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-glasses, 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-glass goes also. They are like the sand on the seashore--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 noble 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.