Character — Ch 5a - Courage

CHAPTER V. --COURAGE.

"It is not but the tempest that doth show The seaman's cunning; but the field that tries The captain's courage; and we come to know Best what men are, in their worst jeopardies."

--DANIEL.

"If thou canst plan a noble deed, And never flag till it succeed, Though in the strife thy heart should bleed, Whatever obstacles control, Thine hour will come--go on, true soul!

Thou'lt win the prize, thou'lt reach the goal."

--C.

MACKAY.

"The heroic example of other days is in great part the source of the courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onwards by the shades of the brave that were."

--HELPS.

"That which we are, we are, One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

--TENNYSON.

THE world owes much to its men and women of courage.

We do not mean physical courage, in which man is at least equalled by the bulldog; nor is the bulldog considered the wisest of his species.

The courage that displays itself in silent effort and endeavour--that dares to endure all and suffer all for truth and duty--is more truly heroic than the achievements of physical valour, which are rewarded by honours and titles, or by laurels sometimes steeped in blood.

It is moral courage that characterises the highest order of manhood and womanhood--the courage to seek and to speak the truth; the courage to be just; the courage to be honest; the courage to resist temptation; the courage to do one's duty.

If men and women do not possess this virtue, they have no security whatever for the preservation of any other.

Every step of progress in the history of our race has been made in the face of opposition and difficulty, and been achieved and secured by men of intrepidity and valour--by leaders in the van of thought--by great discoverers, great patriots, and great workers in all walks of life.

There is scarcely a great truth or doctrine but has had to fight its way to public recognition in the face of detraction, calumny, and persecution.

"Everywhere," says Heine, "that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts, there also is a Golgotha."

"Many loved Truth and lavished life's best oil, Amid the dust of books to find her, Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, With the cast mantle she had left behind her.

Many in sad faith sought for her, Many with crossed hands sighed for her, But these, our brothers, fought for her, At life's dear peril wrought for her, So loved her that they died for her, Tasting the raptured fleetness Of her divine completeness."

[141] Socrates was condemned to drink the hemlock at Athens in his seventy-second year, because his lofty teaching ran counter to the prejudices and party-spirit of his age.

He was charged by his accusers with corrupting the youth of Athens by inciting them to despise the tutelary deities of the state.

He had the moral courage to brave not only the tyranny of the judges who condemned him, but of the mob who could not understand him.

He died discoursing of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; his last words to his judges being, "It is now time that we depart--I to die, you to live; but which has the better destiny is unknown to all, except to the God."

How many great men and thinkers have been persecuted in the name of religion!

Bruno was burnt alive at Rome, because of his exposure of the fashionable but false philosophy of his time.

When the judges of the Inquisition condemned him, to die, Bruno said proudly: "You are more afraid to pronounce my sentence than I am to receive it."

To him succeeded Galileo, whose character as a man of science is almost eclipsed by that of the martyr.

Denounced by the priests from the pulpit, because of the views he taught as to the motion of the earth, he was summoned to Rome, in his seventieth year, to answer for his heterodoxy.

And he was imprisoned in the Inquisition, if he was not actually put to the torture there.

He was pursued by persecution even when dead, the Pope refusing a tomb for his body.

Roger Bacon, the Franciscan monk, was persecuted on account of his studies in natural philosophy, and he was charged with, dealing in magic, because of his investigations in chemistry.

His writings were condemned, and he was thrown into prison, where he lay for ten years, during the lives of four successive Popes.

It is even averred that he died in prison.

Ockham, the early English speculative philosopher, was excommunicated by the Pope, and died in exile at Munich, where he was protected by the friendship of the then Emperor of Germany.

The Inquisition branded Vesalius as a heretic for revealing man to man, as it had before branded Bruno and Galileo for revealing the heavens to man.

Vesalius had the boldness to study the structure of the human body by actual dissection, a practice until then almost entirely forbidden.

He laid the foundations of a science, but he paid for it with his life.

Condemned by the Inquisition, his penalty was commuted, by the intercession of the Spanish king, into a pilgrimage to the Holy Land;

and when on his way back, while still in the prime of life, he died miserably at Zante, of fever and want--a martyr to his love of science.

When the 'Novum Organon' appeared, a hue-and-cry was raised against it, because of its alleged tendency to produce "dangerous revolutions," to "subvert governments," and to "overturn the authority of religion;"

[142] and one Dr. Henry Stubbe [14whose name would otherwise have been forgotten] wrote a book against the new philosophy, denouncing the whole tribe of experimentalists as "a Bacon-faced generation."

Even the establishment of the Royal Society was opposed, on the ground that "experimental philosophy is subversive of the Christian faith."

While the followers of Copernicus were persecuted as infidels, Kepler was branded with the stigma of heresy, "because," said he, "I take that side which seems to me to be consonant with the Word of God."

Even the pure and simpleminded Newton, of whom Bishop Burnet said that he had the WHITEST SOUL he ever knew--who was a very infant in the purity of his mind--even Newton was accused of "dethroning the Deity" by his sublime discovery of the law of gravitation; and a similar charge was made against Franklin for explaining the nature of the thunderbolt.

Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jews, to whom he belonged, because of his views of philosophy, which were supposed to be adverse to religion;

and his life was afterwards attempted by an assassin for the same reason.

Spinoza remained courageous and self-reliant to the last, dying in obscurity and poverty.

The philosophy of Descartes was denounced as leading to irreligion; the doctrines of Locke were said to produce materialism; and in our own day, Dr. Buckland, Mr. Sedgwick, and other leading geologists, have been accused of overturning revelation with regard to the constitution and history of the earth.

Indeed, there has scarcely been a discovery in astronomy, in natural history, or in physical science, that has not been attacked by the bigoted and narrow-minded as leading to infidelity.

Other great discoverers, though they may not have been charged with irreligion, have had not less obloquy of a professional and public nature to encounter.

When Dr. Harvey published his theory of the circulation of the blood, his practice fell off, [143] and the medical profession stigmatised him as a fool.

"The few good things I have been able to do," said John Hunter, "have been accomplished with the greatest difficulty, and encountered the greatest opposition."

Sir Charles Bell, while employed in his important investigations as to the nervous system, which issued in one of the greatest of physiological discoveries, wrote to a friend: "If I were not so poor, and had not so many vexations to encounter, how happy would I be!"

But he himself observed that his practice sensibly fell off after the publication of each successive stage of his discovery.

Thus, nearly every enlargement of the domain of knowledge, which has made us better acquainted with the heavens, with the earth, and with ourselves, has been established by the energy, the devotion, the self-sacrifice, and the courage of the great spirits of past times, who, however much they have been opposed or reviled by their contemporaries, now rank amongst those whom the enlightened of the human race most delight to honour.

Nor is the unjust intolerance displayed towards men of science in the past, without its lesson for the present.

It teaches us to be forbearant towards those who differ from us, provided they observe patiently, think honestly, and utter their convictions freely and truthfully.

It was a remark of Plato, that "the world is God's epistle to mankind;" and to read and study that epistle, so as to elicit its true meaning, can have no other effect on a well-ordered mind than to lead to a deeper impression of His power, a clearer perception of His wisdom, and a more grateful sense of His goodness.

While such has been the courage of the martyrs of science, not less glorious has been the courage of the martyrs of faith.

The passive endurance of the man or woman who, for conscience sake, is found ready to suffer and to endure in solitude, without so much as the encouragement of even a single sympathising voice, is an exhibition of courage of a far higher kind than that displayed in the roar of battle, where even the weakest feels encouraged and inspired by the enthusiasm of sympathy and the power of numbers.

Time would fail to tell of the deathless names of those who through faith in principles, and in the face of difficulty, danger, and suffering, "have wrought righteousness and waxed valiant" in the moral warfare of the world, and been content to lay down their lives rather than prove false to their conscientious convictions of the truth.

Men of this stamp, inspired by a high sense of duty, have in past times exhibited character in its most heroic aspects, and continue to present to us some of the noblest spectacles to be seen in history.

Even women, full of tenderness and gentleness, not less than men, have in this cause been found capable of exhibiting the most unflinching courage.

Such, for instance, as that of Anne Askew, who, when racked until her bones were dislocated, uttered no cry, moved no muscle, but looked her tormentors calmly in the face, and refused either to confess or to recant; or such as that of Latimer and Ridley, who, instead of bewailing their hard fate and beating their breasts, went as cheerfully to their death as a bridegroom to the altar--the one bidding the other to "be of good comfort," for that "we shall this day light such a candle in England, by God's grace, as shall never be put out;" or such, again, as that of Mary Dyer, the Quakeress, hanged by the Puritans of New England for preaching to the people, who ascended the scaffold with a willing step, and, after calmly addressing those who stood about, resigned herself into the hands of her persecutors, and died in peace and joy.

Not less courageous was the behaviour of the good Sir Thomas More, who marched willingly to the scaffold, and died cheerfully there, rather than prove false to his conscience.

When More had made his final decision to stand upon his principles, he felt as if he had won a victory, and said to his son-in-law Roper: "Son Roper, I thank Our Lord, the field is won!"

The Duke of Norfolk told him of his danger, saying: "By the mass, Master More, it is perilous striving with princes; the anger of a prince brings death!"

"Is that all, my lord?"

said More;

"then the difference between you and me is this--that I shall die to-day, and you to-morrow."

While it has been the lot of many great men, in times of difficulty and danger, to be cheered and supported by their wives, More had no such consolation.

His helpmate did anything but console him during his imprisonment in the Tower.

[144] She could not conceive that there was any sufficient reason for his continuing to lie there, when by merely doing what the King required of him, he might at once enjoy his liberty, together with his fine house at Chelsea, his library, his orchard, his gallery, and the society of his wife and children.

"I marvel," said she to him one day, "that you, who have been alway hitherto taken for wise, should now so play the fool as to lie here in this close filthy prison, and be content to be shut up amongst mice and rats, when you might be abroad at your liberty, if you would but do as the bishops have done?"

But More saw his duty from a different point of view: it was not a mere matter of personal comfort with him; and the expostulations of his wife were of no avail.

He gently put her aside, saying cheerfully, "Is not this house as nigh heaven as my own?"

--to which she contemptuously rejoined: "Tilly vally--tilly vally!"

More's daughter, Margaret Roper, on the contrary, encouraged her father to stand firm in his principles, and dutifully consoled and cheered him during his long confinement.

Deprived of pen-and-ink, he wrote his letters to her with a piece of coal, saying in one of them: "If I were to declare in writing how much pleasure your daughterly loving letters gave me, a PECK OF COALS would not suffice to make the pens."

More was a martyr to veracity: he would not swear a false oath; and he perished because he was sincere.

When his head had been struck off, it was placed on London Bridge, in accordance with the barbarous practice of the times.

Margaret Roper had the courage to ask for the head to be taken down and given to her, and, carrying her affection for her father beyond the grave, she desired that it might be buried with her when she died;

and long after, when Margaret Roper's tomb was opened, the precious relic was observed lying on the dust of what had been her bosom.