Moral courage comes with spiritual understanding. Nothing but an absolute conviction, based on knowing the truth, can secure the bravery requisite to meet the stings of fear and the threats of impending doom which the carnal mind hurls at those who are making the pilgrimage from sense to Soul. Courage is not a material thing to be judged by material evidence. It cannot be touched or handled. It is invisible to mortal sense. It is a quality of mind, and can be cultivated to sturdy growth by the right mental process, that is, by metaphysical means. Righteousness or right thinking is a virtue which can be acquired by diligent study and persistent practise, and thus the foundation can be laid for that grand and noble expression of manhood in Christ which is called moral courage.
The revelator described the quality which was requisite to make one worthy to open the book of divine Science, as "the Lion of the tribe of Juda," and Mrs. Eddy explains this figure of speech in the following words: "Moral courage is 'the Lion of the tribe of Juda,' the king of the mental realm. Free and fearless it roams in the forest. Undisturbed it lies in the open field, or rests in 'green pastures, . . . beside the still waters'" (Science and Health, p. 514). There is a brave beauty about these words. When we stop for a moment to consider the tests which Mrs. Eddy successfully surmounted in her lifework, the dangers she faced unflinchingly, the mistaken enmity she encountered in her work of helping and healing, we feel that she proved her right to speak concerning the nature of courage "as one having authority." It is not necessary to dwell particularly upon the various phases of evil which tried her moral courage. A perusal of her life experience, as recorded in her own writings or as set forth so admirably in her "Life," by Sibyl Wilbur, will convince any one that the courage which came to her in the hour of need was superhuman and heaven born.
It does not take very profound inquiry into the habits of the human mind to recognize that fear plays a predominant part in all human woe. It prompts the thief, it camps beside the sick-bed, it presages disaster, it hides amid the recesses of unregenerate thought, ready to make mischief and suggest sin. Fear forms the inducement to every disease and every crime, it plays a part in every tragedy enacted on the stage of human existence. Moral courage alone can detect fear and face it down. "The king of the mental realm" drives this mischief-maker from the field of action, discloses its hidingfield in the forest of darkened thought, and secures a covenant of peace and safety for those who once dreaded the pernicious intruder. Then come the "green pastures" and "the still waters," the stretches of Sabbath rest, and the hours safeguarded by the assurance of God's presence, blessed, as the hymn of Harriet Beecher Stowe so well phrases this sentiment, by
