I heard an amusing story sometime ago about a savage in Africa who came
to a missionary very much excited and told him that his dog had been
completely spoiled as a watch-dog because he had chewed up and eaten a
small New Testament he had happened to get hold of. He said that the dog
would never be of any more use because the New Testament which he had
swallowed would take all the fight out of him, and he could no longer
keep wild animals away from the sheep.
That seems a strange notion for a grown-up man to get into his head,
doesn't it? And yet, boys and girls, I run across some young people even
here in America that think if they let Christ into their hearts it will
make them sort of "wishy-washy" and "goody-goody," and not strong and
rugged people.
It is true that to be a Christian does take some of the fight out of a
person, but it is the quarrelsome kind of fighting that has neither
beauty nor strength in it which it takes out of one. But when you come
to read history you will find that some of our bravest soldiers were
Christians. John Havelock, a British general who fought in India for the
sake of his country, was called "The Christian Warrior." Sir Oliver
Cromwell, who had to lead an army in England against the king, who was
ill-treating the people, had a body of soldiers under him who were
Christians, and they were such good soldiers and so hard to defeat that
they were called "Cromwell's Ironsides." Sometimes just before battle
these soldiers used to sing hymns and then pray on the battlefields. And
because they were Christians it made better and braver soldiers of them.
And so the truest kind of courage that any boy or girl can have is the
kind that Christ gives. Paul tells all of us Christians to be "good
soldiers." The Bible takes the wrong kind of fight out of you and puts
the right kind of fight into you, the fight for noble things.