ombination with much amiability of character. It is commonly found
in persons who have some natural leanings to virtue, and who, if
circumstances would only favour them, would prefer to lead, and would
lead, at least an inoffensive and respectable, if not a very useful,
noble, or heroic life. Finely strung natures that are very sensitive to
all impressions from without, natures which thrill and vibrate in
response to a touching tale or in sympathy with fine scenery or soft
music, natures which are housed in bodies of delicate nervous
temperament, are commonly keenly sensitive to the praise or blame of
their fellows, and are therefore liable to moral cowardice, though by no
means necessarily a prey to it.

The examples of its ill-effects are daily before our eyes. A man cannot
bear the coolness of a friend or the contempt of a leader of opinion,
and so he stifles his own independent judgment and goes with the
majority. A minister of the Church finds his faith steadily diverging
from that of the creed he has subscribed, but he cannot proclaim this
change because he cannot make up his mind to be the subject of public
astonishment and remark, of severe scrutiny on the one side and still
more distasteful because ignorant and canting sympathy on the other. A
man in business finds that his expenditure exceeds his income, but he is
unable to face the shame of frankly lowering his position and curtailing
his expenses, and so he is led into dishonest appearances; and from
dishonest appearances to fraudulent methods of keeping them up the
step, as we all know, is short. Or in trade a man knows that there are
shameful, contemptible, and silly practices, and yet he has not moral
courage to break through them. A parent cannot bear to risk the loss of
his child's good-will even for an hour, and so omits the chastisement he
deserves. The schoolboy, fearing his parents' look of disappointment,
says he stands higher in his class than he does; or fearing to be
thought soft and unmanly by his schoolfellows, sees cruelty or a cheat
or some wickedness perpetrated without a word of honest anger or manly
condemnation. All this is moral cowardice, the vice which brings us down
to the low level which bold sinners set for us, or which at any rate
sweeps the weak soul down to a thousand perils, and absolutely forbids
the good there is in us from finding expression.

But of all the forms into which moral cowardice develops this of denying
the Lord