A critical examination of Grundtvig's theory, about which thousands of pages have been written, lies beyond the scope of this work. Grundtvig himself felt that his "discovery" had given him a solid foundation for his stand against the Rationalists. And his theory unquestionably did enable him, in the midst of an almost hopeless religious confusion, to reassert the essentials of Evangelical Christianity, to refute the contentions of the Rationalists by weighing them on an acknowledged historical basis of faith, and to reemphasize that the Christian church is not a creation of theological speculations but of God's own work in His word and sacraments. Grundtvig for some time previous to his discovery had felt exceedingly depressed. His long struggle for the reawakening of his people to a richer Christian and national life appeared fruitless. Most of the intellectual and spiritual leaders of his time looked upon the very idea of sharing the richer cultural and spiritual values of life with the common man as a visionary conception of an unstable and erratic mind. One ought naturally, they admitted, to be interested in improving the social and economic conditions of the lower classes, but the higher treasures of mind and spirit belonged in the very nature of things to the cultured few and could not be shared with the common herd. In spite of these discouragements, Grundtvig somehow experienced a wonderful rebirth of his hope in the spring of 1824, an experience to which he gave eloquent expression in his great poem, "New Year's Morning." He writes in the preface that he has "long enough battled with a witch called indifference, and has discovered that the battle wherein one is most likely to be defeated is the battle against nothing." He therefore urges his friends to ignore the witch and join him in a determined crusade for a reawakening of the Northern spirit to the accomplishment of Christian deed.