IF there is one thing more than another which calls forth the admiration of all men, it is the calm courage which bravely faces danger and difficulty and endures without murmuring the buffetings of adverse fate. Without characters of this type, the pages of history would be barren of any real interest to the one who desires inspiration for true living, and the wonder is that so few of those who are thrilled in the records of others' heroism are themselves willing to take the steps which lead to a place among the immortals. Certain it is that no one can ever reach it who is swayed by egotism or personal ambition. The one who is thus moved may indeed start out to do great things, but ere the goal is reached he is likely to perish from self-pity or turn ignominiously back to join the common herd of those who would rather enjoy themselves than dare and do.
No nation could have a history worth writing if it had not had men who strove against heavy odds for the good of the nation, whether they were called Christians or pagans, men whose greatness consisted in the willingness to give themselves without reserve to a cause which they held to be holy. In loftiest strain a great poet contrasts the dead kings of Egypt, sleeping in a "nameless pyramid," with the noble Greeks whose selfless deeds immortalized "the mountains of their native land," where the muse of history points to "the graves of those that cannot die."
It is, however, to the pages of Holy Writ that we turn for the records of heroism which most readily relate themselves to our own possible achievements, and as we do this we find ourselves "compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses" to man's divine possibilities that we are, for the moment at least, ready to "lay aside every weight" which would impede our progress on the march toward universal freedom. As we ponder the career of Moses, the great Hebrew leader, we have a picture of one who turned his back on luxury and learning, with the possibility of a throne, that he might find, in knowing Spirit and spiritual law, the true way to establish righteousness on the earth. Of him Christ Jesus said, "Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote of me." His vision of the Christ enabled him to endure bravely till the veil of sense was taken away, and immortal being at last unfolded in the demonstrations of Christ Jesus for the people whom he led and loved. At a later day, Paul, the intrepid follower of Christ Jesus, gave to the world, in his own splendid heroism, an inspiration which might last to earth's latest hour, it would seem. Here is part of the story of his human endurance: "Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; ... in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness." There is however no trace of self-pity in Paul's comment upon these experiences; rather does he say that he glories in them because of his triumph over the flesh.
