My readers, I have somewhat else to do,
   Than with vain stories thus to trouble you;
   What here I say some men do know so well
   They can with tears and joy the story tell . . . 
   Then lend thine ear to what I do relate,
   Touching the town of Mansoul and her state: 
   For my part, I (myself) was in the town,
   Both when ’twas set up and when pulling down. 
   Let no man then count me a fable-maker,
   Nor make my name or credit a partaker
   Of their derision:  what is here in view
   Of mine own knowledge, I dare say is true.

The characters in the Holy War are not as a rule nearly so clear-cut or so full of dramatic life and movement as their fellows are in the Pilgrim’s Progress, and Bunyan seems to have felt that to be the case.  He shows all an author’s fondness for the children of his imagination in the Pilgrim’s Progress.  He returns to and he lingers on their doings and their sayings and their very names with all 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.