Discipline and Other Sermons | Page 2

the Jews, save those simple ten commandments, which we still hold to be
necessary for all civilized society.
And their obedience was, after all, a moral obedience; the obedience of free hearts and

wills. The law could threaten to slay them for wronging each other; but they themselves
had to enforce the law against themselves. They were always physically strong enough to
defy it, if they chose. They did not defy it, because they believed in it, and felt that in
obedience and loyalty lay the salvation of themselves and of their race.
It was not, understand me, the mere physical training of these forty years which had thus
made them men indeed. Whatever they may have gained by that--the younger generation
at least--of hardihood, endurance, and self-help, was a small matter compared with the
moral training which they had gained--a small matter, compared with the habits of
obedience, self-restraint, self-sacrifice, mutual trust, and mutual help; the inspiration of a
common patriotism, of a common national destiny. Without that moral discipline, they
would have failed each other in need; have broken up, scattered, or perished, or at least
remained as settlers or as slaves among the Arab tribes. With that moral discipline, they
held together, and continued one people till the last, till they couched, they lay down as a
lion, and as a great lion, and none dare rouse them up.
You who are here to-day--I speak to those in uniform--are the representatives of more
than one great body of your countrymen, who have determined to teach themselves
something of that lesson which Israel learnt in the wilderness; not indeed by actual
danger and actual need, but by preparation for dangers and for needs, which are only too
possible as long as there is sin upon this earth.
I believe--I have already seen enough to be sure--that your labour and that of your
comrades will not be in vain; that you will be, as you surely may be, the better men for
that discipline to which you have subjected yourselves.
You must never forget that there are two sides, a softer and a sterner side, to the character
of the good man; that he, the perfect Christ, who is the Lion of Judah, taking vengeance,
in every age, on all who wrong their fellow men, is also the Lamb of God, who shed his
own blood for those who rebelled against him. You must recollect that there are
virtues--graces we call them rather--which you may learn elsewhere better than in the
camp or on the drilling ground; graces of character more devout, more pure, more tender,
more humane, yet necessary for the perfect man, which you will learn rather in your own
homes, from the innocence of your own children, from the counsels and examples of your
mothers and your wives.
But there are virtues--graces we must call them too--just as necessary for the perfect man,
which your present training ought to foster as (for most of you) no other training can;
virtues which the old monk tried to teach by the stern education of the cloister; which are
still taught, thank God, by the stern education of our public schools; which you and your
comrades may learn by the best of all methods, by teaching them to yourselves.
For here, and wherever military training goes on, must be kept in check those sins of
self-will, conceit, self-indulgence, which beset all free and prosperous men. Here must be
practised virtues which (if not the very highest) are yet virtues still, and will be such to all
eternity.
For the moral discipline which goes to make a good soldier or a successful competitor on
this ground,--the self-restraint, the obedience, the diligence, the punctuality, the patience,
the courtesy, the forbearance, the justice, the temperance,--these virtues, needful for those
who compete in a struggle in which the idler and the debauchee can take no share, all
these go equally toward the making of a good man.
The germs of these virtues you must bring hither with you. And none can give them to

you save the Spirit of God, the giver of all good. But here you may have them, I trust,
quickened into more active life, strengthened into more settled habits, to stand you in
good stead in all places, all circumstances, all callings; whether you shall go to serve your
country and your family, in trade or agriculture, at home; or whether you shall go forth,
as many of you will, as soldiers, colonists, or merchants, to carry English speech and
English civilization to the ends of all the earth.
For then, if you learn to endure hardness--in plain English, to exercise obedience and
self-restraint--will you be (whether regulars or civilians) alike the soldiers of Christ, able
and willing to fight in