There is a *moral courage* required in pursuing our legitimate course in life, or in discharging our manifest duty, notwithstanding straitnesses, hindrances, obstacles, to which the feeble and timid could not but yield. The constituent elements of this type of courage are precisely the same that are needed in the encounter with physical peril. In both cases it is equally unmanly to succumb until we have resisted to the utmost. But while physical courage can at best only insure our safety, moral courage contributes essentially to the growth of mind and character; and the larger the opportunity for its exercise, the greater will be the mass of mind, the quantity of character, the power of duty and of usefulness. Straitnesses develop richer resources than they bar. Hindrances nurture hardihood of spirit in the struggle against them, or in the effort to neutralize them. Obstacles, when surmounted, give one a higher position than could be attained on an unobstructed path. The school of difficulty is that in which we have our most efficient training for eminence, whether of capacity or of moral excellence. What are accounted inevitable evils are, when met with courage, only benefits and blessings, inasmuch as they bring into full and vigorous exercise the hardier muscles and sinews of the inner man, to measure strength with them or to rise above them. Courage is needed in *the profession and maintenance of the true and the right*, when denied, assailed, or vilipended. Communities never move abreast in the progress of opinion. There are always pioneer minds and consciences; and the men who are in advance of their time must encounter obloquy at least, often persecution, loss, hardship, sometimes legal penalties and disabilities. Under such circumstances, there are doubtless many more that inwardly acknowledge the unpopular truth or the contested right, than there are who are willing to avow and defend their belief. Many are frightened into false utterance or deceptive silence. But there must be in such minds a conscious mendacity, fatal to their own self-respect, and in the highest degree detrimental to their moral selfhood. It demands and at the same time nurtures true greatness of soul to withstand the current of general opinion, to defy popular prejudice, to make one’s self “of no reputation” in order to preserve his integrity unimpaired. Therefore is it that, in the lapse of time, the very men who have been held in the lowest esteem rise into eminence in the general regard, sometimes while they are still living, oftener with a succeeding generation. Martyrs in their day, they receive the crown of martyrdom when the work which they commenced is consummated. The history of all the great reforms which have been successive eras in the moral progress of Christendom is full of names, once dishonored, now among the foremost of their race.