l moment. It can hardly be
anticipated that the civilized world will recede so far into barbarism as
to light again the death-flame of persecution; but it may be questioned
whether the chronic sacrifice of all which men most desire in life
requires or manifests less of heroism than in earlier times furnished
victims for the arena or the stake.

In the moral hierarchy the first rank is probably due to *the courage that
inspires and sustains arduous and perilous philanthropic enterprise*. The
martyr for opinion suffers or dies rather than stain his soul with the
positive guilt of falsehood; while the philanthropist might evade toil and
danger without committing any actual sin, or making himself liable to
censure or disapproval either from God or man. In the former case,
hardship or danger is rendered inevitable by the felt necessity of
self-respect; in the latter, by the urgency of a love for man equal or
superior to the love for self. As examples of this highest type of
courage, it may suffice to name Howard, whose labors for prison-reform
were pursued at the well-known risk and the ultimate cost of his life;
Florence Nightingale and the noble sisterhood inaugurated by her, who have
won all the untarnished and undisputed laurels of recent wars on both
sides of the Atlantic; and the Christian missionaries to savage tribes and
in pestilential climates, who have often gone to their work with as clear
a consciousness of deadly peril as if they had been on their way to a
battle-field.

Chapter XII.

ORDER; OR DUTIES AS TO OBJECTS UNDER ONE'S OWN CONTROL.

There are many duties that are self-defined and self-limited. Thus, the
ordinary acts of justice and many of the charities of daily life include
in themselves the designation of time, place, and measure. There are other
duties, of equal obligation, which admit of wide variance as to these
particulars, but which can be most worthily and efficiently performed only
when reference is had to them. There are, also, many acts, in themselves
morally indifferent, which acquire their moral character as right or wrong
solely from one or more of these particulars. Thus recreations that are
innocent and fitting on Saturday, may be inconsistent with the proprieties
of Sunday; conversation and conduct perfectly befitting the retirement of
home may be justly offensive in a place of public concourse; or there may
be great guilt in the excessive u