Life and Conduct Part 4

To these thoughts on the use of time we may fitly add the great words of Scripture, "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom," Ps. xc. 12. "Redeeming the time, because the days are evil," Ephes. v. 16. We transform time into eternity by using it aright.

[1] These ill.u.s.trations are given by Mr. Davenport Adams.

[2] _Beginning Life_.

CHAPTER VII.

COURAGE.

We all know what is meant by courage, though it is not easy to define it. It is the determination to hold our own, to face danger without flinching, to go straight on our way against opposing forces, neither turning to the right hand nor the left.

It is a quality admirable in the eyes of all men, savage and civilized, Christian and non-Christian--as admirable as cowardice, the opposite quality, is detestable. The brave man is the hero of the savage.

Bravery, or, as the Scriptures term it, _virtue_, is a great requisite in a Christian. If it is not the first, it is the second characteristic of a Christian life. "Add," says St. Paul, "to your faith virtue," that is to say, courage.

It is the very glory of youth to be courageous.--The "sneak" and the "coward" are the abhorrence of youth. It is youth which climbs "the imminent deadly breach" and faces the deadly hail of battle, which defies the tyranny of custom and the hatred of the world. One may have compa.s.sion for age, which is naturally timid and sees fears in the way, but youth which is cowardly is contemptible.

There are two kinds of courage--the one of a lower, the other of a higher type. (_a_) The first, the lower kind of courage, is that which has its root and foundation in our physical nature. It is const.i.tutional; there is little or no merit in it. Some men are born to know no fear--men of strong nerve, of iron const.i.tution, and powerful physique. Such men laugh at danger and scorn opposition.

Theirs is the courage of the lion or the bull-dog, and there is no virtue about it. They cannot help being what they are. (_b_) But there is another kind of courage which is not so much physical as _moral_. It has its foundation not in man's bodily const.i.tution so much as in his higher nature. It draws its power from the invisible.

"Are you not afraid," was a question put by a young and boastful officer to his companion whose face was blanched and pale, as they stood together amid the thickly falling shot of a battle-field. "I _am_ afraid," he replied, "and if you were half as afraid as I am, you would run." In his case there was little physical courage, but there was the higher courage drawn from a sense of duty which made him stand firm as a rock. When our Lord knelt in His mysterious anguish in Gethsemane, His whole physical nature seemed broken down, "His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground."

"Suffer," He said, "this cup to pa.s.s from me"; and His strength came from the invisible. "Not my will," He cried, "but thine be done."

With that sublime trust in G.o.d strengthening Him, He shrank not back for a moment; He took the cup and drained it to the dregs. This is the highest form of courage that there is. The weakest women have displayed it in face of appalling dangers. It is the courage of the martyr, the patriot, the reformer. There is a glory and beauty in it before which all men bow.

There are three chief forms which this moral courage takes in ordinary life.

_First, there is the courage of our opinions_.--Many people, perhaps the majority, do not have opinions. They have simply notions, impressions, sentiments, prejudices, which they have imbibed from others. They may be said to be like looking-gla.s.ses, which have a shadow of whatever stands before them. So long as they are in company with a positive person who believes something, they have an opinion.

When he goes the shadow on the looking-gla.s.s goes also. They are like the sand on the seash.o.r.e--the last person who comes the way makes a track and the next wave washes it away and leaves the sand ready for another impression. How many are there who, when any important question comes up, have no opinion about it, until they read their paper or hear what other people are saying. There is no sort of courage 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.blest 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 where were found, buried in ashes, the rusted remains of the helmet and cuira.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d to hearken unto you more than unto G.o.d, 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 is faith.--We use the word in the Christian sense of trust in G.o.d. When a man feels that G.o.d is with him he can stand up against all the powers of earth and h.e.l.l. "If G.o.d be for us, who can be against us?" The heroes of the past, who subdued kingdoms and wrought righteousness, have all been men of faith. Recall Hebrews xi., the Covenanters, the Ironsides of Cromwell, the Huguenots, Luther, Knox. Their faith may not have been so enlightened as it might have been had their knowledge been wider. Their religious creeds may have contained propositions that are no longer accepted, but they were strong because of their undoubted faith in G.o.d. When His presence is an abiding presence with us and in us, our

Strength is as the strength of ten, Because our hearts are pure.

He who fears G.o.d will know no other fear.

The third source of courage is sympathy.--A man who has G.o.d with him will be brave if he stand alone, but he will be greatly helped if he is in company with others like himself and knows that he has the sympathy of good men. You remember St. Paul on his journey to Rome reaching a little village about thirty miles from the great city. The look-out for him was very depressing. He had appealed to Caesar, but what likelihood was there of his obtaining justice in Caesar's capital. He might be thrown to the lions, or made to fight for his life in the Coliseum, a spectacle to the Roman mult.i.tude. Then it was that a few Roman Christians who had heard of his approach came out to meet him, and, it is said, "he thanked G.o.d and took courage." Such was the power of sympathy. If we would be encouraged we will seek it. If we would encourage others we will give it.

We will only say in closing this chapter that its subject is most truly ill.u.s.trated by the life of our Lord himself. The mediaeval conception of Christ was that He exhibited only the pa.s.sive virtues of meekness, patience, and submission to wrong. From the gospels we form a different idea. He vanquished the devil in the wilderness; He faced human opposition boldly and without fear; He denounced the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and encountered their rage and violence. He went calmly along His appointed path, neither turning to the right hand nor to the left. Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, could not deter Him from doing His Father's work. Amid a tumultuous tempest of ill-will He moved straight forward, foreseeing His death, "setting His face toward Jerusalem," knowing all that awaited Him there. He went through Gethsemane to Calvary with the step of a conqueror. Never was He more truly a king than on the cross, and the grandest crown ever worn was "the crown of thorns." In Him we have the highest example of courage, as of all other virtues.

CHAPTER VIII.

HEALTH.

Health means soundness of body and of mind; the keeping of our physical system in such a condition that it is able to do its work easily, without disturbance, and without pain; the exercise of the mind so as not to harm the body. There are certain preliminary considerations that we should bear in mind in connection with this subject.

I. The close connection between body and mind.--They are both related to each other in some mysterious way. So close is the connection that the one cannot be affected without the other. The well-being of the one depends on the well-being of the other. The power which the mind has over the body and the body over the mind has been well and tersely described by a writer of our time. "Man," he says, "is one, however compound. Fire his conscience, and he blushes; check his circulation, and he thinks tardily or not at all; impair his secretions, and the moral sense is dulled, discolored, or depraved, his aspirations flag, his hope and love both reel; impair them still more, and he becomes a brute. A cup of wine degrades his moral nature below that of the swine. Again, a violent emotion of pity or horror makes him vomit; a lancet will restore him from delirium to clear thought; excessive thought will waste his energy; excess of muscular exercise will deaden thought; an emotion will double the strength of his muscles; and at last, a p.r.i.c.k of a needle or a grain of mineral will in an instant lay to rest forever his body and its unity." [1] When we consider the close connection between mind and body, and how the state of the one affects the other, we see how important it is that both should work together in that harmonious action which is health, and how carefully we should guard against anything by which that harmonious action may be interrupted.

II. Bodily health is almost essential to success in life.--It is not _absolutely_ essential, but it is _almost_ essential. (_a_) Physical health is not everything. "Give a man," it has been said, "a good deep chest and a stomach of which he never knew the existence, and he must succeed in any practical career." This has been said by a great authority, Professor Huxley, but it is only partially true, for many worthless people fulfil these conditions. They are, as Carlyle calls them, only "animated patent digesters." (_b_) Great things also have been done in the world by men whose health has been feeble. Calvin was a man of sickly body; Pascal was an invalid at eighteen; Pope was weak and deformed; William of Orange, a martyr to asthma; Hall, the famous preacher, suffered great paroxysms of pain; Milton was blind; Nelson, little and lame; St. Paul in bodily presence was weak. On the other hand, some of these men might have done more if their health had been better. Health is a splendid possession in the battle of life. The men of great physical vitality, as a rule, achieve most; other things being equal, their success in life is sure. Everything shows that the greatness of great men is almost as much a bodily affair as a mental one. It has been computed that the average length of life of the most eminent philosophers, naturalists, artists, jurists, physicians, musical composers, scholars and authors, including poets, is sixty-five years. This shows that the most successful men on the whole have had good bodies and been blessed with great vitality.

III. The care of the body is a religious duty.--(_a_) It is so because our spiritual feelings are largely dependent upon the state of our health. "Certain conditions of body undeniably occasion, irritate and inflame those appet.i.tes and inclinations which it is one great end of Christianity to repress and regulate." The spirit has sometimes to maintain a terrible struggle against the flesh. Intemperance is largely the result of bad feeding. "It is easier for a camel to pa.s.s through the eye of a needle," than for a dyspeptic person to be gentle, meek, long-suffering. Dark views of G.o.d often come from the state of the body. It would largely lift up the moral and spiritual condition of men if their surroundings were such as tended to keep them in health. To improve men's dwellings, to give them healthy homes, pure air to breathe, and pure water to drink, would tend to help them morally and spiritually, (_b_) G.o.d requires of us a certain amount of service by and through our bodies. We cannot perform the work if we destroy the machines by which the work is to be done. (_c_) Scripture especially calls us to make the body the object of our reverent care.

"Your bodies are members of Christ." The body "is for the Lord, and the Lord for the body." "Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which ye have of G.o.d." "If any man defile the temple of G.o.d, him will G.o.d destroy." Yield "your members as instruments of righteousness unto G.o.d." Sin is not to "reign in your mortal body."

"Glorify G.o.d in your body." We are to "present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto G.o.d, which is our reasonable service."

(_d_) The body is a part of that humanity which Christ by His _incarnation_ took, redeemed, sanctified and glorified. (_e_) Our Lord's miracles were nearly all performed on the human body, for its relief, cure, and restoration to life.

IV. To a certain extent our health is in our own hands.--Not altogether, for some are const.i.tutionally defective, and subject to infirmities with which they are born, and which they have perhaps inherited. But a vast amount of disease is preventable, and comes from causes over which we have direct control. "It is reckoned that a hundred thousand persons die annually in England of preventable diseases"--from disobedience to the laws of health, which are G.o.d's laws, and the transgression of which, wilfully, is sin. Beyond all doubt a vast amount of sickness comes from bad living, from intemperance in eating and drinking, from breathing bad air, from inhabiting ill-constructed houses. It is possible to live in accordance with the laws of health so that life may be comparatively free from disease and from pain. If Providence denies health, the want of it must be patiently endured. If we have inherited weakness, we must make the most of the strength we have. But if we lack health through our own fault we are guilty of shameful sin.

To discuss fully the subject and laws of health would require a whole treatise, and would be beyond the scope of this text-book. There are, however, some outstanding conditions for the preservation of health which are plain to everyone, and which may be summed up in the three words Temperance, Exercise, and Rest. These have been well termed the three great physicians, whose prescriptions are painless and cost nothing.

1. _Temperance_.--Man needs a certain amount of food to sustain him, but if that amount be increased beyond the proper quant.i.ty it is dangerous to health. It overtasks the power of digestion and is injurious. We need therefore to be constantly on our guard as to what we eat and drink lest we run into excess. Every one must study his own const.i.tution, find out its need, and suit the supply of food to its wants. According to the old proverb, "We should eat to live, not live to eat." It is a great matter for health when we are able to strike the proper medium and neither eat nor drink too much nor too little.

To lay down rules on this subject for the individual is impossible.

"One man's food is another man's poison." A man must determine from his own experience what he ought to take, and how much, as well as what he ought to avoid. The word intemperance is generally employed as applying to the abuse of strong drinks. On this subject much has been written, some advocating total abstinence and others judicious and moderate use. Into this region of controversy we cannot enter. The evils of drinking habits, as they are called, are plain to all. They are a terrible curse to society, and a terrible danger to the individual. They have ruined many a promising career. For many, perhaps we may say for most, entire abstinence is their only safety.

He who finds that he can do his work well by drinking only water will be wise if he drinks nothing else. That will never harm him, though other liquids may. We must judge for ourselves, but "Temperance in all things" is a rule binding on every Christian man. We cannot have health unless we strictly and constantly practise temperance.

2. _Exercise_.--This is as necessary to health as food. "Only by exercise--physical exercise--can we maintain our muscles, organs and nervous system in proper vigor; only by exercise can we equalise the circulation and distribute the blood evenly over every part of the body; only by exercise can we take a cheerful and wholesome view of life, for exercise a.s.sists the digestion, and a good digestion is a sovereign antidote to low spirits; only by exercise can the brain be strengthened to perform the labor demanded of it." [2] No sensible man will try to do without it. If any man does so he will pay the penalty.

As to the amount of exercise and the kind of exercise every man must judge for himself. Some, from their occupation, need less than others; the outdoor laborer, for instance, than the clerk who is most of the day at the desk. One man may take exercise best by walking, another by riding, another by following outdoor sports. Athletics, such as football, and cricket, are a favorite form of exercise with the young, and if not followed to excess are most advantageous. The walk in the open air is life to many. But boy or man can never be what they ought to be unless they take exercise regularly and judiciously, take it not to exhaust but to refresh and stimulate. It strengthens the nerve and clears the brain and fits for work.

3. _Rest_.--Man needs a certain amount of repose to sustain his frame in full vigor. Some need more, some need less. We must find out for ourselves what we need and take it. Lack of sleep is especially a great waste of vitality. Here also we must exercise our judgment as to the amount of sleep we require. One needs a great deal; another can do with very little. Early rising, which has been much recommended, is only good for those who go early to bed. If one is compelled to sit up late he should sleep late in the morning. It is no virtue on the part of anyone to get up early unless he has slept enough. _That_ he must do if he is to have health. A man who would be a good worker must see to it that he is a good sleeper; and whoever, from any cause, is regularly diminishing his sleep is destroying his life. Shakespeare has well described the blessing of sleep when he says:

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast.

These are but _hints_ in connection with a great subject. A few brief rules may be given of a general character:

1. Take exercise every day in the open air if possible, and make it a recreation and not merely a duty.

2. Eat wholesome food, drink pure water.

3. Let your house and room be well ventilated.