The second source of courage is faith.—We use the word in the Christian sense of trust in God. When a man feels that God is with him he can stand up against all the powers of earth and hell. "If God be for us, who can be against us?" The heroes of the past, who subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness, have all been men of faith. Recall Hebrews xi., the Covenanters, the Ironsides of Cromwell, the Huguenots, Luther, Knox. Their faith may not have been so enlightened as it might have been had their knowledge been wider. Their religious creeds may have contained propositions that are no longer accepted, but they were strong because of their undoubted faith in God. When His presence is an abiding presence with us and in us, our
Strength is as the strength of ten,
Because our hearts are pure.
He who fears God will know no other fear.
The third source of courage is sympathy.—A man who has God with him will be brave if he stand alone, but he will be greatly helped if he is in company with others like himself and knows that he has the sympathy of good men. You remember St. Paul on his journey to Rome reaching a little village about thirty miles from the great city. The look-out for him was very depressing. He had appealed to Caesar, but what likelihood was there of his obtaining justice in Caesar's capital. He might be thrown to the lions, or made to fight for his life in the Coliseum, a spectacle to the Roman multitude. Then it was that a few Roman Christians who had heard of his approach came out to meet him, and, it is said, "he thanked God and took courage." Such was the power of sympathy. If we would be encouraged we will seek it. If we would encourage others we will give it.
We will only say in closing this chapter that its subject is most truly illustrated by the life of our Lord himself. The mediaeval conception of Christ was that He exhibited only the passive virtues of meekness, patience, and submission to wrong. From the gospels we form a different idea. He vanquished the devil in the wilderness; He faced human opposition boldly and without fear; He denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and encountered their rage and violence. He went calmly along His appointed path, neither turning to the right hand nor to the left. Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, could not deter Him from doing His Father's work. Amid a tumultuous tempest of ill-will He moved straight forward, foreseeing His death, "setting His face toward Jerusalem," knowing all that awaited Him there. He went through Gethsemane to Calvary with the step of a conqueror. Never was He more truly a king than on the cross, and the grandest crown ever worn was "the crown of thorns." In Him we have the highest example of courage, as of all other virtues.
CHAPTER VIII.
HEALTH.
Health means soundness of body and of mind; the keeping of our physical system in such a condition that it is able to do its work easily, without disturbance, and without pain; the exercise of the mind so as not to harm the body. There are certain preliminary considerations that we should bear in mind in connection with this subject.
I. The close connection between body and mind.—They are both related to each other in some mysterious way. So close is the connection that the one cannot be affected without the other. The well-being of the one depends on the well-being of the other. The power which the mind has over the body and the body over the mind has been well and tersely described by a writer of our time. "Man," he says, "is one, however compound. Fire his conscience, and he blushes; check his circulation, and he thinks tardily or not at all; impair his secretions, and the moral sense is dulled, discolored, or depraved, his aspirations flag, his hope and love both reel; impair them still more, and he becomes a brute. A cup of wine degrades his moral nature below that of the swine. Again, a violent emotion of pity or horror makes him vomit; a lancet will restore him from delirium to clear thought; excessive thought will waste his energy; excess of muscular exercise will deaden thought; an emotion will double the strength of his muscles; and at last, a prick of a needle or a grain of mineral will in an instant lay to rest forever his body and its unity." [1] When we consider the close connection between mind and body, and how the state of the one affects the other, we see how important it is that both should work together in that harmonious action which is health, and how carefully we should guard against anything by which that harmonious action may be interrupted.
II. Bodily health is almost essential to success in life.—It is not absolutely essential, but it is almost essential. (a) Physical health is not everything. "Give a man," it has been said, "a good deep chest and a stomach of which he never knew the existence, and he must succeed in any practical career." This has been said by a great authority, Professor Huxley, but it is only partially true, for many worthless people fulfil these conditions. They are, as Carlyle calls them, only "animated patent digesters." (b) Great things also have been done in the world by men whose health has been feeble. Calvin was a man of sickly body; Pascal was an invalid at eighteen; Pope was weak and deformed; William of Orange, a martyr to asthma; Hall, the famous preacher, suffered great paroxysms of pain; Milton was blind; Nelson, little and lame; St. Paul in bodily presence was weak. On the other hand, some of these men might have done more if their health had been better. Health is a splendid possession in the battle of life. The men of great physical vitality, as a rule, achieve most; other things being equal, their success in life is sure. Everything shows that the greatness of great men is almost as much a bodily affair as a mental one. It has been computed that the average length of life of the most eminent philosophers, naturalists, artists, jurists, physicians, musical composers, scholars and authors, including poets, is sixty-five years. This shows that the most successful men on the whole have had good bodies and been blessed with great vitality.