He is faithful among the faithless. He has
allegiance to right that the lure of all the kingdoms of the earth
cannot swerve for a moment. He counts soul so much above the body that
no fiery furnaces, heated seven times hotter than they are wont, sway
him for a moment from adherence to the interests of soul as against
even the existence of the body.
Now, how has such an eminence of character been attained? Not
altogether by individual evolution. Ancestral tendencies, parental
example, the great force of strong, eternal principles, the moral
muscle acquired in the gymnasium of temptation, and confessedly and
especially a spiritual force vouchsafed from without, have wrought out
this greatest result of heaven and earth. Of some men you expect
nothing but goodness and greatness. They would belie all the
tendencies of their blood to be otherwise than good. Some are
constantly trained under the mighty influences of great principles that
sway men as much as gravitation sways the worlds. What could be
expected of the men of '76 when the air was electric with patriotism?
What could be expected of men whose childhood was filled with the
sacrifices of men who made themselves pilgrims and strangers over the
earth, from England to Holland and thence over the drear and
inhospitable sea to America, for the sake of liberty? What could be
expected of men whose whole ancestry was cut off by the slaughter
following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and they themselves
exiled for liberty to worship God? What can be expected of men who
have been tried in the furnace of temptation till they are pure gold?
Nay, more, what can be expected of men who have in these temptations
been strengthened out of God? Besides the strength of development by
the resistance of evil, they have found that God made a way of escape,
that he strengthened, them and that they were thus by supernal power
able to bear it.
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