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 they are thereby fast preparing their city for that threatened day when she is to be hung up on her own walls and bled to the white?  Who would not hate and revile the book or the preacher who prophesied such rough things as that?  Who could love the author or the preacher who told him to his face that his eyes and his ears and all the passes to his heart were already in the hands of a cruel, ruthless, and masterful enemy?  No wonder that you never read the Holy War.  No wonder that the bulk of men have never once opened it.  The Downfall is not a favourite book in the night-gardens of Paris.