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INTRODUCTION
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hosts of the angels. The influence of the Apocalypse is here very evident. Komensky, as all the "brethren" of his time, was an indefatigable student of Scripture. The "Bible of Kralice," to which I have already referred, was always in their hands, and the "Labyrinth" shows many traces of its study. Komensky's vision of heaven is very striking, and I do not hesitate to say that it has sometimes reminded me of Dante's "Paradise."

After the vision has disappeared, the pilgrim falls on his knees and addresses to God a prayer, breathing that passionate and disinterested love of the divinity that is so characteristic of the mystics. With this chapter the book ends. But in this chapter, as in several others, such as that which deals with the pilgrim's mystical betrothal with Christ, we are carried upward to the highest summits of mystic thought. Had the book been written in a language better known than that of Bohemia, it would, I think, have ranked high among the works belonging to that school of thought. It would be interesting to examine to what extent Komensky was influenced by the writings of the German mystics, but limited space renders this impossible.

Though the "Labyrinth" is, to a certain extent, a philosophical work, and, to a certain extent, also a book of adventure, yet it must be considered as mainly a theological work. It could not be otherwise as regards a book written by Komensky, who called himself "hominem vocatione theologum," and who, in all his writings, even on other subjects,