Caleb the Soldier

It is not the quantity, but the temper of the metal, which makes a good sword: nor is it mere bulk, but a large measure of nervous and muscular force, which makes a strong man; and, in accordance with the saying of Napoleon I., that “‘moral is to physical power as three to one,” the wars of all ages have proved that success in battle does not turn so much on the multitude as on the morale, on the numbers as on the character, of the troops.

The triumph of the Prussians, for example, in their late brief but bloody contest with Austria, was due less to the superiority of their arms than of their education, intelligence, and religion; under Providence, these, not numbers, or the needle-gun, turned the fortunes of the campaign. To the same, or similar, moral causes Oliver Cromwell owed his remarkable success. Fanatics or not, right or wrong in their religious and political views, his troops were thoughtful men, of strict and even severe manners, within whose camps there was little swearing but much psalm-singing: soldiers who, if they did not, because they could not in conscience, honor the king, feared God, It was from their knees in silent prayer, or from public assemblies held for worship, those men went to battle, who almost never fought but they conquered, bearing down in the shock of arms the very flower and pride of England’s chivalry. By heroic deeds which history records, and John Milton sang, and all denominations of Protestant Christians agree in admiring and approving, the valleys of Piedmont teach the same lesson. Strong were their mountain fastnesses; the dizzy crag they shared with the eagle; the narrow gorge, where, with a roaring torrent on this side, and a dark frowning precipice on that, one brave man, spear in hand, or with boys and women at his back to load the rifles, could hold the pass against a thousand. Yet the salvation of the Waldenses did not lie in ‘the munition of rocks.” To the morale which endured three centuries of the cruelest persecution, turned every rock into a monument, faced death on every meadow, and gave to every village its roll of martyrs, was chiefly due the illustrious spectacle of a handful of men defending their faith and country against the arms of Savoy and the persecutions of Rome. It was this which braced them for the struggle, and repeatedly rolled back on the plains of Italy the bleeding fragments of the mighty armies that invaded their mountain homes.

The true defence of a country lies far more in the moral character and spirit of its inhabitants than in ships or arsenals of war; or in the numbers that, soldiers by profession, form its standing army. This was demonstrated by America in its War of Independence, and also by the issue of that gigantic conflict which ended so well in Negro Freedom. Yet, where a country, surrounded with dangerous neighbors, has its shores, its commerce, and also widely-scattered colonies, to defend, a body of men whose trade is arms, is an institution with which it may not be able to dispense. Such is the situation of our country. Numbering nearly. 200,000 men, our standing army forms a very important branch of the public service; and, though a costly, a useful one, so long as, kept at the lowest possible figure, and confined to its own proper duties, it is maintained, not for the purpose of attacking others, but of defending ourselves. No doubt, as in those days when gentlemen wore swords, and were ready to draw them in every petty quarrel and drunken brawl, nations which maintain standing armies are tempted to commit acts of violence. It has been too much their custom to bring ordinary questions to the arbitrament of the sword, and rush without consideration into the unspeakable horrors and cruelties of war. These, however, are not the legitimate uses of such an institution. Circumstances may make it necessary to carry war beyond our shores. We may reguire to follow the example of Hannibal, who, to draw the enemies of his country from Carthage, invaded Italy, and thundered at the gates of Rome; but the proper motto on the banners of a standing as well as of a volunteer army is, Defence, and not Offence. In no other way can it receive, I vent ure to affirm, either the approbation of humanity or the sanctions of religion.

It were a happy thing for us, and the world also, if we could afford to disband our army, and, our situation making it safe to embrace the peace principles of the Society of Friends, might convert every sword into a plowshare, and never more dig iron from the earth to bury it in a brother’s bowels. Menslaughtering each other is a spectacle horrid to contemplate. War, at the best, is a fearful necessity; and there is no doubt that we have rushed into many wars without any just or righteous cause — we have been verily ‘“‘ guilty concerning our brother.” Meanwhile, however, and till the advent of millennial days, the peace principles of that excellent class of citizens, commonly called Quakers, are a dream; and one from which, were we to embrace them, we should be rudely awakened some morning by the roar of cannon on our shores.

So long as we cannot dispense with locks and keys to protect our goods from thieves, nor with police to preserve our persons from assault and our homes from housebreakers, it is vain to hope that we can dispense with the means of protecting our country from those who, though dignified with — the names of conquerors, are nothing else than thieves and murderers. Alexander, Cesar, Napoleon, differed from the felons we send to prison, or consign to a gallows, only in that they plundered, not houses, but kingdoms, and, on bloody battlefields, strewed with the bodies of mangled thousands, committed not solitary, but wholesale slaughter.

But while we may justify a standing army, 1 would like to ask what Christian man can justify those arrangements which, in so many respects, convert it into a standing immorality? This is a subject within our sphere, as Christians and patriots, to notice. We have here an enormous evil, which every lover of God, and of the souls of men, and of his country, should seek to amend. I know few things that call so loudly for reform as the unfavorable circumstances in which we place our soldiers, so far as regards especially their highest, their moral and religious interests. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to our soldiers. They have often defended our shores: nor, like other armies, the tools of ambitious tyrants or usurpers, have they ever turned their swords against the lives or liberties of those whom they were sworn to defend; and therefore their comfort, their material happiness, their moral and religious welfare, should be a grateful country’s anxious care. It was eminently so in other days. It appears, for example, from Macaulay’s ‘History of England,’ that. the Protector paid the common soldier nearly as much as we now pay our ensigns — double the wages of a day-laborer. His ranks, in consequence, were filled by a much higher and better class than out one shilling a day induces to become soldiers, Recruited with such men, and supplied with devout chaplains and religious ordinances, the army was at that time considered a school of virtue; and Christian parents — as none certainly would do now — sent their sons to its ranks to learn a pure and high morality. And this, to take a merely mercenary view of the matter, paid. They were “well worth the money.” Bringing to battle frames unimpaired by vice, and hearts sustained by piety, they formed incomparable soldiers. Their prowess was expressed in the name they won — ‘“‘ Cromwell’s Tronsides;” and their high morale by the astonishing fact that twenty thousand of them were one day disbanded in the streets of London, thrown on society, cast all of a sudden out of bread and employment, and yet were guilty of no violence, of no crime, of no breach of the laws. They mingled as quietly with the general community as a drop of water with the wave on whose bosom it falls.

Let us now turn to our army, and look, for instance, at the position of a young recruit. At that time of life when principle is weak and passion strong, he is taken away from under the eye of, I shall say, Christian parents. He has now no godly father or kind mother to please or to grieve by his behavior. He no longer feels, in the respectable character of his family, and the opinion of decent neighbors, incentives to virtue, and. a powerful check on vice. Shifted about from place to place, he gains nothing by being a moral, and loses nothing by being a vicious man. He is plied on all hands with temptations to seek relief from the exnud of an idle life in the pleasures of licentiousness and debauchery. Thrown in the barrack-room into the company of depraved associates, he finds morality and piety held up to ridicule; nor can he escape, though he would, from hearing and seeing what is calculated to pollute his mind, and blight any lingering regard he may feel for prayer, his Bible, the house of God, the holy Sabbath, and the virtues of his father’s home. Is that the care which youth requires, and a Christian country should bestow? But it is from other homes, with exceptions, of course, that our army draws its soldiers. It is where the scum of the city floats, and whisky-shops flank the pavements, that the recruiting-sergeant spreads his net and plies his trade. That, surely, forms no reason, furnishes no excuse, for the neglect of our soldiers. On the contrary, I have thought, as I saw a batch of ill-fed, ill-clad, dissipated-looking lads, marched off to be examined as recruits, that no class of the community, considering their unhappy antecedents, stood so much in need as they of being shielded from temptation; and not only guarded from incentives to vice, but surrounded with incentives to virtue. Yet, how miserably is this duty discharged? Prodigal of their blood, but parsimonious of its money, the country does little, compared at least with what it might do, either to preserve or to improve the morals of its soldiers. The consequence is, that these, as is notorious, are too often of the worst description, degrading the men, impairing the efficiency, and adding enormously to the expense of the army. Decency forbids details; but they may be imagined from the fact that the appearance of our troops has struck others besides our enemies with terror — often filling with anxiety and dread the decent fathers and mothers of the provincial town where they were billeted and happened to sojourn.

This is lamentable: yet the soldiers are less to blame than the Government; and the Government than a country which sacrifices, as could be proved, toa false economy, the happiness as well as the moral and religious welfare of those it expects to die in its defence. People bewail the immorality of our soldiers. But who is chiefly to blame for that? As if we had never heard the proverb, “Idle dogs worry sheep,” or read the lines,

And Satan still some mischief finds
For idle hands to do,”

we condemn them to a life of comparative idleness and dull routine; and, worse still, in the arrange-

ments for our army, run counter to the plainest laws of God. Marriage is discouraged; not discouraged only, but denied — save in exceptional cases. That divine institution which forms the only true foundation of a holy and happy society, is ignored; and in its room a system of celibacy is practically enacted, which has in every country, Pagan or Popish, proved destructive of morals — not excepting those of the very ministers of religion. But why should not the soldier, as well as others, receive wages sufficient to maintain a wife and children? How can this Christian country,

with its enormous wealth, justify itself before God

or man for arrangements that, I may say, doom its soldiers to a life of vice ? — a wrong that appears all the greater when we see how, as in the Madras army, where their families accompany the troops, we grant privileges to the natives of India which we deny to our own countrymen. Cowards, and worshippers of Mammon, we yield to heathenism what we refuse to Christianity. We have no right to maintain an army at the expense of the moral and religious interests of its men: nor can any good reason be given why their pay should not be so augmented, and their movements so limited or arranged, as to allow our soldiers the blessings of domestic life, and a better home than they can ever find amid the discomforts and immoralities of a barrack-room. I have mingled with them; I have slept in a hut; I have passed nights in the camp; I have conversed on these matters with all classes, from the general commanding a brigade to the private lost in the rank and file; and I know not a grander object for a Christian statesman and patriot to take up, than devising a remedy for these wrongs — wrongs of which soldiers do not, because they dare not, complain.

This picture of the morals and condition of our soldiers — for which, I repeat, others are more culpable than they — is quite consistent with the fact that no profession can show finer examples of religion than the army and navy. “All things are yours,” says the apostle, “‘and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s;” and among these “all things” are to be reckoned the temptations good men have to contend with — the very difficulties they have to encounter in maintaining their religious profession. In this respect none, so much as Christian soldiers, are like gold tried in the fire. The flames that have consumed others seem only to have imparted additional lustre to them; the efforts they have to make to maintain their position but strengthening their graces, and making them more zealous, bold, and decided than ordinary believers. Just as mountaineers, compared with the inhabitants of the plain, have broader chests, and stronger limbs; and just as the pines on Norwegian hills, that have to battle with rude tempests and long cold winters, make stouter masts than trees grown in sheltered spots; and just as the boatmen of isles exposed to northern storms, beaten by Atlantic waves, and swept by surging commingling tides, form braver sailors than those bred on the shores of inland seas, so the remarkable piety of such soldiers as Lieutenant-General

Monro, Colonel Gardiner, Sir Henry Havelock, and Hedley Vicars has been in no small measure due to the very difficulties they had to contend with, the very immoralities they had to witness, and the very battles they had to fight for the faith. Their pre-eminent piety proves, at any rate, what our soldiers might be; and, drafted abroad as they are to heathen countries, what, were they as pious as they are brave, they might do to recommend the gospel, and carry it to the ends of the earth. They were models of the Christian soldier. Monuments of divine grace, and enduring hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, they were as true to the Cross as to their colors.

Such a model we have in him whose honored name stands at the head of this chapter. Covered with the blood of a hundred battles, crowned with the laurels of a hundred victories, Parliament saw the great captain of our age stand up before the noblest assembly of the world to receive the thanks of his king and country. Caleb received a higher honor. Not Moses, their leader, not the assembled tribes, but God himself applauded his conduct and crowned his brows with the laurels of an immortal renown — and now taking him as our type and model, let us look at two of the many soldierly qualities by which he won the palm.

CALEB’S FIDELITY.

Fidelity is one of the first properties of a soldier; and it were well that every good cause, and especially that of Christ, could boast of such fidelity as gallant men have often shown in the ranks of war, Mere boys have bravely carried the colors

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of their regiment into battle; and to save them from falling into the hands of the enemy, they have been known, when they themselves fell, to wrap them around their bodies, and die within their encrimsoned folds. An incident more heroic — still occurred on one of those fields where Austria lately suffered disastrous defeat. When the bloody fight was over, and the victors were removing the wounded, they came ona young Austrian stretched on the ground, whose life was pouring out in the red streams of a ghastly wound. To their astonishment he declined their kind services. Recommending others to be removed, he implored them, though he might still have been saved, to let him alone. On returning some time afterwards they found him dead — all his battles o’er. But the mystery was explained. They raised the body to give it burial; and there, below him, lay the colors of his regiment. He had sworn not to part with them; and though he clung to life, and tenderly thought of a mother and sisters in their distant home, he would not purchase recovery at the price of his oath, and the expense of a soldier’s honor — “he was faithful unto death.”

There was nothing in Pompeii, that most weird and wonderful of all cities — city of the dead,” as Walter Scott kept repeating to himself when they bore the shattered man through its silent streets — that invested it with a deeper interest to me than the spot where a soldier of old Rome displayed a most heroic fidelity. That fatal day on which Vesuvius, at whose feet the city stood, burst out into an eruption that shook the earth, poured torrents of lava from its riven sides, and discharged, amid the noise of a hundred thunders, such clouds of ashes as filled the air, produced a darkness deeper than midnight, and struck such terror into all hearts, that men thought not only that the end ’ of the world had come and all must die, but that

the gods themselves were expiring, — on that night

a sentinel kept watch by the gate which looked E to the burning mountain. Amid unimaginable confusion and shrieks of terror mingling with the a roar of the volcano, and cries of mothers who had: lost their children in the darkness, the inhabitants fled the fatal town, while the falling ashes, load- 1 ing the darkened air, and penetrating every place, rose in the streets till they covered the house-roofs, “7 nor left a vestige of the city but a vast silent mound, beneath which it lay unknown, dead and

buried, for nearly 1700 years. Amid this fearful disorder the sentinel at the gate had been for- a gotten; and as Rome required her sentinels, happen what might, to hold their posts till relieved

by the guard or set at liberty by their officers,

he had to choose between death or dishonor. Pattern of fidelity, he stood by his post. Slowly

but surely, the ashes rise on his manly form; now

they reach his breast; and now covering his lips,

they choke his breathing. He also was “faithful

unto death.” After seventeen centuries they found

his skeleton standing erect in a marble niche, clad

jn its rusty armor — the helmet on his empty skull,

and his bony fingers still closed upon his spear.

And next almost to the interest I felt in placing

myself on the spot where Paul, true to his colors,

when all men deserted him, plead before the Roman

tyrant, was the interest I felt in the niche by the city gate where they found the skeleton of one who, in his fidelity to the cause of Cesar, sets us an example of faithfulness to the cause of Ohrist — an example it were for the honor of their Master that all his servants followed.

This property of a good soldier was eminently illustrated by Caleb. One of the twelve heads of the tribes of Israel, whom Moses selected to spy out the promised land, he entered Canaan along with Joshua and the other ten — travelling from its southernmost to its northern border. In this expedition his fidelity and courage do not appear to have been put to the test. Nor is it difficult to explain how this happened, and they were able to execute their commission without being suspected of the character, or suffering the fate of spies — safe from the dangers to which the two men were exposed who, forty years afterwards, were sent into Jericho.

Caleb and his associates entered the land of Canaan little more than twelve months after Israel had left that of Egypt. At this time, no report of what had happened there seemed to have reached the Canaanites. But when the host, after wandering in the wilderness for forty years, returned to the borders of the promised land, they found its inhabitants, as well they might be, all on the alert — the whole country alarmed by reports, which fame would not lessen but rather exaggerate, of how the host that approached their borders had been miraculously sustained in the wilderness, and how, aided by Jehovah, they had trodden in the dust the greatest kings and nations that had attempted to oppose their progress. It was not till Caleb returned to the camp of Israel that, as I proceed now to show, he met with anything to put his fidelity to the test, and bring it out, an illustrious example to future ages.

The news that the spies are returning flies like wildfire through the tents, and calls for all the people. There they come — browned with the sun and dust of travel. They bring proofs of the fertility of the soil in the fruits which they hold in their hands; and in that one bunch of grapes, a cluster so weighty, that it requires two men to carry. The camp is full of joy; and every ear intent as, addressing Moses in the hearing of the people, the spies say — ‘‘ We came into the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.” Alas! their joy is short-lived. How are their hearts struck with dread, and the hopes they have cherished changed into blank despair, as the spies go on to say — ‘‘ Nevertheless the people be strong, and the cities are walled, and very great;” adding, with voices that trembled at the recollection of their gigantic forms, ‘‘and we saw the children of Anak there!” The children of Anak? At this news the whole congregation grows pale with terror. Fear sits on every face; and expresses itself in a low murmuring wail that, unless it meets a timely check, will ere long break out into open mutiny. At this crisis Caleb interposes — not to deny the statement of his associates, but to repudiate the cowardly conclusion they suggested, and the people accepted. Faithful to the cause of God, he rushes to the front to deliver himself of words full of faith and courage. They sound like a battle trumpet. No doubt the Canaanites are strong; their walls are high; their ranks led on by giant warriors, the formidable sons of Anak. Nevertheless, as one who knew that He who was with them was greater than all who could be against them, Caleb cries out, ‘Let us go up at once and possess it; we are well able to overcome or”

So he spake. But ere Joshua, if we may judge from the narrative, has time to second him, and echo this heroic address, the other spies interpose. Now painting matters darker than at first, they complete the panic, saying, ‘‘ All the people that we saw in it are men of great stature; and there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak; and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in theirs!” At these words, as if a thunderbolt, or shell, had dropt among them, the multitude suddenly disperse. Through the livelong night weeping fills the camp; nor does joy come in the morning. They have abandoned themselves to despair. Regretting that they had ever left the land of Egypt, they resolve to retrace their steps. They cast blame on God; and give way to such grief, and rage, and wild, blind fury, that Moses and Aaron are confounded. Knowing neither what to do, nor how to turn the people from their mad purpose, they fall on their faces; and lie on the ground — as if they said, If you will go back to Egypt, it is over our bodies you shall go! At this moment, though it was like laying hands on the mane of a raging lion; Caleb, supported by Joshua, once more steps forward; and regardless of a life the people - had armed themselves with stones to destroy, he reproaches their cowardice, saying, “Rebel not ye against the Lord, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they are bread to us, their defence is departed from them. The Lord is with us; fear them not!” Another moment, and, his life battered out of him by a shower of stones, Caleb had fallen a sacrifice to his own fidelity, and the people’s fury. But suddenly, in the form of some brilliant, dazzling, intolerable light, the well-known symbol of the divine presence, “the glory of the Lord appears in the tabernacle before all the children of Israel.” They, not Caleb and Joshua, nor Moses and Aaron, are in peril now. God is ready to destroy them; and they had been swept from the face of the earth but for Moses’ earnest and timely intercession. They are doomed for their sin to wander forty years in the wilderness, until the carcases of all who were over twenty years of age on leaving Egypt have fallen there. God forgives them. Merciful and gracious, He forgets their offence, but not Caleb’s fidelity. ‘‘ Surely,” he says, “they shall not see the land, but my servant Caleb, because he had another spirit with him and hath followed me fully, him will I bring into the land whereunto he went; and his seed shall possess it.” Even so shall it be with all who, faithful to the sacred interests of their Heavenly Master, prove themselves good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Remembering their fidelity in the hour of trial, how they stood by His cause, resisted temptations, by faith crucified the flesh, by the blood of the covenant overcame the world, how they denied themselves but not Him, how they were of “another spirit”

from the mass of mere professors, and how in purpose, if not always in practice, they “followed the Lord fully,” them also will He bring into the land whither they go — the ransomed of the Lord, a sacramental host, pilgrims to the Heavenly Canaan.

CALEB’S COURAGE.

Courage, which has in all ages won the praise of poets and admiration of mankind, is a property for which our seamen and soldiers have been long and eminently distinguished. Descended from ancestors who met the Romans on the sea-beach, and those brave Norsemen who ploughed the stormiest oceans with their warlike prows, our countrymen have proved themselves worthy of their sires; and the repute of a courage which has been tested in many a hard-fought field, has proved, under God, the strongest bulwark of our island-home. It is remarkable, and highly creditable to the resolution and bravery of our soldiers, that, notwithstanding all the wars in which they have engaged, no foreign nation flaunts a flag of ours as the trophy of its victory, and of our defeat. No British banner, so far as I know, hangs drooping in dusty folds from the walls of foreign castle or cathedral to make us blush; nor in that proud pillar the great Napoleon raised, whose bronze, formed of the cannon taken by him in battle, commemorates his victories, is there an ounce of metal that belonged to a British gun. I have heard indeed how cowards, probably drawn from the scum of the people, hung back when the bugler in the trenches sounded a new assault; and refused to cross ground so strewed with their fallen comrades as to resemble a field carpeted with scarlet cloth. Yet, whatever may be their defects, our soldiers have been commonly as much distinguished for their courage when the battle raged, as for their clemency when the victory was won. For that courage, true, calm courage, which does not lie in insensibility to danger, nor in the violent animal passion which may bear a coward forward as a whirlwind does the dust, or a wave the sea-weed on its foaming crest, Caleb presents the very model of a soldier. How bravely he bears himself when the other spies prove traitors! With fire in his eye and resolution seated on his brow, he steps forth to cry, “Let us go up at once and possess the land! — Away with these coward fears!” The speech this, be it observed, not of one who was to guard the camp or bring up the rear. Judah’s place is in the front of battle. The bloody wave breaks first on that gallant tribe; and of all its warriors, first on Caleb — its prince and head. Nor was this bold proposal to face and fight the sons of Anak, an empty boast, a mere bravado. Forty years thereafter his courage was put to that test — the portion of the land assigned him, at his own request, being held by the giant race whose descendant, Goliath of Gath, struck terror into the boldest hearts in Israel, as he went forth vaporing before their host — till he fell to the shepherd’s sling, defying the armies of the living God. It was en the hands of giants Caleb wrung his inheritance. Undaunted by their towering stature, he met them, sword to sword, foot to foot, in the bloody field; the God in whom he trusted inspiring his heart with such courage and endowing his arm with such strength, that they succumbed before his blows — their armor loudly clashing, and the very earth shaking in their fall.

The source of Caleb’s courage, of a bravery so admirable and dauntless, is not far to seek. In him, as in those noble Christian soldiers whom I have mentioned, and in others also who have maintained their religion in the camp, courage, if it did not spring from, was sustained by piety. He had faith in God. Therefore he did not fear the face of man, though that man were a giant; nor of death itself. From the same lofty source, and none other, the soldier of the cross, he who fights with foes more formidable than giants — the devil, the world, and the flesh, that trinity of evil — is to draw his courage. No grace more necessary than that in one who would do his duty to Jesus, and to His cause. Courage to speak for Christ everywhere, and act for Christ always, is a grace of the highest value — yet one in which, alas! many a good man, to the dishonor of his Master, and the ioss of others, has been sadly wanting. The Apostle Paul possessed it: and what he himself possessed in a degree so eminent, he enforced on his converts, saying, ‘“‘ Add to your faith virtue,” or, as it were better translated, ‘“‘courage.” No greater bravery, indeed, in battlefields than what the Christian may require! More of it may be needed to face the jeers of an ungodly world than a blazing battery of cannon.

In illustration of this, hear what a nobleman of ancient family, and high rank, and still higher piety, has written in a very precious record which was lately given to the public: — ‘I felt,” he says, ‘that salvation must be sought and attained, though the path to it lay through fire and water, and that no hardships were worth a moment’s consideration in comparison of so great a prize. In the same manner the pursuits of my life hitherto appeared utterly frivolous. They could not advance me one step on the road to heaven. I resolved to make an entire change in my life, to spend the whole day in the service of God, and devote myself entirely to the promotion of His glory. Yet how to begin, I knew not. I felt I ought earnestly to address every one I met, beginning with my own servants; that I ought to speak out, and not sneak into heaven by the back door. For several days, however, I did nothing. I shrunk from the idea of declaring myself, and dreaded the remarks of relatives, acquaintances, and servants. I seriously debated with myself, since society presented such great difficulties in our way, whether we should not leave all, and fly with our children to a distant land: where, living quite unknown, we might commence our new life with fewer outward impediments, and spend our days in prayer, praise, and preaching to others Christ’s gospel of salvation. It was in my mind to give up our inheritance, reserving only enough for our bare support, and, taking leave of all our connections, to burn, as it were, our ships behind us, and, dying to this world, to live entirely for the next. To the objection that we should be deserting the station in which God had placed us, I urged that our first duty is the care of our own souls. I compared it to Lot flying out of Sodom. In giving up my hereditary rank and riches, I considered that I should injure no one. My children being brought up in total ignorance of their origin, would have no cause for regret, and, if religion be true, they would be incalculable gainers, since riches (if Christ be an authority) are a great hindrance in the way to heaven. For several days I debated this question with myself, and one consideration alone determined my conclusion on it in the negative. I could not reconcile it with my duty to leave my aged father.”

These are the touching words of one who lived to openly avow his change, and confess Christ before the world. He added to his faith courage. His circumstances needed it, and so — though perhaps toa less degree — do those of the humblest Christians. Nor shall we go without it, if we seek God’s help, the aids of His Holy Spirit. He that gave Nicodemus, who once came stealing to Jesus under the cloud of night, courage to perform the last kind offices to the dead, and boldly attend the funeral; He who gave the disciple, that denied his Master before a woman, courage to confess him before all the Jews, and charge home on them the guilt of his innocent blood; He will make his feeblest followers “valiant for the truth” — bold to avow themselves the followers of Jesus, and say —

‘‘T’m not ashamed to own my Lord,
Or to defend His cause,
Maintain the glory of His cross,
And honor all his laws.

‘*¢ Jesus, my Lord, I know His name,
His name is all my boast;
Nor will He leave my soul to shame,
Nor let my hove be lost.”
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