Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1895 Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier edition.

BUNYAN CHARACTERS (THIRD SERIES)
by Alexander Whyte

CHAPTER I
--THE BOOK

'--the book of the wars of the Lord.'--Moses.
John Bunyan's Holy War was first published in 1682, six years before
its illustrious author's death. Bunyan wrote this great book when he was
still in all the fulness of his intellectual power and in all the ripeness of
his spiritual experience. The Holy War is not the Pilgrim's
Progress--there is only one Pilgrim's Progress. At the same time, we
have Lord Macaulay's word for it that if the Pilgrim's Progress did not
exist the Holy War would be the best allegory that ever was written:
and even Mr. Froude admits that the Holy War alone would have
entitled its author to rank high up among the acknowledged masters of
English literature. The intellectual rank of the Holy War has been fixed
before that tribunal over which our accomplished and competent critics
preside; but for a full appreciation of its religious rank and value we
would need to hear the glad testimonies of tens of thousands of God's
saints, whose hard-beset faith and obedience have been kindled and
sustained by the study of this noble book. The Pilgrim's Progress sets
forth the spiritual life under the scriptural figure of a long and an uphill
journey. The Holy War, on the other hand, is a military history; it is full
of soldiers and battles, defeats and victories. And its devout author had
much more scriptural suggestion and support in the composition of the
Holy War than he had even in the composition of the Pilgrim's Progress.
For Holy Scripture is full of wars and rumours of wars: the wars of the
Lord; the wars of Joshua and the Judges; the wars of David, with his
and many other magnificent battle-songs; till the best known name of
the God of Israel in the Old Testament is the Lord of Hosts; and then in
the New Testament we have Jesus Christ described as the Captain of
our salvation. Paul's powerful use of armour and of armed men is

familiar to every student of his epistles; and then the whole Bible is
crowned with a book all sounding with the battle-cries, the shouts, and
the songs of soldiers, till it ends with that city of peace where they hang
the trumpet in the hall and study war no more. Military metaphors had
taken a powerful hold of our author's imagination even in the Pilgrim's
Progress, as his portraits of Greatheart and Valiant-for- truth and other
soldiers sufficiently show; while the conflict with Apollyon and the
destruction of Doubting Castle are so many sure preludes of the coming
Holy War. Bunyan's early experiences in the great Civil War had taught
him