ust not expect to find the life of duty always easy,
or the narrow way strewn with roses. But it is not for us to ask
whether a thing is pleasant, it is enough for us to know that it is
right. The Duke of Wellington once sent this message to his troops,
"Cindad Rodrigo must be taken to-night." And the answer of those
troops was not to ask of the danger, or the difficulty of the task, but
simply to say, "then we will do it." So when God puts our duty before
us, we must not stay to ask if we like the work or no, but simply make
answer, "then, by God's grace, we will do it." Come what may, let us
do our duty. When the battle of the Alma was being fought, a message
was brought to a general that the guards were falling fast before the
enemy's fire, and suggesting that they should retire under shelter.
And the general answered that it would be better that every man of the
brigade of guards should fall, rather than that they should retire from
the enemy.

Whatever hardship, sorrow, loss or trial it may please God to send us,
let nothing turn us back from the path of duty. Remember, by our
actions we are raising a monument which will last for ever, when every
memorial of brass or marble has crumbled into dust. Every act of
_brave self-sacrifice_ adds a something to our monument. Some time ago
a ship was wrecked upon the rocks within sight of shore. The captain
ordered the crew to save themselves, whilst he kept his place on the
deck. When all the men had gone, there crept forth trembling from his
hiding-place a boy, a waif and stray of the streets, who had concealed
himself on board as a stowaway. The boy begged the captain to save
him. Looking across the wild water that lay between him and the shore,
the captain muttered, "I can swim as far as that," and then unfastening
the life-belt which he wore, he fixed it on the stowaway. Both sailor
and child entered the waves, and the stowaway was kept afloat by the
life-belt, and safely carried ashore. But the brave man who had saved
him never reached land alive. Well says the writer of this true story,
"words would be wasted in saying more of the perfect humanity, and
noble self-forgetfulness of a man, who gave up his best chance of life
without hesitation, 'for one of the least of these little ones' who
stood helpless by his side, when man and boy were in the immediate
presence of death. That captain unlashing his life-belt, with two
miles of white water between him