The After-glow of a Great Reign | Page 6

are we to say to anyone we see who is under that most terrible trial? What are we to say to ourselves if such a misfortune and trial comes to us? Why, we can only say this, and it is enough--that if it is true that a general places his bravest soldiers in the hottest part of the battle, if it is true that it is only certain strokes which can reach the most sensitive parts of our character, if it is true that this very trial came to Jesus Christ Himself, and He had it said of Him--"He works through Beelzebub, the prince of the devils," "He saved others, Himself He cannot save"--then, my brother, the secret of your strange punishment is out, it means that it is a special mark of favour, it is a Victoria Cross for service, it is Christ coming to you and bringing the very cup out of which He drank Himself, and saying, "Are ye able to drink of the cup that I drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Pray hard, pray with all your strength, for the moral courage to answer back, "I am able." "Therefore," as the poet so beautifully says:--
"Therefore gird up thyself, and come to stand Unflinching under the unfaltering hand That waits to prove thee to the uttermost.
It were not hard to suffer by His hand If thou could see His face; but in the dark! That is the one last trial--be it so; Christ was forsaken, so must thou be too: How couldst thou suffer but in seeming else?
Thou wilt not see the face, nor feel the hand, Only the cruel crushing of the feet, When, thro' the bitter night, the Lord comes down To tread the wine-press. Not by sight but faith, Endure, endure; be faithful to the end."
And so, once again, looking out upon our ordinary life, what shall we need to put backbone into life? What do we need to give a little more strength to it, to enable us to be braver and firmer and stronger? It is just that power of being able to take our own line against others; it is just that courage of our opinions; it is consistent with being perfectly humble, and ever ready to learn; it implies no conceit, and no contempt of others, but it enables this one in the workshop to stand up for the faith in which he believes, that one in the drawing-room to take a strong moral line when people are sneering at virtue; it nerves us to stand by our colours and to cry to the last,
"Faith of our fathers, living still, We will be true to thee till death."
How then are we to gain the secret? What is the secret of moral courage? And, in answering that question, let us be perfectly fair to those who, like the Stoics of old, showed a wonderful endurance with no knowledge whatever of Christ, and very little belief in another world; let us be perfectly honest and frank with regard to the virtue of those in our day who, having lost, to their infinite misfortune, their childish faith, still say to themselves: "I will cling to my morality, I will try and keep a clean hand and a pure heart"; let us give full allowance to what we have heard of this morning in this cathedral--the power and the influence of secondary motives, secondary motives allowed sometimes to save us for the time before the primary motive comes in--but still, making all allowance for that, what is the secret of the best moral courage? It is not the highest moral courage merely to endure, it is not the highest moral courage, like the old Roman, just to fold our toga round us and die. There has come a new thing into the world, a new kind of moral courage, and that moral courage is full of inspiration and full of cheerfulness: it does not merely bear the cross, it takes up the cross. It has in the midst of its own sorrow a force and a power which shake the world; it has in the midst of personal trouble,
"A heart at leisure from itself To soothe and sympathize."
And what is the secret of that? And I would dare anyone here, whatever may be their private belief, to doubt or to dispute this, that it is produced and shown by no one else but those who believe that Jesus is with them in the ship; and that when you see some woman going through the most terrible trouble, perfectly calm, quiet, brave and cheerful; when some man, over whom all the waves and storms are bursting, stands there brave, and cheerful, and happy in the hour