I wish sincerely that we possessed somewhat more of this ability of our forefathers to use the shield, to _fight and to rest behind the shield of faith, spiritually speaking_. That would make it possible for us to give battle the thunder of which would resound in the remotest corners of the earth, as in days of yore the song and the hammer strokes of our forefathers were heard in distant countries. Then we would not use our fighting ability to plunder foreign shores, but to lead the fight against the spiritual powers of evil--to be in the front ranks during the fight that shall be fought from the sea to the ends of the earth, in which thousands must bleed because they have not learned how to use the shield of faith. _We shall make a stand against the wiles of the devil!_ If I am not very much mistaken by the signs of the age, the attacks on the church of the Lord will during the present century become still more marked by diabolical cunning and cleverness than ever before. _The arrows_ will be sharpened with all the shrewdness of science, directed against us with cunning, glowing with a devilish hatred against everything that is of heavenly birth, and aims at heavenly goals. Indecent jokes, cutting scorn and cleverly formulated inquiries will constitute a cloud of arrows which will darken the sun to many. They will be hurled against us through the means of literature and science, with violent haughtiness, with fierce hatred. And we--we have not that unconquerable courage which enables us to say with the hero of Thermopylae: "So much the better--then we fight in the shade!" How shall we approach the struggle of the twentieth century? Someone may say: We shall sharpen our arrows, make them pointed, and send them forth with shrewdness and wisdom. We shall use our common sense, meet the opponents on the battlefield of thought and cleverness, show them what is unenduring in the chimera of the atheists and what is depraved in the life without God. In the church of the Lord we have men who are not inferior to our opponents in respect to cleverness and wisdom--indeed, we have, praised be God! But it does seem to me that many a valiant fighter will succumb in this kind of a struggle, and many plain-thinking Christians may flee, as did the Philistines in ancient days when their giant had fallen. All honor to those who defend and promote the Kingdom of God by thought, by reasoning and by wisdom! But along that way we do not accomplish much more than to humbly admit that "Stood we alone in our own might, Our striving would be losing."