"We do not wish to find out what we have lost: leave us alone, man, we have chosen our path and must stick to it," while some who had never heard of the King and His mercy, laughed unbelievingly.
"Had your story been true we should have been told about it long ago," they said. "Nobody ever told us. Would people who have known such good news for years never have taken the trouble to come and help us in our misery if they knew it to be true?"
But every now and then Amer would meet one whose eyes would follow him with a hungry expression visible in them, as he went about proclaiming the Good News, and then he knew that his efforts were not in vain, and he would tell him of the Great King Who had died on the Cross to save him and to give deliverance from the enemy.
"We will fight the enemy together," Amer would say, and he would fall on his knees and pray.
His fellow soldiers had been right when they had told him that the warfare would be fierce and long; it needed all his strength not to give way, and his enemies were watching him determined to make him fall.
"Pity thyself," they would whisper in his ear, "pity thyself, you are losing strength, the battle is too hard, others can do the work, why put yourself into such danger?" Then Pride would murmur,
"You of all people must persevere, you are by far the most successful worker here. No one works so hard as you, and people will listen to you who turn a deaf ear to the other soldiers." Amer found this enemy even more difficult to overcome than the others, and he knew him to be the more dangerous, for if he induced him to continue his work for any other motive than that of obedience to his King, it would be ruined.
Then Despondency would try and seize him.
"Give it all up," he cried, "it is useless, these people are too far gone in wickedness, your efforts are quite in vain."
All these enemies attacked Amer while he was busy about his work, and often he found when he was doing his utmost to break the chains of some poor slave, he would receive a blow from an unseen hand, and it was only by crying to his King fur help that he was able to overcome.