where were found, buried in ashes, the rusted
remains of the helmet and cuirass of the Roman sentinel. When the
black cloud rose from the mountain, and the hot ashes fell around him,
and the people rushed out at the gate, he stood there immovable,
because it was his duty, and died in his place, suffocated by the
sulphury air. It was a grand instance of courage, but it is seen again
and again equalled in common life. In men and women stricken down by
fell disease; in those on whom adverse circumstances close like the
walls of an iron chamber; in people for whom there was no possible
escape, who could only bear, but who stood up firm and erect in their
weakness, whose cross, instead of crushing them to the earth, seemed
only to lift them up. We are told that Robert Hall, the great
preacher, suffered much from disease. He was forced often to throw
himself down and writhe on the ground in paroxysms of pain. From these
he would rise with a smile, saying, "I suffered much, but I did not cry
out, did I? did I cry out?"

These are the chief forms of moral courage in ordinary life. We have
now to point out what are the sources of such courage.

The first source of courage is conviction--the feeling that we are in
the right, the "testimony of a good conscience." Nothing can make a
man brave without that. "Thrice is he armed," we are told, "who hath
his quarrel just," and he is more than trebly armed who knows in his
heart that it is just. If we go over the roll of the strongest and
bravest men the world has seen we will find that at the root of their
courage there lay this fact of conviction. They _believed_, therefore
they spake, therefore they fought, therefore they bled and died. The
man of strong conviction is the strong man all the world over. If a
man wants that, he will be but a feeble character, a poor weakling to
the end of the chapter. Shakespeare says that "conscience makes
cowards of us all"; but it does something else when it makes us fear
evil--it lifts us above all other fear. So it raised Peter, who had
shortly before denied his Master, to such courage that he could say
before his judges, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken
unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the
things which we have seen and heard." It has enabled men and women to
endure a martyr's death when one word, which they would not speak,
might have saved them.

The second source of courage i