Courage

There is no name more abhorred by a well - conditioned mind than that of coward, and every young man covets a reputation for being courageous. It is a favourite occupation of boyhood, in hours of reverie, to dream of situations in which the dreamer performs heroic exploits and earns the applause of the astonished onlookers. Of course, the probability of anything of the kind ever happening is not seriously entertained even by the boy when he is fully awake, and it disappears altogether as soon as the walls of reality begin to close around the growing mind. But it is good that the dream should be there; the stronger the aspirations after the heroic in a boyish mind the better; in fact, in some shape these ought al ways to survive; and, although the form of their realisation may be totally different from the visions of youth, yet they will receive fulfilment in every true life. Every brave soul retains in its composition to the last a strain of the romantic.

Neither the four virtues of the ancient world nor the three of the Christian world were picked at haphazard out of the total number of human excellences. Although the connection between the two groups may be indeterminate, the connection between the members of each of the groups is of the closest. Especially is this the case with the subject of the first chapter and that of the present one; and I wish the connection to be noted, because the course will make a deeper and more lasting impression if its different members form themselves into an organism in the mind of the reader.

What, then, is the connection between wisdom and courage? Wisdom, as we saw in last chapter, is chiefly concerned with the object of existence: it fixes on the supreme good which we decide to pursue. And courage is the force by which the obstacles which impede this pursuit are overcome. It is a kind of indignation, which blazes out against everything which would prevent it from going where duty calls. It is the club of Hercules or the hammer of Thor, with which we clear the path to the goal.

It is highly important to keep this connection between wisdom and courage in view, because it enables us to distinguish between true courage and its counterfeits, of which there are many. No sailor is more resolute in facing the stormy seas than is the pirate in tracking the booty on which he has fixed his cupidity; but we do not honour the resolution of such a human shark with the name of bravery: we call it ferocity. No confessor, championing the truth in the face of principalities and powers, is more sure of his own opinions than is many an ignoramus, who, gifted with nothing but self-conceit and a loud voice, shouts down the arguments of all opponents; but we do not call such noisy stubbornness by the name of courage: we call it pig-headedness. The assassin of President M’Kinley took his life in his hand and must have been more certain of having to die for what he was about to do than is the leader of the most desperate forlorn hope on the field of battle; but, whatever his master motive may have been — whether it was an overweening vanity and craving for notoriety, or a malignant hatred of capitalism and a morbid compassion for the poor — we do not count his act a brave one.

It sends to the heart no thrill such as a brave act excites, but quite the reverse.

The truth is, the raw material of courage is neither beautiful nor admirable. It exists in brutes in greater measure than in men. No soldier attacks with the violence of a tiger; no hero stands his ground with the pertinacity of a bull-dog. As the clay requires to have another element transfused through it before it can assume shapes of beauty, so the animal instinct requires to have something higher added be fore it becomes truly admirable. And this addition is that which wisdom supplies, namely, an end worthy of pursuit. Courage is the power of going forward in spite of difficulties to reach a chosen and worthy object.

II

Although wisdom is the primary virtue in the order of logic, courage is probably the primitive one in the order of time. It was the first virtue — the first which man kind exemplified, noticed and extolled. In both the Greek and Latin languages the very name for virtue itself is manliness, or valour, and the evolutionists would probably demonstrate that all other virtues are derivable from this one.

The original arena of courage was the battle-field. The earliest heroes of all nations are the valiant, who have performed exploits in defence of their altars and their hearths. The Greek poets and orators were never tired of extolling Thermopylae, where three hundred brave warriors rolled back the whole power of the East. The lyre of the Roman poet emitted its most subduing notes when he told of Regulus, who, when sent home by the Carthaginians, who held him in captivity, to negotiate a peace for them with his fellow-countrymen,counselled the senate to make no peace, but to carry on the war more vigorously, and, when his heroic courage had prevailed, went back to Carthage, in fulfilment of his parole, to be exposed with his eyelids cut off to the torrid African sun and rolled down a steep place in a barrel spiked with nails. ‘He pushed aside,’ says the Roman poet, ’ the embraces of his chaste wife and the kisses of his little children, and would not lift his face from the ground till the trembling senators agreed to his proposal, and then through the ranks of his weeping friends he hastened back to exile, well knowing the tortures which awaited him there, yet as gay as if he had been going to one of the retreats of luxury and beauty on the southern shores of his native Italy.’ In modern times, in like manner, the Scots have their Robert the Bruce and the English their Nelson, the Tyrolese their Andreas Hofer and the Swiss their Wilhelm Tell. Nor has this primitive sentiment yet died out, as we see by the circle of fame which in our own time has surrounded the names of a Moltke and a Gordon.

In battle man risksthe most precious possession he has — namely, his own life. All men instinctively cling to life, and dread death as the worst of all evils, because it sums up all earthly losses in one; and, when they see a General Gordon, with nothing in his hand but the staff of a civilian, going about his business in the very thick of shot and shell as coolly as if he were taking the air in a flower-garden, they feel for him an admiration which knows no bounds. Here again, however, the question arises, wherein true valour consists. In some cases recklessness of danger may be a mere animal propensity. A celebrated general used to say, that in a thousand men there would be fifty ready to run any risks, and other fifty ready to run away on any pretext, while the nine hundred were neither brave nor the reverse, and it was a toss-up which of the two fifties they would follow. In others it may be the callousness of custom. The veteran enters the breach with much the same indifference with which any other labourer goes about his day’s work. Some of the bravest soldiers have been the timidest to begin with, like that one who, when reproached by a rough companion for trem-* bling, replied, ‘Yes, I am afraid; but, if you had been as afraid as I am, you would have run away long ago.’ Here we see the true soul of valour peeping out: it is the mettle in a mind inspired by a great end, whether this end be called duty, or loyalty, or patriotism. The truly brave man is he who loves some worthy object so much that he is willing to risk everything — even life itself — for its attainment.

In the eyes of primitive man the only hero was the warrior. It was a great step in advance when it was recognised that there is a valour of peace no less admirable than that of war. The Roman Cicero already says — ‘The majority consider that military life is superior to that of civilians; but this opinion must be confuted, for in civil affairs there are opportunities of valour even more brilliant than in war.’ This is the voice of civilisation, and the great lesson of modern times.

We know now that the physician, who goes from house to house and bed to bed righting an epidemic and exposing his own life, and perhaps that of his family, every day to danger, is as worthy of admiration as the soldier who walks with intrepidity up to the cannon’s mouth. It is not without justification that the fireman, rescuing women and children from burning houses at the risk of being crushed by falling beams or tumbling walls, is as popular in the reading of the young as the soldier or the sailor. The statesman who maintains the cause of humanity in the face of the frowns of the multitude and in spite of the danger of being turned out of office; the journalist who refuses, notwithstanding a diminishing circulation, to make his newspaper the organ of a public opinion which he believes to be wrong; the judge who’ sentences a titled favourite of society to the hulks with the same impartiality with which he would dispose of an ordinary criminal — such are the heroes of civil life. But we must bring heroism down to still more lowly acts; for the pure ore of courage is often most abundant where it is least discerned by untrained eyes. The widow who, when the bread winner has been taken from her side, does not surrender herself to despair, but resolves to face the world alone and bring up her children in honesty; the man who has failed in business but, instead of for ever harking back to the glory of his prosperous days, adjusts his outlay to his new circumstances and refuses to let go his self-respect; the policeman who rushes into a barricaded room to grapple with a madman — these are the brave of the modern type.

The bravery of the soldier is a momentary effort. By one charge, which is over and done in an hour, he earns the admiration and the gratitude of his fellow-countrymen. But the most difficult heroism is that which is long-continued, the strain never relaxing year after year, and the struggle requiring to be constantly renewed; and this is requisite in modern life merely to preserve our manhood intact. The pressure of conventionality is constant. It is continually seeking to wear down our individuality and reduce us to the level of mere specimens of a common type. Even at school the force of practice and opinion is tyrannical, and the schoolboy dreads being anything different from his fellows. As life goes on, the tendency to be a mere echo of others becomes more and more pronounced, and any deviation from what society prescribes and expects is treated as a crime. They say that in city life especially this obliteration of individuality is the rule: while in the country men grow up with their own features and can express their own opinions, in the town we are all turned off on the same pattern, as if we had dropped from a machine. Oh the weary repetition of the streets, the monotony of the crowds that stream together from the gates of our public works, the artificial and mechanical sameness of the drawing-room! It is a life-long struggle for a human being now to be able to say, ‘I am what I am ’ — to look the world in the face and, without oddity or bounce, maintain and express a mind of his own.

For this a man must be often with himself — he must be able to enjoy his own company. Many are afraid of themselves, and betake themselves instinctively to crowds; but it is in the crowd that the features of individuality are rubbed off, and one becomes a cipher and a nonentity. It may seem a strange test of courage to set up, but it is a genuine one, when we say, that he is a brave man who can look his own inmost self steadily in the face and be long alone without blenching.

IV

No arena affords greater scope for courage than religion. So it has been from the beginning. If you wish to see a hero, look at David approaching Goliath not in the armour of Saul but in the faith of the God of Jacob; or look at Elijah, on Carmel, standing alone against the world. In the New Testament look at Stephen on the field of martyrdom, or at St. Paul passing through a hundred deaths. Every century since then has had its martyrs — down to those, numbering thousands, who have recently in China sealed their testimony with their blood. There is no extreme of courage beyond martyrdom; yet often have tender and delicate women for the sake of their faith, and for the sake of their Lord, braved the worst that the hellish ingenuity of inquisitors or the brutality of the roughest soldiery could invent. This is the most perfect illustration of sacrifice for a noble end.

The necessity for courage is inherent in the Christian religion; for the world is instinctively its enemy. There are innumerable degrees and forms of opposition — sometimes it is violent and brutal, ready to grasp at fire and sword, in order to annihilate what it abhors; at other times it is scornful, using the weapons of satire and comedy; and there are times when it actually professes Christianity itself, affecting only to object to a spirituality which is fantastic and an austerity which is extreme; but everywhere and always the spirit of the world is hostile to the spirit of Christ, and the courage requisite to stand up against it may sometimes be greater when the opposition is soft-spoken than when it is boisterous.

Another thing that makes courage a necessity to the Christian is that his Lord and Master demands testimony from him. ‘Ye are my witnesses,’ says Jesus to one and all who have believed on Him for salvation; and the word ‘witnesses’ is the same as ’ martyrs.’ Every Christian is a possible martyr. Circumstances are conceivable in which he would have either to lose his life or cast away his hope; and the world is not yet so improved that any one who is loyal to his Lord should be able to escape scot-free. There is a great deal more of persecution than many people are aware still going on in the world. In every city there are works and shops where any one making a decided profession of Christianity has to run the gauntlet of ridicule and annoyance; and there are homes, too, in which, under the safe cover of what ought to be tender relationships, the stabs of aversion and malignity are dealt in the dark.

This is the cross of Christ, and it takes courage to bear it. But let none who are bearing it be ashamed, for it makes them the associates of the heroes of every age. The greatest of all martyrs was Jesus Himself. Never was there purer courage than His; and it was courage even unto death. He bore the cross and despised the shame, and there is no way of getting so near Him as suffering for His sake. Coleridge tells a striking story of a young officer, who confided to him that in his first battle he was absolutely demoralised with fear, till his General, Sir Alexander Ball, the friend of Coleridge, grasped his fingers and said, ‘I was just the same the first time I was in a battle’; when, at that touch and these words, his timidity vanished in a moment and never returned. It is an instructive as well as an affecting incident, suggesting what the mature might do for beginners in the warfare of the Lord. But the best encouragement is in the touch and the word of the Lord Himself. Ay, and He also can say, ‘I trembled once like you,’ as He remembers Gethsemane and the wilderness of temptation. ‘We have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, there fore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in every time of need.’