"
Where fear sees nothing but the black clouds that threaten coming
storms, hope looks through them to the bow of promise. Hope is the
internal principle of true courage. St. Paul, in his beautiful
description of charity, tells us that it "hopeth all things"; and we may
easily perceive how it must be so, for the external form of charity
is love to the neighbor, which leads us to hope all things for our
fellow-beings; while its internal form, which is love to God, must lead
us to hope all things for ourselves. The devils believe and tremble
because they hate God; the devout believe and hope because they love
him.
Let us consider courage specially in its four principal
relations,--physical, intellectual, moral, and religious.
Physical courage,--the courage of practical life,--though it seems the
lowest form of this virtue, is perhaps quite as rare as either of the
others. There is abundance of fool-hardiness, of brutal rashness,
indifferent to all consequences, in the World; but very little of that
calm, self-possessed courage that leaves to one the full use of his
faculties in the midst of danger, and allows him to act wisely, even
when meeting death face to face. The only sure foundation for this form
of courage is unshrinking trust in the overruling power of God,--a trust
that shall make us feel his providence ever clasping its arms about us
in all the circumstances of life, causing us ever to bear in mind, that
he who watches the fall of the sparrow cannot permit us to perish or to
suffer by chance.
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