its exercise, the greater will be the mass of
mind, the quantity of character, the power of duty and of usefulness.
Straitnesses develop richer resources than they bar. Hindrances nurture
hardihood of spirit in the struggle against them, or in the effort to
neutralize them. Obstacles, when surmounted, give one a higher position
than could be attained on an unobstructed path. The school of difficulty
is that in which we have our most efficient training for eminence, whether
of capacity or of moral excellence. What are accounted inevitable evils
are, when met with courage, only benefits and blessings, inasmuch as they
bring into full and vigorous exercise the hardier muscles and sinews of
the inner man, to measure strength with them or to rise above them.

Courage is needed in *the profession and maintenance of the true and the
right*, when denied, assailed, or vilipended. Communities never move
abreast in the progress of opinion. There are always pioneer minds and
consciences; and the men who are in advance of their time must encounter
obloquy at least, often persecution, loss, hardship, sometimes legal
penalties and disabilities. Under such circumstances, there are doubtless
many more that inwardly acknowledge the unpopular truth or the contested
right, than there are who are willing to avow and defend their belief.
Many are frightened into false utterance or deceptive silence. But there
must be in such minds a conscious mendacity, fatal to their own
self-respect, and in the highest degree detrimental to their moral
selfhood. It demands and at the same time nurtures true greatness of soul
to withstand the current of general opinion, to defy popular prejudice, to
make one's self "of no reputation" in order to preserve his integrity
unimpaired. Therefore is it that, in the lapse of time, the very men who
have been held in the lowest esteem rise into eminence in the general
regard, sometimes while they are still living, oftener with a succeeding
generation. Martyrs in their day, they receive the crown of martyrdom when
the work which they commenced is consummated. The history of all the great
reforms which have been successive eras in the moral progress of
Christendom is full of names, once dishonored, now among the foremost of
their race.

This type of courage has, in less enlightened ages than our own, been made
illustrious by *those who have sacrificed life rather than deny or
suppress beliefs* which they deemed of vita