Fear engenders weakness. It is a negative state, an element of the belief that there is life in matter. Courage, on the other hand, is conscious strength. It is born of the understanding that Life is God, omnipotent, supreme, and that man is His image and likeness. The fatal effects of fear and the mighty power of true courage are well exemplified in the experiences of the children of Israel in their search for the promised land. It will be remembered that when the Israelites came to the land to which God had led them, twelve rulers, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, were chosen to explore the land and to bring back word to the people as to whether it was good or bad and by what road they must go up to reach it. These chosen delegates were commanded, "And be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the land." The richness and abundance of this fruit is indicated by "a branch with one cluster of grapes," which they carried "between two upon a staff." It is scarcely to be wondered at, then, that the emissaries brought back the report, "We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey." But those who still believed there was life and strength in matter added, "Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great." Though they were forced to admit the richness and abundance of God's fulfilled promise, nevertheless their fear, the outgrowth of the belief of life in matter, became a veritable wall barring them from their God-given heritage.
Caleb and Joshua alone of the twelve that had gone to explore the land were imbued with the courage of conscious spiritual strength, for these two only were willing to take possession of God's promised inheritance. "Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it," Caleb said. "But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we. And they brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched unto the children of Israel, saying, The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof; and all the people that we saw in it are men of a great stature. And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight."
Surely there can be no better illustration of the perverted sense of the human mind than this very propensity to reverse true values, and place its fear or confidence in that where lies no power or strength at all. If these Israelites, with such manifold proofs as they had had of God's governing and controlling power, yet doubted their God-given strength, and saw themselves merely as grasshoppers as compared with those intrenched only in empty materiality, small wonder is it indeed that they wandered so many years in the wilderness of human hopes and fears before finding their true inheritance. To attempt to weigh the divine against the material, when the perverted human sense regulates the scale of value, is always fatal. The Israelites had yet to see a youthful shepherd boy put off the material armor supplied him by the king, because he had not proved it, and armed instead with the tried and invincible armor of God's law go forth with his sling to conquer Goliath of Gath, another giant thought formidable by those placing confidence in material strength and equipment. The Israelites were unable, apparently, to rouse themselves from the wretched mesmerism of material belief. Seeing the promised land of freedom right before them they were yet so overwhelmed with the strength which their belief attached to the big battalions of materialism that they feared to take possession of the inheritance God had given them. Caleb and Joshua again endeavored to rouse the people from their doubts and fears. "The land, which we passed through to search it," they said, "is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into this land, and give it us." But still the people, in their fear, rebelled against Principle, and engaged in the always futile attempt to resist good. They even tried to stone Caleb and Joshua for bearing witness to the truth, but their efforts were frustrated, for the very law of good, obedience to which had given Caleb and Joshua courage to bear witness to good, now protected and sustained them. "And the glory of the Lord appeared in the tabernacle of the congregation before all the children of Israel."
