“Antichrist,” he cried, adapting to the day, as Christian preachers have done in every age, the language of the apostles—“Antichrist is at hand! You see him in these heathen hosts who are threatening you on every side; these Saxon pirates from the east, who are ravaging our shores; these Pictish ravagers from the north, who every year are penetrating further and further into the land. Yes,” he added, with a telling reference to the event of the night before, “and even in apostates of British blood, who have preserved in your midst the hideous superstitions from which our ancestors turned to worship the blessed Christ; and as it was in the days of the blessed Paul, so is it now: ‘He that letteth will let till he be taken out of the way,’ The Roman power has kept these forces in check, but it will keep them no more. The time is short. They are gathering every day in greater strength, and you must gird yourselves to meet them.” Therefore, he went on, they must be strong and quit them like men. They must gird on them, and make complete in every point, their spiritual armour—the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Divine Word, the all-covering shield of faith; nor must they forget the temporal weapons with which the outward enemies who assail the body must be met. “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one,” cried the preacher, in his final apostrophe to his people, “and he will find that as his day so shall his strength be, and that the Lord can deliver by few as by many, Gideon’s three hundred, as by the eight hundred thousand men that drew sword in Israel.” Wrought by the eloquence of the orator to an almost incontrollable excitement, the whole congregation sprang to their feet, as if they were asking to be led at once to the battle. Then, with a sudden change from the stirring tone of the trumpet to the sweet music of the flute, the preacher touched another note. In a pleading voice, almost but never quite broken with tears, he besought them to cleanse their hearts; he reminded them that the armies of the Lamb of God must be clothed in the white robe of righteousness; that purity, tenderness to the weak, charity to the fallen, were as needed for Christ’s soldiers as steadfastness and courage, till many a cheek was wet with tears of contrition and repentance.