18 
NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
MEMORIAL DAY SERMON 
(Continued from Page 17) 
ble. It was generally believed that the 
North would not fight. Many thought 
thev had lost their power of resis- 
tance and their sense of heroism. 
But the grand opportunity came to 
prove this idea false. After Sumpter 
and Bull Run, never was there a 
grander rallying to the defense of 
liberty and union and the things good 
men hold dear. ‘The opportunity did 
not create the heroes, it simply de- 
veloped the latent possibilities of hero- 
ism in them. ‘The Great Captain of 
our Salvation found His opportunity 
and He was equal to all its immensi- 
ty. When the fulness of time was 
come He came. When the world had 
become weary of its idolatries and 
superstitions; when it despaired of 
reaching the golden age it had long 
but vainly sought, when the hollow- 
ness and mockery of its possessions 
and pleasures had become evident and 
had left the mind in weariness and 
disgust even when society had sunk- 
en to its worst estate because no long- 
er sustained by these props—then was 
the great opportunity, and then He 
came. And never was measureless 
opportunity so fully and nobly met. 
And this conviction is becoming 
stronger and more wide spread, the 
more His character is understood. 
The harsh element of heroism 1s 
courage; that quality of mind and 
heart which makes one daring and 
intrepid in the midst of danger and 
difficulty. Men may rush into dan- 
ger heedlessly, scarcely knowing it is 
danger. ‘That is not courage. One 
may go into danger needlessly, osten- 
tatiously; that is not true courage. 
3ut when one fully realizes the dan- 
ger and the difficulty before him and 
yet from a high sense of duty pushes 
himself into the teeth of danger; yea 
into the very jaws of death, that is 
courage. That courage our soldiers 
and sailors exhibited on a thousand 
battle fields and on rivers and sea. 
When on that chill December day 
in 1862, the Union troops were order- 
ed to attack Mary’s Height at Fred- 
ricsburg, not a man of all that mighty 
host but knew it was practically im- 
possible to force back that other host 
in gray that lay along the ridge there 
so mightily intrenched. But when sol- 
dierly duty required it, they steadily 
and calmly marched up those heights, 
again and again in the teeth of an 
awful shower of lead and iron; and 
that was courage. Scarcely has the 
world ever seen a more wonderful ex- 
hibition of martial courage. Tenny- 
son has immortalized the charge of the 
Light Brigade. But here were no 
600 impetuous horsemen but thous- 
ands of infantry who moved steadily 
forward into that awful fire with no 
thought of turning back until halted 
by a bullet or an order. 
The same sublime courage shone 
forth on a hundred other fields. 
Men admire true courage. It is a 
most prominent trait of manliness. 
And never was there such an exhibi- 
tion of true courage as is seen in the 
life and work of Jesus Christ. Think 
of the mighty task He undertook to 
perform, to redeem men, to break the 
chains of sin and Satan from their 
souls. Think of the vast and mighty 
opposition He encountered, an oppo- 
sition of the leaders and chief men, 
of the people at large, and times even 
of His own friends and household. 
He stood alone in facing the opposi- 
tion of the world, the flesh and the 
devil. In the temptations of the wild- 
erness in face of the howling mob at 
Nazareth or Jerusalem, in the dark 
hours of Gethsemane, in the loneliness 
of being deserted by those specially 
chosen to be with Him, when the very 
heavens above were clouded by the 
blackness of darkness He held calmly 
on His way up the thorny path which 
He knew would only end_ in cruel 
death. There is a sublime courage in 
all this which has been too little rec- 
ognized but which is worthy of our 
loving admiration and imitation. Em- 
erson’s hero is the man ‘“‘who taking 
both reputation and life in his hand 
will with perfect urbanity dare the 
gibbet and the mob by the absolute 
truth of his speech and the rectitude 
of his behavior.” Christ is this hero. 
Without anger or bravado, without 
haste and without rest, in sunshine 
and blackest midnight, steadily He 
bore the white sceptre of God’s truth 
for the salvation of men up from 
Bethlehem’s cradle to Calvary’s cross. 
That was courage. But another ele- 
ment of heroism is patient endurance 
of trial and suffering. Self-restraint 
under the most trying circumstances. 
During the war, there were the long 
and tiresomema rches, the weary night 
vigils, the defeats and disappointments, 
the dreaded hospital, the wasting dis- 
ease, the rankling wounds, the awful 
but unfilled longing for home and loy- 
ed ones, the enforced idleness, the re- 
straint and untold suffering in the 
Southern prison pen. But the patient 
endurance with which these burdens 
were borne forms a bright chapter in 
the history of our country. These 
men could say “We can starve but 
we will never lift a finger against our 
government.” Who ever endured such 
sufferings as Jesus Christ, without 
murmur and without complaint. Sure- 
ly His was the patient endurance 
which marks the highest type of mor- 
al hero. But quiet endurance may 
arise from a feeling of despair. ‘To 
be an element of heroism it must be 
inspired by the calmness of hope. 
Whatever the true hero suffers of trial 
and defeat, hope still fills his breast. 
General Grant believed our cause 
would triumph and that faith gave 
him the steadfastness and cheerful- 
ness of hope. He knew no defeat but 
in the calmness of hope he pushes on 
until victory crowned our arms. 
In this too, Jesus was the greatest 
of all heroes. He never became sour, 
morose, or despairing under the bur- 
den which would have crushed any 
mere man. He was the perfect em- 
bodiment of Isaiah’s prophecy; “‘He 
shall not fail nor be discouraged, until 
He shall set judgement in the earth.” 
The crowning element of true hero- 
ism is the voluntary devotion of one’s 
self for life or for death to a great 
and worthy cause. Self sacrifice for 
a worthy cause is an essential of hero- 
The true hero counts not his 
life dear unto himself. We have seen 
what heroes in self sacrifice were 
those who freely gave their lives that 
the nation might live. Equally heroic 
are those of you who live, who would 
gladly have given your lives rather 
than that the nation should perish. 
We have also seen the glorious self 
sacrifice of the Great Hero who free- 
ly gave his life for mankind. And 
was not the cause worthy in each case? 
What cause is nobler than that for 
which the Union soldiers fought and 
fell. If ever war was justifiable it 
was then when free men took up arms 
ism. 
to save the best government on earth — 
and to free an enslaved race. 
Back of all the questions of seces- 
sion, state rights and division of terri- 
tory was the crime of human slavery. 
When President Lincoln, promised 
himself and God that if Lee was turn- 
ed back from Maryland on his first in- 
vasion he would issue the proclama- 
tion of Emancipation, then the blood- 
ly field of Antietam was won. The 
first real victory for the Army of the 
Potamac. Union and freedom! The 
salvation of a race,, a new career of 
unexampled prosperity and_ peace. 
No intelligent man North or South — 
would now deny that the cause for 
which the Union soldiers fought was 
worthy of all their sacrifices and en- 
deavors. But the object for which 
Christ died was worthier still. He 
came to save men by His life and by 
His death. To lift up all races of 
men out of the slavery and degrada- 
tion of sin into the freedom of God’s 
