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.

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