COURAGE.
We all know what is meant by courage, though it is not easy to define
it. It is the determination to hold our own, to face danger without
flinching, to go straight on our way against opposing forces, neither
turning to the right hand nor the left.
It is a quality admirable in the eyes of all men, savage and civilized,
Christian and non-Christian--as admirable as cowardice, the opposite
quality, is detestable. The brave man is the hero of the savage.
Bravery, or, as the Scriptures term it, _virtue_, is a great requisite
in a Christian. If it is not the first, it is the second
characteristic of a Christian life. "Add," says St. Paul, "to your
faith virtue," that is to say, courage.
It is the very glory of youth to be courageous.--The "sneak" and the
"coward" are the abhorrence of youth. It is youth which climbs "the
imminent deadly breach" and faces the deadly hail of battle, which
defies the tyranny of custom and the hatred of the world. One may have
compassion for age, which is naturally timid and sees fears in the way,
but youth which is cowardly is contemptible.
There are two kinds of courage--the one of a lower, the other of a
higher type. (_a_) The first, the lower kind of courage, is that which
has its root and foundation in our physical nature. It is
constitutional; there is little or no merit in it. Some men are born
to know no fear--men of strong nerve, of iron constitution, and
powerful physique. Such men laugh at danger and scorn opposition.
Theirs is the courage of the lion or the bull-dog, and there is no
virtue about it. They cannot help being what they are. (_b_) But
there is another kind of courage which is not so much physical as
_moral_. It has its foundation not in man's bodily constitution so
much as in his higher nature. It draws its power from the invisible.
"Are you not afraid," was a question put by a young and boastful
officer to his companion whose face was blanched and pale, as they
stood together amid the thickly falling shot of a battle-field. "I
_am_ afraid," he replied, "and if you were half as afraid as I am, you
would run." In his case there was little physical courage, but there
was the higher courage drawn from a sense of duty which made him stand
firm as a rock. When our Lord knelt in His mysterious anguish in
Gethsemane, His whole physical nature seemed broken down, "His sweat
was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."
"Suffer," He said, "this cup to pass from me"; and His strength came
from the invisible. "Not my will," He cried, "but thine be done."
With that sublime trust in God strengthening Him, He shrank not back
for a moment; He took the cup and drained it to the dregs. This is the
highest form of courage that there is. The weakest women have
displayed it in face of appalling dangers. It is the courage of the
martyr, the patriot, the reformer. There is a glory and beauty in it
before which all men bow.
There are three chief forms which this moral courage takes in ordinary
life.
_First, there is the courage of our opinions_.--Many people, perhaps
the majority, do not have opinions. They have simply notions,
impressions, sentiments, prejudices, which they have imbibed from
others. They may be said to be like looking-glasses, which have a
shadow of whatever stands before them. So long as they are in company
with a positive person who believes something, they have an opinion.
When he goes the shadow on the looking-glass goes also. They are like
the sand on the seashore--the last person who comes the way makes a
track and the next wave washes it away and leaves the sand ready for
another impression. How many are there who, when any important
question comes up, have no opinion about it, until they read their
paper or hear what other people are saying. There is no sort of
courage more needed than the courage to form an opinion and keep by it
when we have formed it. There is no more contemptible form of
cowardice than to do a thing merely because others do it. The grand
words of President Garfield of the United States are worthy of
remembrance: "I do not think what others may say or think about me, but
there is one man's opinion about me which I very much value, that is
the opinion of James Garfield; others I need not think about. I can
get away from them, but I have to be with him all the time. He is with
me when I rise up and when I lie down, when I go out and when I come
in. It makes a great difference whether he thinks well of me or not."
To this noble utterance we may add the words of the poet Russell Lowell:
They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think.
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.
_Second, there is the courage of resistance_.--This is the chief form
courage should take in the young. They are surrounded on every side by
strong temptations--temptations addressed to their lower nature, to
vanity, to indolence, to scepticism, to impurity, to drunkenness.
There is many a young man beset by temptation who has in reality to
fight far harder if he will maintain his integrity than any soldier
belonging to an army making its way through an enemy's country. He
does not know when an ambush may be sprung upon him, or from what side
the attack may come. In an old tower on the Continent they show you,
graven again and again on the stones of one of the dungeons, the word
_Resist_. It is said that a Protestant woman was kept in that hideous
place for forty years, and during all that time her employment was in
graving with a piece of iron, for anyone who might come after her, that
word. It is a word that needs to be engraven on every young man's and
young woman's heart. It represents the highest form of courage which
to them is possible--the power to say "No" to every form of temptation.
_Third, there is the courage of endurance_.--This is really the noblest
form of courage. There is no excitement in it; nothing to be won by
it. It is simply to bear without flinching. In the buried city of
Herculaneum, near Vesuvius, now uncovered, after the guide has shown
the visitor the wonders of the place he takes him to the gate and
points out the stone box where were found, buried in ashes, the rusted
remains of the helmet and cuirass of the Roman sentinel. When the
black cloud rose from the mountain, and the hot ashes fell around him,
and the people rushed out at the gate, he stood there immovable,
because it was his duty, and died in his place, suffocated by the
sulphury air. It was a grand instance of courage, but it is seen again
and again equalled in common life. In men and women stricken down by
fell disease; in those on whom adverse circumstances close like the
walls of an iron chamber; in people for whom there was no possible
escape, who could only bear, but who stood up firm and erect in their
weakness, whose cross, instead of crushing them to the earth, seemed
only to lift them up. We are told that Robert Hall, the great
preacher, suffered much from disease. He was forced often to throw
himself down and writhe on the ground in paroxysms of pain. From these
he would rise with a smile, saying, "I suffered much, but I did not cry
out, did I? did I cry out?"
These are the chief forms of moral courage in ordinary life. We have
now to point out what are the sources of such courage.
The first source of courage is conviction--the feeling that we are in
the right, the "testimony of a good conscience." Nothing can make a
man brave without that. "Thrice is he armed," we are told, "who hath
his quarrel just," and he is more than trebly armed who knows in his
heart that it is just. If we go over the roll of the strongest and
bravest men the world has seen we will find that at the root of their
courage there lay this fact of conviction. They _believed_, therefore
they spake, therefore they fought, therefore they bled and died. The
man of strong conviction is the strong man all the world over. If a
man wants that, he will be but a feeble character, a poor weakling to
the end of the chapter. Shakespeare says that "conscience makes
cowards of us all"; but it does something else when it makes us fear
evil--it lifts us above all other fear. So it raised Peter, who had
shortly before denied his Master, to such courage that he could say
before his judges, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken
unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the
things which we have seen and heard." It has enabled men and women to
endure a martyr's death when one word, which they would not speak,
might have saved them.
The second source of courage is faith.--We use the word in the
Christian sense of trust in God. When a man feels that God is with him
he can stand up against all the powers of earth and hell. "If God be
for us, who can be against us?" The heroes of the past, who subdued
kingdoms and wrought righteousness, have all been men of faith. Recall
Hebrews xi., the Covenanters, the Ironsides of Cromwell, the Huguenots,
Luther, Knox. Their faith may not have been so enlightened as it might
have been had their knowledge been wider. Their religious creeds may
have contained propositions that are no longer accepted, but they were
strong because of their undoubted faith in God. When His presence is
an abiding presence with us and in us, our
Strength is as the strength of ten,
Because our hearts are pure.
He who fears God will know no other fear.
The third source of courage is sympathy.--A man who has God with him
will be brave if he stand alone, but he will be greatly helped if he is
in company with others like himself and knows that he has the sympathy
of good men. You remember St. Paul on his journey to Rome reaching a
little village about thirty miles from the great city. The look-out
for him was very depressing. He had appealed to Caesar, but what
likelihood was there of his obtaining justice in Caesar's capital. He
might be thrown to the lions, or made to fight for his life in the
Coliseum, a spectacle to the Roman multitude. Then it was that a few
Roman Christians who had heard of his approach came out to meet him,
and, it is said, "he thanked God and took courage." Such was the power
of sympathy. If we would be encouraged we will seek it. If we would
encourage others we will give it.
We will only say in closing this chapter that its subject is most truly
illustrated by the life of our Lord himself. The mediaeval conception
of Christ was that He exhibited only the passive virtues of meekness,
patience, and submission to wrong. From the gospels we form a
different idea. He vanquished the devil in the wilderness; He faced
human opposition boldly and without fear; He denounced the hypocrisy of
the Pharisees, and encountered their rage and violence. He went calmly
along His appointed path, neither turning to the right hand nor to the
left. Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, could not deter Him from doing
His Father's work. Amid a tumultuous tempest of ill-will He moved
straight forward, foreseeing His death, "setting His face toward
Jerusalem," knowing all that awaited Him there. He went through
Gethsemane to Calvary with the step of a conqueror. Never was He more
truly a king than on the cross, and the grandest crown ever worn was
"the crown of thorns." In Him we have the highest example of courage,
as of all other virtues.