for the faith in which he believes, that one in the drawing-room to
take a strong moral line when people are sneering at virtue; it nerves
us to stand by our colours and to cry to the last,

"Faith of our fathers, living still,
We will be true to thee till death."

How then are we to gain the secret? What is the secret of moral
courage? And, in answering that question, let us be perfectly fair to
those who, like the Stoics of old, showed a wonderful endurance with no
knowledge whatever of Christ, and very little belief in another world;
let us be perfectly honest and frank with regard to the virtue of those
in our day who, having lost, to their infinite misfortune, their
childish faith, still say to themselves: "I will cling to my morality,
I will try and keep a clean hand and a pure heart"; let us give full
allowance to what we have heard of this morning in this cathedral--the
power and the influence of secondary motives, secondary motives allowed
sometimes to save us for the time before the primary motive comes
in--but still, making all allowance for that, what is the secret of the
best moral courage? It is not the highest moral courage merely to
endure, it is not the highest moral courage, like the old Roman, just
to fold our toga round us and die. There has come a new thing into the
world, a new kind of moral courage, and that moral courage is full of
inspiration and full of cheerfulness: it does not merely bear the
cross, it takes up the cross. It has in the midst of its own sorrow a
force and a power which shake the world; it has in the midst of
personal trouble,

"A heart at leisure from itself
To soothe and sympathize."

And what is the secret of that? And I would dare anyone here, whatever
may be their private belief, to doubt or to dispute this, that it is
produced and shown by no one else but those who believe that Jesus is
with them in the ship; and that when you see some woman going through
the most terrible trouble, perfectly calm, quiet, brave and cheerful;
when some man, over whom all the waves and storms are bursting, stands
there brave, and cheerful, and happy in the hour of trial, it is
because, unheard by the world, he hears a voice in his ear saying, "Why
are ye fearful? O ye of little faith," because, unseen by the world,
he sees Someone standing with His hand upon the tiller, Someone Whom he
believes to have supreme power in the last resort over the waves, and
Who he knows,