Moral Courage | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 11, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 43.

Moral Courage.

No AGE ever demanded greater moral courage than does the present. Lawlessness lurks everywhere. Indifference to God's law and to the highest good, poisons every breeze. The miasma of disobedience, under the guise of non-essentialism, pervades every popular theory. Men want easy theories, and freedom in practice. "Puritanism" is scoffed at because it was rigid, exacting, uncompromising. Moral heroism is sadly needed.

An equally important truth must be recognized, viz., moral courage can be produced from nothing less than loyalty to God, his word, his law. Emotion may strengthen moral courage, but it cannot produce it. Creeds may deliver formulas concerning it, but they cannot give birth to it. It grows in no soil except the word of the Lord—Maker of heaven and earth. Doubt concerning that word destroys it. Quibbling, accommodative interpretation, loose exegesis, are all destructive of moral courage. Marble and granite are developed only under the pressure from above and the heat beneath. By a similar law, the pressure of obligation, arising from the grip of God's law, and the heat of obedient love, are needful to bring out moral courage in men. Longing and praying will not bring moral courage as a gift ready-made from God. It is one of the treasures which even the Almighty cannot give to men "ready-made." He who seeks moral courage, must seek it through obedience to all which God has commanded. He must do this by the one straight road which accepts God's word and stops then. When God says, "The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God;" keep it holy; no man can develop moral courage to battle with Sabbathlessness by answering: "That old fourth commandment don't mean what it says; the seventh day is not the Sabbath, the first day has taken its place; of course you can change the count and call it seventh if you want to, but it is the first, nevertheless." This is what men do say in fact, and then bemoan the state of things, and the abounding lack of moral courage. They virtually disobey God and then pray for moral courage. It is all useless; such a course will beget moral cowardice in spite of God himself.—Light of Home.