Bunyan Characters (3rd Series) | Page 7

Bunyan's experiences and
observations and reflections as a soldier are all worked up. I would set
that classical book on the same shelf with Caesar's Commentaries and
Napier's Peninsula, and Carlyle's glorious battle-pieces. Even Caesar
has been accused of too great dryness and coldness in his
Commentaries, but there is neither dryness nor coldness in John
Bunyan's Holy War. To read Bunyan kindles our cold civilian blood
like the waving of a banner and like the sound of a trumpet.
The situation of the city of Mansoul occupies one of the most beautiful
pages of this whole book. The opening of the Holy War, simply as a
piece of English, is worthy to stand beside the best page of the Pilgrim's
Progress itself, and what more can I say than that? Now, the situation
of a city is a matter of the very first importance. Indeed, the insight and
the foresight of the great statesmen and the great soldiers of past ages
are seen in nothing more than in the sites they chose for their citadels

and for their defenced cities. Well, then, as to the situation of Mansoul,
'it lieth,' says our military author, 'just between the two worlds.' That is
to say: very much as Germany in our day lies between France and
Russia, and very much as Palestine in her day lay between Egypt and
Assyria, so does Mansoul lie between two immense empires also. And,
surely, I do not need to explain to any man here who has a man's soul
in his bosom that the two armed empires that besiege his soul are
Heaven above and Hell beneath, and that both Heaven and Hell would
give their best blood and their best treasure to subdue and to possess his
soul. We do not value our souls at all as Heaven and Hell value them.
There are savage tribes in Africa and in Asia who inhabit territories that
are sleeplessly envied by the expanding and extending nations of
Europe. Ancient and mighty empires in Europe raise armies, and build
navies, and levy taxes, and spill the blood of their bravest sons like
water in order to possess the harbours, and the rivers, and the
mountains, and the woods amid which their besotted owners roam in
utter ignorance of all the plots and preparations of the Western world.
And Heaven and Hell are not unlike those ancient and over-peopled
nations of Europe whose teeming millions must have an outlet to other
lands. Their life and their activity are too large and too rich for their
original territories, and thus they are compelled to seek out colonies
and dependencies, so that their surplus population may have a home.
And, in like manner, Heaven is too full of love and of blessedness to
have all that for ever shut up within itself, and Hell is too full of envy
and ill-will, and thus there continually come about those contentions
and collisions of which the Holy War is full. And, besides, it is with
Mansoul and her neighbour states of Heaven and Hell just as it is with
some of our great European empires in this also. There is no neutral
zone, no buffer state, no silver streak between Mansoul and her
immediate and military neighbours. And thus it is that her statesmen,
and her soldiers, and even her very common-soldier sentries must be
for ever on the watch; they must never say peace, peace; they must
never leave for one moment their appointed post.
And then, as for the wall of the city, hear our excellent historian's own
words about that. 'The wall of the town was well built,' so he says. 'Yea,
so fast and firm was it knit and compact together that, had it not been
for the townsmen themselves, it could not have been shaken or broken

down for ever. For here lay the excellent wisdom of Him that builded
Mansoul, that the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the
most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave their consent
thereto.' Now, what would the military engineers of Chatham and Paris
and Berlin, who are now at their wits' end, not give for a secret like that!
A wall impregnable and insurmountable and not to be sapped or mined
from the outside: a wall that could only suffer hurt from the inside!
And then that wonderful wall was pierced from within with five
magnificently answerable gates. That is to say, the gates could neither
be burst in nor any way forced from without. 'This famous town of
Mansoul had five gates, in at which to come, out of which to go; and
these were made likewise answerable to the walls; to wit, impregnable,
and such as could never be opened or forced but by the