ourage more needed than the courage to form an opinion and keep by it
when we have formed it. There is no more contemptible form of
cowardice than to do a thing merely because others do it. The grand
words of President Garfield of the United States are worthy of
remembrance: "I do not think what others may say or think about me, but
there is one man's opinion about me which I very much value, that is
the opinion of James Garfield; others I need not think about. I can
get away from them, but I have to be with him all the time. He is with
me when I rise up and when I lie down, when I go out and when I come
in. It makes a great difference whether he thinks well of me or not."
To this noble utterance we may add the words of the poet Russell Lowell:

They are slaves who will not choose
Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,
Rather than in silence shrink
From the truth they needs must think.
They are slaves who dare not be
In the right with two or three.

_Second, there is the courage of resistance_.--This is the chief form
courage should take in the young. They are surrounded on every side by
strong temptations--temptations addressed to their lower nature, to
vanity, to indolence, to scepticism, to impurity, to drunkenness.
There is many a young man beset by temptation who has in reality to
fight far harder if he will maintain his integrity than any soldier
belonging to an army making its way through an enemy's country. He
does not know when an ambush may be sprung upon him, or from what side
the attack may come. In an old tower on the Continent they show you,
graven again and again on the stones of one of the dungeons, the word
_Resist_. It is said that a Protestant woman was kept in that hideous
place for forty years, and during all that time her employment was in
graving with a piece of iron, for anyone who might come after her, that
word. It is a word that needs to be engraven on every young man's and
young woman's heart. It represents the highest form of courage which
to them is possible--the power to say "No" to every form of temptation.

_Third, there is the courage of endurance_.--This is really the noblest
form of courage. There is no excitement in it; nothing to be won by
it. It is simply to bear without flinching. In the buried city of
Herculaneum, near Vesuvius, now uncovered, after the guide has shown
the visitor the wonders of the place he takes him to the gate and
points out the stone box