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What, then, is manliness?

1. First, it is self-respect. I need hardly warn you that self-respect has an analogy to pride, or to the wretched vulgar ape of pride which is self-conceit.

2. And next to self-respect, manliness is resistance. The true man will not bend like a reed to every passing gust of that insolent ignorance which sometimes in the light-headedness of nations arrogates to itself the name of public opinion. He will not swim with the stream either in the Church or in the State, but will strike out against its fiercest waves. He will not spread his sail to the soft breeze of flattery and self-interest, but even when menaced with shipwreck will oppose his constancy and his convictions to the fury of the storm. Resist the temptations to be idle, self indulgent, vicious, and all the more if those around you are so. Resist the prejudices and the littleness of your own profession or school or party; resist the temptations of the impulses of your lower nature; and so far from being weakened by the struggle, the strength and fire of the conquered temptation shall be to you an added element of force, even as the Indian warrior believes that the strength of his vanquished enemy passes into his own right arm. Resist difficulties! Show that you have some iron in you, and are not all of straw! There are many spurious forms of courage, and that which is often most admired is the lowest and poorest, like that of the brutes. The manliest courage is that which rises superior to the fear of man. The manly youth will have a certain disdain and impatience of evil, a certain violence of truthfulness, a certain impetuosity of principle, conquering and combating all that is hollow and base and mean. He will not be at the mercy of a wicked code of a few silly or depraved companions for a few brief years, at the cost of having to reproach himself as a fool all the rest of his life.

3. And again, manliness is self-mastery. It sits self-governed in the fiery prime of youth obedient at the feet of law. And this self-mastery cannot be had without self-sacrifice. Any fool, the weakest, dullest, paltriest that ever was, can make a drunkard or a debauchee. There is no human clay so vile, no sludge and scum of humanity so despicable, but out of it you may make an effeminate corrupter, or lying schemer; but it takes God's own gold to make a man. No lacquer work, no tinsel suffices for the cherubim of the sanctuary. They must be hammered out of pure gold, seven times purified in the fire.

(Archdeacon Farrar.)

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KJV: Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

WEB: Watch! Stand firm in the faith! Be courageous! Be strong!