Real Courage by Percy C. Ainsworth

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jun 7, 1910

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 37, No. 22.

Real Courage

By Percy C. Ainsworth

THERE is a picture of a man living out his life fully and bravely in spite of a terrible handicap in the form of an incurable disease, which must, year after year, gain a stronger hold on his body, and eventually end his life. . . .

How do we face this side of things? Naaman faced it with courage. And it was courage of no mean order. It was not born of hope. We say sometimes, “While there is life there is hope.” But that was not true in the case of the leper. He saw the long years of suffering, and knew, humanly speaking, that the way would only get harder the farther he went. Part of the work of life for him was to carry one of the heaviest burdens that a man ever has to carry—the burden of a dead hope. He could not say with regard to his disease, “While there is life there is hope;” but he found a better and a nobler thing to say, “While there is life there is duty.” There is no braver story in history than the story of those who have had to stoop and lift and bear the hope that might have lifted and borne them, if only both its wings had not been broken. Some of the world’s leaders and deliverers and helpers have been men who have had courage to look beyond the thing that could not be, and who have known that the only way to overcome some things is to accept them—the only way to conquer them is to bear them. The faith to remove mountains is not a complete equipment for life. We need also the courage and strength to climb them.—Percy C. Ainsworth.