Resolution Armed with Prayer

“Wait on the Lord, and let thine heart take courage.” PSALM xxvii. 14.

MERE courage may be very inefficient. It can be little more than high spirits, and subject to the swift changes of the surrounding temperatures. Courage may be only a chivalrous impulsiveness, a brilliantly attractive flare, but speedily relapsing into the cold greyness of the advancing night. There is the courage of the single act. There is the higher courage of prolonged action. There is the still higher courage of waiting, when the relief of action is forbidden. And therefore must we distinguish between the courage which is born and dies in a day, and that which stubbornly persists through the long, exacting years. One is flightiness, the other is fortitude. Now the courage commended in the Christian Scriptures is an evergreen. It is not brave impulsiveness, but strong endurance. It is not the exhilarant spirits of a single battle, but the firm, resolute mood of a long

66 Resolution Armed with Prayer

campaign. It is not so much the impetuousness which can take Jericho by assault as the hardihood which can, if need be, tramp round it seven times, waiting for the crumbling of its walls. This kind of resoluteness must itself be armed, or circumstances will maim and destroy it. Courage can lose its blood, not only by disappointment and defeat, but by the lack of suitable food. The noblest courage must be armed by regular and appropriate sustenance.

Now prayer is the appointed means by which this highest kind of courage is fed. We are to “wait on the Lord,” and our heart will “‘ take courage.’”? Through prayer our courage renews its youth like the eagle. The heart is invigorated into fresh ambition and endeavour. Its grip upon high ends is established, and it turns to the dull road with a new song. It is not so much that we acquire good spirits as that we obtain deepened communion with the renewing Spirit of God. The praying soul is the dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost. Such a soul ‘‘ shall not fear when heat cometh”’; its resources shall be equal to the demands of the fiercest drought.