THE conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of
true manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character, and
if Christianity runs counter to conscience in this matter, or indeed in
any other, Christianity will go to the wall.
But does it? On the contrary, is not perfection of character—“Be ye
perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” perfection to be reached
by moral effort in the faithful following of our Lord’s life on
earth—the final aim which the Christian religion sets before individual
men, and constant contact and conflict with evil of all kinds the
necessary condition of that moral effort, and the means adopted by
our Master in the world in which we live, and for which he died? In
that strife, then, the first requisite is courage or manfulness, gained
through conflict with evil—for without such conflict there can be no
perfection of character, the end for which Christ says we were sent
into this world.