The scoffer and the infidel make great
boasts of their progress through their independence of Scripture; but in
a little while a devout man follows in their footsteps and proves that
their deductions are false, and that even their observations of facts
were not to be trusted. Scoffers and infidels come, promising to set the
world in order by subverting governments; but though they are quick
to pull down, they have no power to build up; and it is only when the
devout man comes, that the reign of anarchy and misrule ceases.
Common, daily life is the epitome of history. The devout man is the only
one whose opinions are trustworthy; and just so far as we become truly
devout will the scales that hinder us from seeing the truth fall from
our eyes. "If the eye be single," looking to the Lord alone, unbiassed
in its gaze by the thousand-fold passions of earth, "the whole body
shall be full of light."
Moral courage, the third phase of this virtue, is that faculty of the
soul by which we are enabled to act, in all the social relations of
life, with perfect independence of the opinions of the world, and
governed only by the laws of abstract propriety, uprightness, and
charity. It gives us power to say and to do whatever we conscienciously
believe to be right and true, without being influenced by the fear of
man's frown or the hope of his favor. This is very difficult, because
the customs and conventionalisms of society hedge us about so closely
from our very infancy, that they constrain us when we are unconscious of
it, and lead us to act and to refrain in a way which our better judgment
would forbid, did we consult its indications without being influenced by
the world.
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