John Bunyan is as fresh as Nature herself, and as free and
full as Holy Scripture herself in the variety, in the individuality, and
even in the idiosyncrasy of his spiritual portrait gallery.
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