Part 4 (1/2)
To these thoughts on the use of time we may fitly add the great words of Scripture, ”So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom,” Ps. xc. 12. ”Redeeming the time, because the days are evil,” Ephes. v. 16. We transform time into eternity by using it aright.
[1] These ill.u.s.trations are given by Mr. Davenport Adams.
[2] _Beginning Life_.
CHAPTER VII.
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 compa.s.sion 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 const.i.tutional; there is little or no merit in it. Some men are born to know no fear--men of strong nerve, of iron const.i.tution, 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 const.i.tution 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 pa.s.s from me”; and His strength came from the invisible. ”Not my will,” He cried, ”but thine be done.”
With that sublime trust in G.o.d 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-gla.s.ses, 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-gla.s.s goes also. They are like the sand on the seash.o.r.e--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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.blest 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 cuira.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 crus.h.i.+ng 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 G.o.d to hearken unto you more than unto G.o.d, 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 G.o.d. When a man feels that G.o.d is with him he can stand up against all the powers of earth and h.e.l.l. ”If G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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.