Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) | Page 5

a foolish father's fond
delight. While, on the other hand, when we look to see him in his

confidential addresses to his readers returning upon some of the
military and municipal characters in the Holy War, to our
disappointment he does not so much as name a single one of them,
though he dwells with all an author's self-delectation on the outstanding
scenes, situations, and episodes of his remarkable book.
What, then, are some of the more outstanding scenes, situations, and
episodes, as well as military and municipal characters, in the book now
before us? And what are we to promise ourselves, and to expect, from
the study and the exposition of the Holy War in these lectures? Well, to
begin with, we shall do our best to enter with mind, and heart, and
conscience, and imagination into Bunyan's great conception of the
human soul as a city, a fair and a delicate city and corporation, with its
situation, surroundings, privileges and fortunes. We shall then enter
under his guidance into the famous and stately palace of this
metropolitan city; a palace which for strength might be called a castle,
for pleasantness a paradise, and for largeness a place so copious as to
contain all the world. The walls and the gates of the city will then
occupy and instruct us for several Sabbath evenings, after which we
shall enter on the record of the wars and battles that rolled time after
time round those city walls, and surged up through its captured gates
till they quite overwhelmed the very palace of the king itself. Then we
shall spend, God willing, one Sabbath evening with Loth-to-stoop, and
another with old Ill-pause, the devil's orator, and another with Captain
Anything, and another with Lord Willbewill, and another with that
notorious villain Clip-promise, by whose doings so much of the king's
coin had been abused, and another with that so angry and so
ill-conditioned churl old Mr. Prejudice, with his sixty deaf men under
him. Dear Mr. Wet-eyes, with his rope upon his head, will have a fit
congregation one winter night, and Captain Self-denial another. We
shall have another painful but profitable evening before a communion
season with Mr. Prywell, and so we shall eat of that bread and drink of
that cup. Emmanuel's livery will occupy us one evening, Mansoul's
Magna Charta another, and her annual Feast-day another. Her
Established Church and her beneficed clergy will take up one evening,
some Skulkers in Mansoul another, the devil's last prank another, and
then, to wind up with, Emmanuel's last speech and charge to Mansoul
from his chariot-step till He comes again to accomplish her rapture. All

that we shall see and take part in; unless, indeed, our Captain comes in
anger before the time, and spears us to the earth when He finds us
asleep at our post or in the act of sin at it, which may His abounding
mercy forbid!
And now take these three forewarnings and precautions.
1. First:- All who come here on these coming Sabbath evenings will not
understand the Holy War all at once, and many will not understand it at
all. And little blame to them, and no wonder. For, fully to understand
this deep and intricate book demands far more mind, far more
experience, and far more specialised knowledge than the mass of men,
as men are, can possibly bring to it. This so exacting book demands of
us, to begin with, some little acquaintance with military engineering
and architecture; with the theory of, and if possible with some practice
in, attack and defence in sieges and storms, winter campaigns and long
drawn-out wars. And then, impossible as it sounds and is, along with
all that we would need to have a really profound, practical, and at
first-hand acquaintance with the anatomy of the human subject, and
especially with cardiac anatomy, as well as with all the conditions,
diseases, regimen and discipline of the corrupt heart of man. And then
it is enough to terrify any one to open this book or to enter this church
when he is told that if he comes here he must be ready and willing to
have the whole of this terrible and exacting book fulfilled and
experienced in himself, in his own body and in his own soul.
2. And, then, you will not all like the Holy War. The mass of men
could not be expected to like any such book. How could the vain and
blind citizen of a vain and blind city like to be wakened up, as Paris
was wakened up within our own remembrance, to find all her gates in
the hands of an iron-hearted enemy? And how could her sons like to be
reminded, as they sit in their wine gardens, that