Oh, for a courage like Tolstoi's—true-hearted, brave, simple-minded, pure, that never failed when called upon. Granted he was "queer," "quixotic," "unbalanced," "impracticable," was not his queerness and impracticability at least on the side of the moral forces of the world? Everybody knew where and how he stood; where his sympathies were; and his life has strengthened the backbone and put new vigor into the weak knees of hundreds of thousands, for moral courage radiates with power that increases according to the square of the distance. It does not grow less; it enlarges; for each man who feels it becomes a new generator and transformer and thus enlarges and increases its radiating power four-, eight-, twelve-fold.
Henry Bergh was another of these heroic moral-courage radiators. His tender heart was cut to the quick day by day by seeing the cruelties perpetrated upon the poor dumb brutes of the city of New York. He determined to do what he could to stop these barbarous practices. He agitated and wrote, spoke and interviewed until he succeeded in getting ordinances and acts passed which gave him power to prevent whatever cruelties he saw. How he was jeered; how he was cursed, when he sought to interfere with a brutal driver who would cruelly whip his horses to compel them to drag loads beyond their strength! The newspapers said he stood in the way of business, and they sarcastically called him "the knight of the doleful countenance," not realizing that it was the cruelties perpetrated by so-called men upon their younger brothers—the dumb animals—that had so frozen the pain and anguish of his heart upon his face. But his heart never failed, his courage never wavered. Threatened, mobbed, his life often in peril, he fearlessly waged constant warfare against cruelty, and to-day the very city that hated and scorned him is building monuments to his honor in every street-watering trough they erect. And his radiant influence has reached every civilized city in the world, such is the penetrating radiancy of a loving and true heart.
Before I proceed to a further consideration of this radiancy of a large-hearted, moral heroism, I want to answer the objection raised to what I have already written by a young man to whom I read it. He said: "But I am not an Emerson, or a Wendell Phillips, or a John Brown, or Tolstoi. What chance do I have of exercising moral courage?"
A very pertinent question, and one I am glad to try to answer. I do not believe there was ever a man, a time, or a place which did not, sometime, somehow, call for the exercise of moral heroism. And especially in these days of lax principle, breaking down of old standards, political graft, and worship of material success. What minister is there in no matter what church who is not called upon, now and again, nay, often, to speak fearlessly upon some practical subject upon which people are looking for light? Is he a moral hero who taboos such subjects, who refrains from discussing them in the pulpit because they are not "gospel" subjects? What gospel subject can surpass in interest and in human and divine appeal to the soul of man the "white-slave" question, and a host of other subjects upon which ordinary well-to-do men and women need enlightenment? That minister is endowed with the radiant power of moral courage who, even though he offend some of the smug, comfortably righteous members of his congregation, dares to denounce the church people who rent their houses and lands for immoral purposes, for breweries, for saloons, for any and all things that destroy men's bodies and souls and bring suffering to innocent women and children. Take the child-labor question, especially in the communities where men live who have become rich by using child labor, whether in cotton factories, glass factories, tobacco, or any other factories. Should not such men hear the gospel plainly and without equivocation? Who is to give it? The minister of the Christ who came to seek and save the down-trodden, the injured, the forsaken, the lost. Then all honor to the man who dares to speak out, dares to be true to the inward voice, though he lose caste, position, salary.
The same courage is required of the politician. How often the public clamor for, or against, the very opposite of that which is right. In California a few years ago there was a great fight for the exclusion of the Japanese and Chinese. How about the doctrine of the brotherhood of man? Can we play fast and loose with eternal principles? No! Let the true politician stand by the truth and let the poltroon sacrifice his principles for temporary advancement and gain.
There is not an employee who at some time or another is not called upon to exercise moral courage. Some are asked to do dishonest, mean, disreputable, contemptible things—for their employers. Some have one temptation, some another. Stand firm for the highest truth. Be morally brave and courageous. Dare to refuse. Dare to risk losing your job rather than your character. Dare to be poor rather than mean.
One of the great temptations of men and women to-day is to appear better off than they are. We are all as good as everybody else—so we say—and, therefore, we must dress as well, dine as well, live as well, and show off as much. What is the result in many cases? Financial worry or disaster at best; criminality at worst. For many a man to-day is in the penitentiary because he and his wife did not have the moral courage to dare to live within their income; she did not dare to wear her last-year's hat, or a made-over gown, and he did not dare say No! when she insisted upon having new and expensive things, or would not deny himself when his "set" indulged in an expensive pastime which he could not afford. Oh, the pity of it! Let your courage have a chance to grow. Plant the seeds of moral heroism early, so that when the testing time comes you will find the tree already grown to which you can cling.
Every boy and every girl—no matter how young—has times when temptations come which it requires moral courage to resist. Better teach your boy the duty, pleasure, and benefit of this resistance than have him win every other prize of excellent scholarship. Are you radiating such courage so that your children feel it? That they are influenced by it? Happy you, if you are, for it will return to you in the beauty, strength, nobility, and grandeur of your boy's, your girl's, life in after days to your benediction and joy.
The world is cold for want of moral courage. Turn on the radiator. Call on the great source for a full supply and help make the world warm with the heroism, the bravery, the moral courage it needs.
Possessed in any degree, however small, of this heroism of the soul, I, myself, want to radiate the consciousness that my natural and proper place is in the forefront of every movement that makes for human progress. Most men are laggards in human progress. Of comparatively only a few is it said in such things: "He is abreast of his times." Of only the less than few—the solitary, the individual soldiers—is it said: "He is ahead of his times." Here I want to find my place. These are the men and women with whom I would stand. And I would so radiate the spirit of advancement and progress that every awake and alert soul and also every quiescent and sleeping soul will feel and know it when we come in contact.