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.