The students thus equipped will be furnished as none others are, to begin at once the campaign of help and warfare of love.
It may be that insight into and sympathy with the struggles of men who are groping after God, if haply they may find him, will shorten the polemic sword of the professional converter whose only purpose is destructive hostility without tactics or strategy, or whose chief idea of missionary success is in statistics, in blackening the character of "the heathen," in sensational letters for home consumption and reports properly cooked and served for the secretarial and sectarian palates.
Yet, if true in history, Greek, Roman, Japanese, it is also true in the missionary wars, that "the race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries."[6] Apart from the wit or the measure of truth in this sentence quoted, it is a matter of truth in the generalizations of fact that the figure of the "sword of the spirit, which is the word of God," used by Paul, and also the figure of the "word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of the soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart," of the writer to the Hebrews, had for their original in iron the victorious _gladium_ of the Roman legionary--a weapon both short and sharp.

We may learn from this substance of fact behind the shadow of the figure a lesson for our instant application.
The disciplined Romans scorned the long blades of the barbarians, whose valor so often impetuous was also impotent against discipline.

The Romans measured their blades by inches, not by feet.

For ages the Japanese sword has been famed for its temper more than its weight.[7] The Christian entering upon his Master's campaigns with as little impediments of sectarian dogma as possible, should select a weapon that is short, sure and divinely tempered.
To know exactly the defects of the religion we seek to abolish, modify, supplement, supplant or fulfil, means wise economy of force.

To get at the secrets of its hold upon the people we hope to convert leads to a right use of power.