Character — Ch 5b - Courage, cont.

Martin Luther was not called upon to lay down his life for his faith;

but, from the day that he declared himself against the Pope, he daily ran the risk of losing it.

At the beginning of his great struggle, he stood almost entirely alone.

The odds against him were tremendous.

"On one side," said he himself, "are learning, genius, numbers, grandeur, rank, power, sanctity, miracles; on the other Wycliffe, Lorenzo Valla, Augustine, and Luther--a poor creature, a man of yesterday, standing wellnigh alone with a few friends."

Summoned by the Emperor to appear at Worms; to answer the charge made against him of heresy, he determined to answer in person.

Those about him told him that he would lose his life if he went, and they urged him to fly.

"No," said he, "I will repair thither, though I should find there thrice as many devils as there are tiles upon the housetops!"

Warned against the bitter enmity of a certain Duke George, he said--"I will go there, though for nine whole days running it rained Duke Georges."

Luther was as good as his word; and he set forth upon his perilous journey.

When he came in sight of the old bell-towers of Worms, he stood up in his chariot and sang, "EIN FESTE BURG IST UNSER GOTT."

--the 'Marseillaise' of the Reformation--the words and music of which he is said to have improvised only two days before.

Shortly before the meeting of the Diet, an old soldier, George Freundesberg, put his hand upon Luther's shoulder, and said to him: "Good monk, good monk, take heed what thou doest; thou art going into a harder fight than any of us have ever yet been in."

But Luther's only answer to the veteran was, that he had "determined to stand upon the Bible and his conscience."

Luther's courageous defence before the Diet is on record, and forms one of the most glorious pages in history.

When finally urged by the Emperor to retract, he said firmly: "Sire, unless I am convinced of my error by the testimony of Scripture, or by manifest evidence, I cannot and will not retract, for we must never act contrary to our conscience.

Such is my profession of faith, and you must expect none other from me.

HIER

STEHE ICH: ICH KANN NICHT ANDERS: GOTT HELFE MIR!"

[14Here stand I: I cannot do otherwise: God help me!

].

He had to do his duty--to obey the orders of a Power higher than that of kings; and he did it at all hazards.

Afterwards, when hard pressed by his enemies at Augsburg, Luther said that "if he had five hundred heads, he would lose them all rather than recant his article concerning faith."

Like all courageous men, his strength only seemed to grow in proportion to the difficulties he had to encounter and overcome.

"There is no man in Germany," said Hutten, "who more utterly despises death than does Luther."

And to his moral courage, perhaps more than to that of any other single man, do we owe the liberation of modern thought, and the vindication of the great rights of the human understanding.

The honourable and brave man does not fear death compared with ignominy.

It is said of the Royalist Earl of Strafford that, as he walked to the scaffold on Tower Hill, his step and manner were those of a general marching at the head of an army to secure victory, rather than of a condemned man to undergo sentence of death.

So the Commonwealth's man, Sir John Eliot, went alike bravely to his death on the same spot, saying: "Ten thousand deaths rather than defile my conscience, the chastity and purity of which I value beyond all this world."

Eliot's greatest tribulation was on account of his wife, whom he had to leave behind.

When he saw her looking down upon him from the Tower window, he stood up in the cart, waved his hat, and cried: "To heaven, my love!

--to heaven!

--and leave you in the storm!"

As he went on his way, one in the crowd called out, "That is the most glorious seat you ever sat on;" to which he replied: "It is so, indeed!"

and rejoiced exceedingly.

[145] Although success is the guerdon for which all men toil, they have nevertheless often to labour on perseveringly, without any glimmer of success in sight.

They have to live, meanwhile, upon their courage--sowing their seed, it may be, in the dark, in the hope that it will yet take root and spring up in achieved result.

The best of causes have had to fight their way to triumph through a long succession of failures, and many of the assailants have died in the breach before the fortress has been won.

The heroism they have displayed is to be measured, not so much by their immediate success, as by the opposition they have encountered, and the courage with which they have maintained the struggle.

The patriot who fights an always-losing battle--the martyr who goes to death amidst the triumphant shouts of his enemies--the discoverer, like Columbus, whose heart remains undaunted through the bitter years of his "long wandering woe"--are examples of the moral sublime which excite a profounder interest in the hearts of men than even the most complete and conspicuous success.

By the side of such instances as these, how small by comparison seem the greatest deeds of valour, inciting men to rush upon death and die amidst the frenzied excitement of physical warfare!

But the greater part of the courage that is needed in the world is not of a heroic kind.

Courage may be displayed in everyday life as well as in historic fields of action.

There needs, for example, the common courage to be honest--the courage to resist temptation--the courage to speak the truth--the courage to be what we really are, and not to pretend to be what we are not--the courage to live honestly within our own means, and not dishonestly upon the means of others.

A great deal of the unhappiness, and much of the vice, of the world is owing to weakness and indecision of purpose--in other words, to lack of courage.

Men may know what is right, and yet fail to exercise the courage to do it; they may understand the duty they have to do, but will not summon up the requisite resolution to perform it.

The weak and undisciplined man is at the mercy of every temptation; he cannot say "No," but falls before it.

And if his companionship be bad, he will be all the easier led away by bad example into wrongdoing.

Nothing can be more certain than that the character can only be sustained and strengthened by its own energetic action.

The will, which is the central force of character, must be trained to habits of decision--otherwise it will neither be able to resist evil nor to follow good.

Decision gives the power of standing firmly, when to yield, however slightly, might be only the first step in a downhill course to ruin.

Calling upon others for help in forming a decision is worse than useless.

A man must so train his habits as to rely upon his own powers and depend upon his own courage in moments of emergency.

Plutarch tells of a King of Macedon who, in the midst of an action, withdrew into the adjoining town under pretence of sacrificing to Hercules; whilst his opponent Emilius, at the same time that he implored the Divine aid, sought for victory sword in hand, and won the battle.

And so it ever is in the actions of daily life.

Many are the valiant purposes formed, that end merely in words; deeds intended, that are never done; designs projected, that are never begun;

and all for want of a little courageous decision.

Better far the silent tongue but the eloquent deed.

For in life and in business, despatch is better than discourse; and the shortest answer of all is, DOING.

"In matters of great concern, and which must be done," says Tillotson, "there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution--to be undetermined when the case is so plain and the necessity so urgent.

To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it,--this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day to another, until he is starved and destroyed."

There needs also the exercise of no small degree of moral courage to resist the corrupting influences of what is called "Society."

Although "Mrs. Grundy" may be a very vulgar and commonplace personage, her influence is nevertheless prodigious.

Most men, but especially women, are the moral slaves of the class or caste to which they belong.

There is a sort of unconscious conspiracy existing amongst them against each other's individuality.

Each circle and section, each rank and class, has its respective customs and observances, to which conformity is required at the risk of being tabooed.

Some are immured within a bastile of fashion, others of custom, others of opinion; and few there are who have the courage to think outside their sect, to act outside their party, and to step out into the free air of individual thought and action.

We dress, and eat, and follow fashion, though it may be at the risk of debt, ruin, and misery; living not so much according to our means, as according to the superstitious observances of our class.

Though we may speak contemptuously of the Indians who flatten their heads, and of the Chinese who cramp their toes, we have only to look at the deformities of fashion amongst ourselves, to see that the reign of "Mrs. Grundy" is universal.

But moral cowardice is exhibited quite as much in public as in private life.

Snobbism is not confined to the toadying of the rich, but is quite as often displayed in the toadying of the poor.

Formerly, sycophancy showed itself in not daring to speak the truth to those in high places;

but in these days it rather shows itself in not daring to speak the truth to those in low places.

Now that "the masses" [146] exercise political power, there is a growing tendency to fawn upon them, to flatter them, and to speak nothing but smooth words to them.

They are credited with virtues which they themselves know they do not possess.

The public enunciation of wholesome because disagreeable truths is avoided; and, to win their favour, sympathy is often pretended for views, the carrying out of which in practice is known to be hopeless.

It is not the man of the noblest character--the highest-cultured and best-conditioned man--whose favour is now sought, so much as that of the lowest man, the least-cultured and worst-conditioned man, because his vote is usually that of the majority.

Even men of rank, wealth, and education, are seen prostrating themselves before the ignorant, whose votes are thus to be got.

They are ready to be unprincipled and unjust rather than unpopular.

It is so much easier for some men to stoop, to bow, and to flatter, than to be manly, resolute, and magnanimous; and to yield to prejudices than run counter to them.

It requires strength and courage to swim against the stream, while any dead fish can float with it.

This servile pandering to popularity has been rapidly on the increase of late years, and its tendency has been to lower and degrade the character of public men.

Consciences have become more elastic.

There is now one opinion for the chamber, and another for the platform.

Prejudices are pandered to in public, which in private are despised.

Pretended conversions--which invariably jump with party interests are more sudden;

and even hypocrisy now appears to be scarcely thought discreditable.

The same moral cowardice extends downwards as well as upwards.

The action and reaction are equal.

Hypocrisy and timeserving above are accompanied by hypocrisy and timeserving below.

Where men of high standing have not the courage of their opinions, what is to be expected from men of low standing?

They will only follow such examples as are set before them.

They too will skulk, and dodge, and prevaricate--be ready to speak one way and act another--just like their betters.

Give them but a sealed box, or some hole-and-corner to hide their act in, and they will then enjoy their "liberty!"

Popularity, as won in these days, is by no means a presumption in a man's favour, but is quite as often a presumption against him.

"No man," says the Russian proverb, "can rise to honour who is cursed with a stiff backbone."

But the backbone of the popularity-hunter is of gristle; and he has no difficulty in stooping and bending himself in any direction to catch the breath of popular applause.

Where popularity is won by fawning upon the people, by withholding the truth from them, by writing and speaking down to the lowest tastes, and still worse by appeals to class-hatred, [147] such a popularity must be simply contemptible in the sight of all honest men.

Jeremy Bentham, speaking of a well-known public character, said: "His creed of politics results less from love of the many than from hatred of the few; it is too much under the influence of selfish and dissocial affection."

To how many men in our own day might not the same description apply?

Men of sterling character have the courage to speak the truth, even when it is unpopular.

It was said of Colonel Hutchinson by his wife, that he never sought after popular applause, or prided himself on it: "He more delighted to do well than to be praised, and never set vulgar commendations at such a rate as to act contrary to his own conscience or reason for the obtaining them; nor would he forbear a good action which he was bound to, though all the world disliked it; for he ever looked on things as they were in themselves, not through the dim spectacles of vulgar estimation."

[148] "Popularity, in the lowest and most common sense," said Sir John Pakington, on a recent occasion, [149] "is not worth the having.

Do your duty to the best of your power, win the approbation of your own conscience, and popularity, in its best and highest sense, is sure to follow."

When Richard Lovell Edgeworth, towards the close of his life, became very popular in his neighbourhood, he said one day to his daughter: "Maria, I am growing dreadfully popular; I shall be good for nothing soon; a man cannot be good for anything who is very popular."

Probably he had in his mind at the time the Gospel curse of the popular man, "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you!

for so did their fathers to the false prophets."