The apocalyptic side of some men's imaginations is very easily worked
upon. No kind of book sells better among those of our people who have no
root in themselves than just picture-books about heaven. Our
missionaries make use of lantern-slides to bring home the scenes in the
Gospels to the dull minds of their village hearers, and with good
success. And at home a magic-lantern filled with the splendours of the
New Jerusalem would carry multitudes of rootless hearts quite captive for
a time. 'Well said; and what else? This is excellent; and what else?'
Christian could not tell Pliable fast enough about the glories of heaven.
'There we shall be with seraphim and cherubim, creatures that will dazzle
your eyes to look on them. There also you shall meet with thousands and
ten thousands who have gone before us to that place. Elders with golden
crowns, and holy virgins with golden harps, and all clothed with
immortality as with a garment.' 'The hearing of all this,' cried
Pliable, 'is enough to ravish one's heart.' 'An overly faith,' says old
Thomas Shepard, 'is easily wrought.'

As if the text itself was not graphic enough, Bunyan's racy, humorous,
pathetic style overflows the text and enriches the very margins of his
pages, as every possessor of a good edition of _The Pilgrim_ knows.
'Christian and Obstinate pull for Pliable's soul' is the eloquent summary
set down on the side of the sufficiently eloquent page. As the picture
of a man's soul being pulled for rises before my mind, I can think of no
better companion picture to that of Pliable than that of poor, hard-beset
Brodie of Brodie, as he lets us see the pull for his soul in the honest
pages of his inward diary. Under the head of 'Pliable' in my Bunyan note-
book I find a crowd of references to Brodie; and if only to illustrate
our author's marginal note, I shall transcribe one or two of them. 'The
writer of this diary desires to be cast down under the facileness and
plausibleness of his nature, by which he labours to please men more than