I

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.

II

“Manliness and manfulness” are synonymous, but they embrace more than we ordinarily mean by the word “courage;” for instance, tenderness and thoughtfulness for others. They include that courage which lies at the root of all manliness, but is, in fact, only its lowest or rudest form. Indeed, we must admit that it is not exclusively a human quality at all, but one which we share with other animals, and which some of them – for instance the bulldog and weasel – exhibit with a certainty and a thoroughness, which is very rare amongst mankind.

In what, then, does courage, in this ordinary sense of the word, consist? First, in persistency, or the determination to have one’s own way, coupled with contempt for safety and ease, and readiness to risk pain or death in getting one’s own way. This is, let us readily admit, a valuable, even a noble quality, but an animal quality rather than a human or manly one. Proficiency in athletic games is not necessarily a test even of animal courage, but only of muscular power and physical training. Even in those games which, to some extent, do afford a test of the persistency, and contempt for discomfort or pain, which constitute animal courage – such as rowing, boxing, and wrestling – it is of necessity a most unsatisfactory one. For instance, Nelson – as courageous an Englishman as ever lived, who attacked a Polar bear with a handspike when he was a boy of fourteen, and told his captain, when he was scolded for it, that he did not know Mr. Fear – with his slight frame and weak constitution, could never have won a boat-race, and in a match would have been hopelessly astern of any one of the crew of his own barge; and the highest courage which ever animated a human body would not enable the owner of it, if he were himself untrained, to stand for five minutes against a trained wrestler or boxer.

Athleticism is a good thing if kept in its place, but it has come to be very much over-praised and over-valued amongst us.

True manliness is as likely to be found in a weak as in a strong body. Other things being equal, we may perhaps admit (though I should hesitate to do so) that a man with a highly-trained and developed body will be more courageous than a weak man. But we must take this caution with us, that a great athlete may be a brute or a coward, while a truly manly man can be neither.

III

Let us take a few well-known instances of courageous deeds and examine them; because, if we can find out any common quality in them we shall have lighted on something which is of the essence of, or inseparable from, that manliness which includes courage – that manliness of which we are in search.

I will take two or three at hazard from a book in which they abound, and which was a great favorite some years ago, as I hope it is still, I mean Napier’s Peninsular War. At the end of the storming of Badajos, after speaking of the officers, Napier goes on: “Who shall describe the springing valor of that Portuguese grenadier who was killed the foremost man at Santa Maria? or the martial fury of that desperate rifleman, who, in his resolution to win, thrust himself beneath the chained sword-blades, and then suffered the enemy to dash his head in pieces with the end of their muskets.”

Again, at the Coa: “A north-of-Ireland man, named Stewart, but jocularly called ‘the boy,’ because of his youth, nineteen, and of his gigantic stature and strength, who had fought bravely and displayed great intelligence beyond the river, was one of the last men who came down to the bridge, but he would not pass. Turning round he regarded the French with a grim look, and spoke aloud as follows, ‘So this is the end of our brag. This is our first battle, and we retreat! The boy Stewart will not live to hear that said.’ Then striding forward in his giant might he fell furiously on the nearest enemies with the bayonet, refused the quarter they seemed desirous of granting, and died fighting in the midst of them.”

“Still more touching, more noble, more heroic, was the death of Sergeant Robert McQuade. During McLeod’s rush, this man, also from the north of Ireland, saw two men level their muskets on rests against a high gap in a bank, awaiting the uprise of an enemy. The present Adjutant-general Brown, then a lad of sixteen, attempted to ascend at the fatal spot. McQuade, himself only twenty-four years of age, pulled him back, saying in a calm, decided tone, ‘You are too young, sir, to be killed,’ and then offering his own person to the fire, fell dead pierced with both balls.” And, speaking of the British soldier generally, he says in his preface, “What they were their successors now are. Witness the wreck of the Birkenhead, where four hundred men, at the call of their heroic officers, Captains Wright and Girardot, calmly and without a murmur accepted death in a horrible form rather than endanger the women and children saved in the boats. The records of the world furnish no parallel to this self-devotion.”

Let us add to these two very recent examples: the poor colliers who worked day and night at Pont-y-pridd with their lives in their hands, to rescue their buried comrades; and the gambler in St. Louis who went straight from the gaming-table into the fire, to the rescue of women and children, and died of the hurts after his third return from the flames.

Looking, then, at these several cases, we find in each that resolution in the actors to have their way, contempt for ease, and readiness to risk pain or death, which we noted as the special characteristics of animal courage, which we share with the bulldog and weasel.

So far all of them are alike. Can we get any further? Not much, if we take the case of the rifleman who thrust his head under the sword-blades and allowed his brains to be knocked out sooner than draw it back, or that of “the boy Stewart.” These are intense assertions of individual will and force – avowals of the rough hard-handed man that he has that in him which enables him to defy pain and danger and death – this and little or nothing more; and no doubt a very valuable and admirable thing as it stands.

But we feel, I think, at once, that there is something more in the act of Sergeant McQuade, and of the miners in Pont-y-pridd – something higher and more admirable. And it is not a mere question of degree, of more or less, in the quality of animal courage. The rifleman and “the boy Stewart” were each of them persistent to death, and no man can be more. The acts were, then, equally courageous, so far as persistency and scorn of danger and death are concerned. We must look elsewhere for the difference, for that which touches us more deeply in the case of Sergeant McQuade than in that of “the boy Stewart,” and can only find it in the motive. At least, it seems to me that the worth of the last lies mainly in the sublimity of self-assertion, of the other in the sublimity of self-sacrifice.

And this holds good again in the case of the Birkenhead. Captain Wright gave the word for the men to fall in on deck by companies, knowing that the sea below them was full of sharks, and that the ship could not possibly float till the boats came back; and the men fell in, knowing this also, and stood at attention without uttering a word, till she heeled over and went down under them. And Napier, with all his delight in physical force and prowess, and his intense appreciation of the qualities which shine most brightly in the fiery action of battle, gives the palm to these when he writes, “The records of the world furnish no parallel to this self-devotion.” He was no mean judge in such a case; and, if he is right, as I think he is, do we not get another side-light on our inquiry, and find that the highest temper of physical courage is not to be found, or perfected, in action but in repose. All physical effort relieves the strain and makes it easier to persist unto death under the stimulus and excitement of the shock of battle, or of violent exertion of any kind, than when the effort has to be made with grounded arms. In other words, may we not say that in the face of danger self-restraint is after all the highest form of self-assertion, and a characteristic of manliness as distinguished from courage.

IV

The courage which is tested in times of terror, on the battle-field, in the sinking ship, the poisoned mine, the blazing house, presents but one small side of a great subject. Such testing times come to few, and to these not often in their lives. But on the other hand, the daily life of every one of us teems with occasions which will try the temper of our courage as searchingly, though not as terribly, as battle-field or fire or wreck. For we are born into a state of war; with falsehood and disease, and wrong and misery in a thousand forms lying all around us, and the voice within calling on us to take our stand as men in the eternal battle against these.

And in this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us single-handed against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty to truth – the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher.

And this is the great lesson which we shall learn from Christ’s life, the more earnestly and faithfully we study it. “For this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” To bear this witness against avowed and open enemies is comparatively easy; but, to bear it against those we love; against those whose judgment and opinions we respect, in defense or furtherance of that which approves itself as true to our own inmost conscience, this is the last and abiding test of courage and of manliness.