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."
More and more the shibboleth must be: "Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked." Learn how to fight, covered by the shield! That means: All your struggle must be based upon the words of faith, all your arguments must take these as their point of departure instead of using human sagacity and the tricks of interpretation; then you will be unconquerable. And if it does happen that you become weary in the fight against the wiles of the devil, or that your arrows are all spent while the foe has plenty, then do as our fathers did: Take a rest behind the shield! Cover yourself completely with the words of faith, then no hostile dart will reach you, far less wound you. On the contrary—you rest and gather strength while the foe exhausts himself uselessly, and "all the fiery darts of the wicked are quenched."
This method of fighting is especially adapted to the people, and it is the age of the people, also in the church of our Lord. The future does not require a great chieftain with a host of good-for-nothings behind him, but an army whose every individual is trained in the use of the shield of faith.
When Mr. Moeller-Anderson, a Dane with a warm and faithful heart, a Dane whose quiet ways his compatriots abroad do not forget—in the summer of 1888 made regular sailing trips from Copenhagen to Sweden for the sake of his health, it happened one day aboard the vessel that some scoffers wished to have fun with him. They may have thought that it would be an easy matter to subdue him. They, therefore, started a conversation with him, but soon their speech changed to scoffing and witty questions, daring attacks upon Christianity. Then Mr. Moeller-Anderson replied: "I don't know how that all may be, and I cannot answer you, but if you wish to know what my faith is, then I will confess my faith through the Apostles' Creed before you right here!"
The scoffers had nothing more to say!