In those wild times great men built their houses on high places, and then the weak and endangered people gathered around the strongholds of the powerful, as we see in our own city.

Our own steep and towering rock invited to its top the castle-builder of a remote age, and then the exposed country around began to gather itself together under the shelter of the bourg.

And thus it is that the military engineering of the _Holy War_ makes that old allegorical book most excellent to read, not only for common men like you and me, who are bent on the fortification and the defence of our own hearts, but for the military historians of those old times also, for the experts of to-day also, and for all good students of fortification.

And the New Testament of the Divine peace itself, as well as the Old Testament so full of the wars of the Lord--they both support and serve as an encouragement and an example to our spiritual author in the elaboration of his military allegory.

Every good soldier of Jesus Christ has by heart the noble paradox of Paul to the Philippians--that the peace of God which passeth all understanding shall keep their hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.