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Christian Courage
Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. “He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,” is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everday advice for sailors or mountaineers. It might be printed in an Alpine guide or a drill book.
This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or quite brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if he will risk it on the precipice. He can get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then He will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.
No philosopher, I fancy, has ever expressed this romantic riddle with adequate lucidity, and I certainly have not done so. But Christianity has done more; it has marked the limit of it in the awful graves of the suicide and the hero, showing the distance between him who dies for the sake of living and him who dies for the sake of dying. And it has held up ever since above the European lances the banner of the mystery of chivalry: the Christian courage, which is a disdain of death; not the Chinese courage, which is a disdain of life.
~G. K. Chesterton
Do not stand aloof, despising, disbelieving, but come in and help—insist on coming in and helping. Above all, we have shown a good deal of courage; and your part is to add a great courage to it.
There are glorious years lying ahead of you if you choose to make them glorious. God’s in His heaven still. So forward, brave hearts. To what adventures I cannot tell, but I know that your God is watching to see whether you are adventurous...courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
~James M. Barrie
Our Heroes
Here’s a hand to the boy who has courage
To do what he knows to be right;
When he falls in the way of temptation,
He has a hard battle to fight.
Who strives against self and his comrade
Will find a most powerful foe.
All honor to him if he conquers.
A cheer for the boy who says, “No!”
There’s many a battle fought daily
The world knows nothing about;
There’s many a brave little soldier
Whose strength puts a legion to rout.
And he who fights sin singlehanded
Is more of a hero, I say,
Than he who leads soldiers to battle
And conquers by arms in the fray.
Be steadfast, my boy, when you’re tempted,
To do what you know to be right.
Stand firm by the colors of manhood,
And you will o’ercome in the fight.
“The right,” be your battle cry ever
In waging the warfare of life,
And God, who knows who are the heroes,
Will give you the strength for the strife.
Will Versus Fear
A woman of my acquaintance has an absolute horror of height. Her son was amused at her inability to look into the Grand Canyon, and at her stuborn refusal to travel by air. Not long ago, this lad was taken into our army, and, from a remote training camp, sent his mother an honest confession that he was “afraid of being afraid.” “I don’t know whether I’m a brave man or coward,” he wrote, “and doubt worries me all the time.”
On receipt of the letter, his mother climbed into a plane, and flew to her son. “I thought you were afraid to fly,” the boy said.
“I am,” the mother replied. “But I flew to show you that fear can be conquered, if the reason is good enough. A brave man is not a man who isn’t afraid, but one whose will is stronger than his fear.”
~Channing Pollock
Fear always springs from ignorance. --Ralph Waldo Emerson
Have you ever taken your fears go God, got the horizons of eternity about them, looked at them in the light of His love and grace? --Robert J. McCracken
Fear is faithlessness. --George MacDonald
A man of courage is also full of faith. --Cicero
Courage consists not in blindly overlooking danger, but in seeing and conquering it.
--Jean Paul Richter
The fear of God kills all other fears. --Hugh Black
Christians had lost all fear of death. Since, therefore, the fear of death is the mother of all fear, when it has been destroyed, all other forms of fear are thereby vanquished. --John Sutherland Bonnell
When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no daring of which it is incapable. --Leigh Hunt.
Quit You Like Men
Quit you like men, be strong;
There’s a burden to bear,
There’s a grief to share,
There’s a heart that breaks ‘neath a load of care—
But fare ye forth with a song.
Quit you like men, be strong;
There’s a battle to fight,
There’s a wrong to right,
There’s a God who blesses the good with might—
So fare ye forth with a song.
Quit you like men, be strong;
There’s a work to do,
There’s a world to make new,
There’s a call for men who are brave and true—
On! on with the song!
Quit you like men, be strong;
There’s a year of grace,
There’s a God to face,
There’s another heat in the great world race—
Speed, speed with a song!
~William Herbert Hudnut.
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