I.
THE conscience of every man recognizes courage as the foundation of true manliness, and manliness as the perfection of human character, and if Christianity runs counter to conscience in this matter, or indeed in any other, Christianity will go to the wall.
But does it? On the contrary, is not perfection of character—“Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,” perfection to be reached by moral effort in the faithful following of our Lord’s life on earth—the final aim which the Christian religion sets before individual men, and constant contact and conflict with evil of all kinds the necessary condition of that moral effort, and the means adopted by our Master in the world in which we live, and for which he died? In that strife, then, the first requisite is courage or manfulness, gained through conflict with evil—for without such conflict there can be no perfection of character, the end for which Christ says we were sent into this world.
II.
“Manliness and manfulness” are synonymous, but they embrace more than we ordinarily mean by the word “courage;” for instance, tenderness and thoughtfulness for others. They include that courage which lies at the root of all manliness, but is, in fact, only its lowest or rudest form. Indeed, we must admit that it is not exclusively a human quality at all, but one which we share with other animals, and which some of them—for instance the bulldog and weasel—exhibit with a certainty and a thoroughness, which is very rare amongst mankind.
In what, then, does courage, in this ordinary sense of the word, consist? First, in persistency, or the determination to have one’s own way, coupled with contempt for safety and ease, and readiness to risk pain or death in getting one’s own way. This is, let us readily admit, a valuable, even a noble quality, but an animal quality rather than a human or manly one. Proficiency in athletic games is not necessarily a test even of animal courage, but only of muscular power and physical training. Even in those games which, to some extent, do afford a test of the persistency, and contempt for discomfort or pain, which constitute animal courage—such as rowing, boxing, and wrestling—it is of necessity a most unsatisfactory one. For instance, Nelson—as courageous an Englishman as ever lived, who attacked a Polar bear with a handspike when he was a boy of fourteen, and told his captain, when he was scolded for it, that he did not know Mr. Fear—with his slight frame and weak constitution, could never have won a boat-race, and in a match would have been hopelessly astern of any one of the crew of his own barge; and the highest courage which ever animated a human body would not enable the owner of it, if he were himself untrained, to stand for five minutes against a trained wrestler or boxer.
Athleticism is a good thing if kept in its place, but it has come to be very much over-praised and over-valued amongst us.
True manliness is as likely to be found in a weak as in a strong body. Other things being equal, we may perhaps admit (though I should hesitate to do so) that a man with a highly-trained and developed body will be more courageous than a weak man. But we must take this caution with us, that a great athlete may be a brute or a coward, while a truly manly man can be neither.
III.
Let us take a few well-known instances of courageous deeds and examine them; because, if we can find out any common quality in them we shall have lighted on something which is of the essence of, or inseparable from, that manliness which includes courage—that manliness of which we