He read with a smile, which was not wholly one of amusement, Mr. Greatheart's admirable argument as to how the process of redemption was executed. The Redeemer, it seemed, had no less than four kinds of righteousness, three to keep, which he could not do without, and one kind to give away. Every detail of the case was supported by a little cluster of marginal texts, and no doubt it appeared as logical and simple to the author as a problem or an equation. But what an extraordinary form of religion it all was! There was not the least misgiving in the mind of the author. The Bible was to him a perfectly unquestioned manifesto of the mind of God, and solved everything and anything. And yet the whole basis of the pilgrimage was insecure. There was no free gift of grace at all. Some few fortunate people were started on pilgrimage by being given an overpowering desire to set out, while the pleasant party who met at Madam Wanton's house, Mr. Lightmind and Mr. Love-the-flesh, with Mr. Lechery and Mrs. Filth, and passed the afternoon with music and dancing, were troubled by no divine misgivings. Then, too, the Lord of the way found no difficulty in easing the path of the gentler sort of pilgrims. He kept the Valley of the Shadow comparatively quiet for Christiana and her tender band. The ugly thing that came to meet them, and the Lion that padded after them, were not suffered to draw near. The hobgoblins were stayed from howling. It never seemed to have occurred to Bunyan to question why the Lord of the way had ever allowed this unhallowed crew to gather in the valley at all. If he could restrain them, and if Mr. Greatheart could hew the giants in pieces, why could not the whole nest of hornets have been smoked out once and for all? Even the Slough of Despond could not be mended with all the cartloads of promises and texts that were shot there. And yet for all that, when one came to reflect upon it, this Calvinistic scheme of election and reprobation did seem to correspond in a terrible manner with the phenomena of the world. One saw people around one, some of whom seemed to start with an instinct for all that was pure and noble, and again others seemed to begin with no preference for virtue at all, but to be dogged with inherited corruption from the outset. The mistake which moralists made was to treat all alike, as if all men had the moral instinct equally developed; and yet Hugh had met not a few men who were restrained by absolutely no scruples, except prudential ones, and the dread of incurring conventional penalties, from yielding to every bodily impulse. If truth and purity and unselfishness were the divine things, if happiness lay there, why were there such multitudes of people created who had no implanted desire to attain to these virtues?