The history of our private life is little else than the recital of our wrestlings with satan and sin, the chronicle of our victories and our defeats in battling with the world, the flesh and the deviL Now, when a soldier goes to battle he needs weapons, it is true, but he needs courage more. And just so it is with us. In struggling against the forces that make for our eternal destruction, we have great need of courage, and therefore the exhortation of the Royal Psalmist: "Let thy heart take courage" (Ps. xxvi, 14).

Courage is a quality of virtue that we admire by instinct. We need no teacher to tell us that it is an excellent thing to be brave. The lack of courage is recognized as a defect in our character. If in our own hearts we find the want of it, we are not only sorry but secretly ashamed. We try to conceal it, cover it up, and even hide it from ourselves, for there is nothing we are so reluctant to admit as cowardice. Courage is an honorable virtue. Men have always loved and praised it. It lends glory and splendor to the life in which it dwells. The literature of courage has always been immensely popular, and the history of the brave is written in letters of gold. In the strange and lurid annals of war we love to read of deeds of self-forgetful daring which stand forth prominently amid the din and smoke of the battlefield.

We love to read of those angels of the battlefield, the Sisters of Charity, who bid defiance to shot and shell to minister to the wants of the wounded and dying. Truly, a war is a dark, black cloud hovering over the land, but if that cloud has a silver lining, it is the courageous charity and the charitable courage of those noble women. We love to read of the courageous mother who was brave enough to resist the cravings of maternal love in order to be true to her God. We find in the acts of the Martyrs that a Christian woman was brought forth to be burned alive. Her little boy of five years was at her side. When fire was put to the stake, the boy was held before her to increase her torture. The flames mounted and burned her body, but amid the sufferings and cries she called out to her boy: "My child, love only the good God. He will bring thee to thy mother." The little one cried out: "I love only the good God," and, breaking away from the soldiers, he ran up to his mother, and, with her, he went through flames to his God.

We love to read of, to hear of, and to see examples of true courage in all parts of the Christian world; men and women leaving the happiness of home and loved ones to labor and suffer and die for the bodily and spiritual welfare of their fellow-beings, the young, the old, the poor, the orphan, the sick, the afflicted, the dying and the dead. We love to see the courage of a son or daughter who will make any and every sacrifice to lighten the cares of an aged father or mother; or toil, day in and day out, to care for some orphaned brother or sister. Their cross is heavy at times, but the Cyrenean that helps them to bear it is the courage that fills their generous souls.

We love to think of a courageous soul whose devotion to duty leads him to sacrifice his very life. Father Capella was laboring zealously in the environs of Paris, where he was taken very sick. One day, as he lay on his couch, hovering between life and death, a friend came to see him. In the course of the conversation the visitor mentioned an unfortunate man who was on the point of death, but had refused to call for the priest of God.

On hearing this Father Capella stretched out his arms and said to those in attendance: "Bring me to him, I beg of you." "Oh no, Father," they said, "it would mean your death." But he insisted, and, finally yielding to his entreaties, they brought him to the sick man. "My dear man," said he, "both you and I are at death's door. Are we going to be separated beyond the grave? For love of your immortal soul be reconciled to your God." The sinner was completely overpowered. The sight of such heroism on the part of this dying priest wrought a wonderful change in him, and he confessed his sins with sincere repentance. Father Capella was taken home and died.

Courage is an honorable, a noble virtue, but at the same time it is a very serviceable one. There is hardly any place in which it cannot be practised to advantage. Genius is talent set on fire by courage. Fidelity is simply daring to be true in small things as well as in great. As many as are the conflicts and perils and hardships of life, so many are the uses and forms of courage. It is necessary as the protector and defender of the other virtues. It is the standing army of the soul. Unless we are brave we can hardly be truthful or generous or just or pure or kind or loyal. Meekness does not spell weakness; meekness means strength; it betokens the courage we have to repress the promptings of wounded feeling, and present a calm, unruffled exterior when perhaps a storm is raging within. Humility is not weakness; humility is strength . . . . . . . . . and the degree of humility we possess is the measure of courage we have to crush our inmate pride. Purity is not weakness; purity is strength and a virtue that often gives evidence of courage truly heroic--a courage that must battle against forces from within and without; a courage that must never grow daunted, for the fight goes continually on, and every enemy overcome seems like the dragon in the fable--where one head was cut off seven others sprang up in its place.

True piety is not weakness; true piety is strength, and it requires a never-failing source of courage to be faithful to one's practices of piety, for human nature hates to be prodded all the time, and there are times when it will kick against the goad. In one word constant, unswerving fidelity to the duties of our state of life presupposes no ordinary share of moral courage. It takes courage to rise promptly in the morning; it takes courage at times to pray. It takes courage to assist at Mass when we are not obliged to do so, and even at times when we are. It takes courage to go frequently to Confession and Communion as we are often exhorted to do. It takes courage to suppress a harsh word and to utter a kind one instead. It takes courage to forgive an injury and not to repay in kind. It takes courage to frown on an unsavory conversation and run the risk of being considered a prude. It takes courage to turn our curious eyes away from what may endanger our soul. It takes courage to follow the call of God to embrace a life of greater perfection. It takes courage to do what God commands and avoid what God forbids, for all the evil effects of sin were not removed when the sin was washed away. It takes courage, in a word, to live as God would have us live, and, above all things else, it takes courage to die.

Let us now try to understand the difference between courage and some of the things that are often mistaken for it. First of all, there is a sharp distinction between courage and recklessness. The reckless person is an ignorant person; he rushes into danger without knowing what danger is. The brave man is intelligent. He faces danger because he understands it and is prepared to meet it. The drunkard who, in a delirium of intoxication, runs into a burning house is not brave; he is only stupid. But the clear-eyed hero who makes his way with every sense alert and every nerve strung, into the flames to rescue some little child certainly proves his courage.

The more we are awake to the perils of life the grander is our possibility of being truly brave. To drift along, as some people do, through the world of sin as if there were nothing in it to fear; to eat and sleep and be merry under the arch of heaven and as if there were no One above it to dread--what is that but to play the part of the fool who said in his heart: "There is no God," there is no sin, there is no judgment. But to be alive to the dangers of sin that surround us on every side; to be aware of the consequence of defeat in the battle of life; to know that we ourselves are writing the sentence that shall decide our eternal destiny--to realize all this, I say, and still to be up and astir, doing battle in the noble cause, rallying around the standard of the cross, with unbounded confidence in our Leader, Jesus Christ, that is courage. To plunge heedlessly into the rapids is not courage but recklessness, for you will be carried down over the falls. To plunge into the rapids of sin, the danger or the occasion that leads inevitably to sin, is not courage, though you may boast of your ability to escape from the danger before it is too late.

There is another distinction between courage and insensibility. Some natures are so constituted that they do not feel pain very keenly. Their nerves are sluggish and deeply hidden. This may be an advantage or a disadvantage, for if they escape some possibilities of suffering they must also lose many possibilities of enjoyment. To persons of this temperament fear is comparatively a stranger. They can move along with indifference in situations where a more sensitive nature would be profoundly agitated. But we must not suppose that this insensibility makes them brave. It simply exempts them in some measure from the necessity of courage.

The bravest soul is that which feels the tremor and resists it, shrinks from the flame and faces it. Never was there a better soldier than the old French marshal, Montluc, who said he had often gone into battle shaking with fear and had recovered courage only after saying a prayer. A pale face, a trembling hand, yes, even a heart that stands still with dread may belong to a hero who is brave enough to carry them in the midst of conflict, without faltering or failing, straight on to victory or death. Courage does not consist in the absence of fear but in the conquest of it.

Take it in little things. Here is a great, dull, heavy dray-horse. What is it for him to move stolidly on through noises which do not alarm him and pass strange objects which he does not notice? But when the high-mettled, keen-sensed thoroughbred goes through the same tumult and past the same objects with every nerve and muscle quivering, that is courage. It requires no great effort for a traveller inured to hardships and trained to steadiness to guide his frail canoe through the foaming rapids. But for a person by nature sensitive and timid, to sit quiet and silent in the boat not because he has no fear but because he will not yield to it--that is brave; that is courage.

The same thing is true in moral trials. There are some people to whom reproach and ridicule and condemnation mean little. They simply do not care. But there are others to whom an unkind word is like a blow, and the sneer like a sword thrust, while the breath of contempt has the heat of flames. And when they endure these things and will not be driven by them from the path of duty, they are truly courageous.

There is one more distinction that needs to be drawn--the distinction between courage and daring. The distinction is not one in kind but in degree. For daring is only a rare and exceptional kind of courage. It is for great occasions: the battle, the shipwreck or the conflagration. But courage in the broader sense is an every-day virtue. It includes the possibility of daring if it is called for. But from hour to hour, in the long, steady run of life, courage manifests itself in quieter, humbler forms--in patience under little trials, in perseverance in distasteful labors, in endurance of suffering, in resisting continual and familiar temptations, in hope and cheerfulness and activity and fidelity and truthfulness and kindness, and those homely virtues that may find a place in the narrowest and most uneventful life. There is no duty so small, no trial so slight that it does not afford room for true and genuine courage.

And now how are we to obtain it? What is it that really strengthens the heart and makes it brave? There are many things we might consider, but which we must pass over with a mere mention. For example, a simple and wholesome life, plain food and vigorous exercise are conducive to physical and moral courage. A steady regard for high moral principles; a healthful course of reading; friendship with brave and true and single-minded; a habit of self-forgetfulness and consecration to duty--all these are very good. Bishop Spalding says: "What we steadfastly desire to be that we become." And this seems quite true. The more, earnestly we consider the beauty and utility and perhaps the necessity of some trait of character, the more ardent our desire becomes to acquire it. And an ardent, insatiable desire will always find means to attain its object.

The practice of self-denial is an excellent means of acquiring moral courage. For the most part our courage in life will be employed in resisting and overcoming our spiritual enemies, but the worst of these enemies are we ourselves. Unless we are schooled in the practice of self-denial our courage will be wanting when it is needed most. "The day spent without self-denial," says St. Alphonsus, "is a day lost."

Again, the frequent consideration of models of courage will stimulate our desire to imitate them. Hence the great benefit to be derived from the perusal of the lives of the saints, the noblest heroes and heroines the world has ever seen.

But the fount and source of all true courage is the heart of our Lord and God. Our beloved Saviour's life was preeminently a life of courage. For it required no ordinary courage to be born as He was born, to live as He lived, and above all, to die as He died, abandoned as it seemed by God and man. His life was a life of courage from the cradle to the grave, and He calls out to each and every one of us in accents well suited to enliven and reanimate our drooping spirit: "I have given you an example, that as I have done so you do also" (John xiii, 15). Say often what the apostle said when he felt he must be brave: "I can do all things in Him who strengthened me" (Phil, iv, 13). And never grow weary of asking your Lord for a noble and generous heart--a heart like that of the Blessed Mother--the bravest of all brave women--that mother that followed in the blood-stained footsteps of her Beloved Son and mingled her tears with the drops of His sacred blood as it trickled down from the cross.