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Courage is the calm, determined pursuit of the right, notwithstanding the nature of the road, ignoring the world's flattery, despising the world's menace, disparaging the transient garland and the transient crown. Courage is simply the disposition to go right on, irrespective of the world's swords or of the world's crowns. "Be of good courage." Where shall it be exercised? Sometimes in silence. I think if we could make comparisons between one aspect of the Master's life and another, if everything in the Master's life was not superlative; if we could put some things in the positive and some in the comparative and make comparisons; and if I were to be asked to put my finger on the one place in the Master's life where the courage of the Lord shone out the most resplendently, I should put my finger on the word where it says, "And He answered him nothing." It is superlative valour. The valour of silence, when to speak might mean gain. The courage to keep a close lip, the courage to restrain a laugh when somebody has made a filthy jest. The courage to present a perfectly passive face when conversation is becoming unfair; the courage to withhold applause when applause would simply add fury to an unclean fire. That is the courage that our Master seeks — the courage sometimes to withhold the laugh. There is many a young fellow would restrain for ever from an unclean, filthy jest if he were left in the shivering experience of a quiet and passive reception. Courage in silence; courage sometimes by speech. I think nothing shows out more radiantly and more conspicuously the valour of the Apostle Paul than that experience which he describes for us in the Epistle to the Galatians, where he tells us that when he encountered Simon Peter who was destined to be a pillar of the Church, a living light in the metropolitan church, and who had gone down to Antioch, and who had played and trifled with the truth, who had worn one coat one day and another on another day, "I withstood him to the face." A thing like that is not to be received in silence. "I withstood him to the face," warned him, rebuked him, to his face. Now, suppose you could get a radiant, confident, optimistic courage, a disposition that would keep its lips still and closed when it might appear as though to open them would be immediate gain, and that would speak though speech should wreck a possible career, that would go right on disregarding on the one hand a menace, or, on the other hand, a smile — suppose you could get a disposition like that implanted into the personality of men, suppose it had become part of my constitution, part of my make up — pure, clean, clear courage, what would be the influence of it? First of all, the influence of it on myself. Would it have made any influence upon my body? I want to say that it would; I want to proclaim — and I think it is a note that is not sufficiently proclaimed, and emphatically proclaimed — that Virtue makes for physical health. I would say to any athlete here, "You would become a finer athlete if you were a finer man. Virtue ministers to health rather than vice, and courage will send your blood in a glow around your body rather than cowardice, when you are beset by the hostility of the world." It will influence the body, it will still more influence the mind. Would it influence the soul? I use the word "soul" there to describe the highest part of man's personality, the power which lays hold of and apprehends and appreciates and appropriates God. Would it affect that? There is a fine suggestive sentence in one of Emerson's essays which will serve my purpose to quote it now, "God never gives visions to cowards." Why does not God give visions to cowards? Because, my brethren, He cannot. Cowards close the doors, shut out the Divine. The light cannot enter the spirit, cannot find access when a man is timid and cowardly; all the entrances in his life are blocked. But if a man is valorous and courageous, having his eyes set on the truth and the pursuit of it, a man is porous, porous to everything that is Divine. The Divine can simply soak into him. If a man of a valorous spirit takes up a book to read, as he reads through the book all that is lovely in the book steeps into him; he is porous towards the lovely and the true. If he goes into a picture gallery, all that is wonderful and beautiful and spiritually suggestive about the pictures soaks into him; he is porous towards the lovely. God cannot give these things to cowards, because they are closed, they are nonporous. It was when Peter had become bold we are told that he had visions; it was after he had become great that he began to have visions of the ineffable glory, and when a man has set his eye upon the truth in the resolute, determined pursuit of it, then I say he is open in every door of his spirit to the entrance of the ministry of the Spirit of God, he becomes the tabernacle of the Almighty. That is how it would influence myself; how would it influence my neighbour? I am afraid we talk a good deal about the contagion of vice — I do not think too much — but I do not think we talk half enough about the contagion of virtue. We talk a great deal about the leaven of hypocrisy, but I do not think we speak half enough about the leaven of sincerity and truth. Everybody knows that one man can impart a vice to another by simply living with him. There is a most subtle contagion which can pass almost through the mystic influence of thought, and still more by the transmission of speech, but there is a wonderful contagion of virtue, and a man in whom the valorous temperament is enthroned, might give spirit and inspiration to a crowd. Napoleon says: "There is a moment in every great war when the bravest troops feel inclined to run; it is the want of confidence in their own courage," and then Napoleon says: "The supreme art of generalship is to know just when that moment will come and to provide for it. At Arcola" — I am quoting the words exactly — "I won the battle with twenty-five horsemen. I anticipated the moment of fright and flight, and I had twenty-five men ready of cool nerve and decision, and just at the appropriate moment I turned the twenty. five into the host, and the battle was won." Twenty-five men who had not lost their nerve brought back confidence to a host who were inclined for fright and flight. The man who was cool for fight brought back the hordes that were ready for flight. Has that no analogy in the realm of the spirit? One brave member of a family may save the whole household from moral perdition; one young fellow in a warehouse may save all his mates from the timidity which means hell; one fine, brave lad in a school who will despise all meanness and set his eyes upon the true and follow it, may gain a whole form for the army of the Lord. How, then, can we get this fine, valorous disposition? "Wait on the Lord" — "Wait, I say, on the Lord." How painfully inadequate. Inadequate! There are some things in the spiritual which any man can prove in a day. There are some things which inevitably and almost immediately result from the life of the spirit which any man can put into momentary and daily proof. Here is one. Suppose that you find you are becoming possessed by the spirit of anger, and that passion is rising within you like an angry flood, and you feel as though you were about to be overcome, and the flood is going to merge in indiscreet and bitter and violent speech. Just then wait on the Lord, and in the name of God Almighty I promise you, with the most consummate assurance, that you will find your anger will there and then begin to subside, until it becomes as calm as a peaceful sea. If you find that you are becoming the victim of lust, "Wait on the Lord," and even while you kneel you shall find that the unholy fire is being put out. If you are possessed by the feeling of envy or of jealousy, and if you are being consumed by the hateful thing, "Wait on the Lord," and I promise you — and I dare you to put it to proof — that while you kneel the envy and the jealousy will pass away from your vision just as the steam passes away from our windows in the cooler light of the dawn. If I come with my spirit of timidity and cowardice into the presence of the Almighty, and say, "Lord, I have a will like a reed, I would like s will like adamant," will nothing result? Will the Lord, who says to the passion, Be still; and who says to the lust, Die out; and who says to the envy, Evaporate, have nothing to say to a timid and cowardly will? "He shall strengthen thine heart." When? Not just then, perhaps. I would like to make that clear if I may. It will be when you need, because perhaps just then, when you kneel, you may not need.

(J. H. Jowett, M. A.)

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KJV: Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.

WEB: Wait for Yahweh. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for Yahweh. By David.