brance, 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.

3. And then, few, very few, it is to be feared, will be any better of
the _Holy War_. For, to be any better of such a terrible book as this
is, we must at all costs lay it, and lay it all, and lay it all at once,
to heart. We must submit ourselves to see ourselves continually in its
blazing glass. We must stoop to be told that it is all, in all its
terrors and in all its horrors, literally true of ourselves. We must
deliberately and resolutely set open every gate that opens in on our
heart--Ear-gate and Eye-gate and all the gates of sense and intellect,
day and night, to Jesus Christ to enter in; and we must shut and bolt and
bar every such gate in the devil's very face, and in the face of all his
scouts and orators, day and night also. But who that thinks, and that
knows by experience what all that means, will feel himself sufficient for
all that? No man: no sinful man. But, among many other noble and
blessed things, the _Holy War_ will show us that our sufficiency in this
impossibility also is all of God. Who, then, will enlist? Who will risk
all and enlist? Who will matriculate in the military school of Mansoul?
Who will submit himself to all the severity of its divine discipline? Who
will be made willing to throw open and to keep open his whole soul, with
all the gates and doors thereof, to all the sieges, assaults,
capitulations, submissions, occupations, and such like of the war of
gospel holiness? And who will enlist under that banner now?

'Set down my name, sir,' said a man of a very stout countenance to him
who had the inkhorn at the outer gate. At which those who walked upon
the top of the palace broke out in a very pleasant voice,

'Come in, come i