In the fourth place, compromise breaks down the strength of rigid consistency, and by letting in one qualification prepares the way for others. That is the reason why it is so much harder for a man to be a moderate drinker than to be a total abstainer. As was said of Samuel Johnson, “He could practice abstinence but not temperance.” When a man has made up his mind that he will never do a thing, it is a great deal easier for him to refuse to do it in any given instance than if he has made up his mind that he will do it moderately, because he never knows when he ceases to be moderate. There is a sharp line between moderate drinking and total abstinence. That boundary line no one can ever mistake, but the boundary line between intemperance and moderation is not located anywhere. There is no definite border between those two countries. As a matter of fact, every man starts in by being a moderate drinker. He never intended to become anything else but a moderate drinker when he began. But there is a boundary line so clear that a blind man can see it between yes and no, between not doing a thing at all and doing that thing only moderately. We believe in the principle of absolutely no compromise in moral habit and principle, and we believe in the same principle in our clear and evangelical convictions regarding the Christian faith. In the fifth place, we ought to shun all such compromise because it undermines our confidence in men, and the solid unity of their coöperative action. We know where truth is, but we never know where calculating compromise may be. In the language of the deaf and dumb this is the sign for truth――a straight line right away from your mouth――for the simple reason that between two points there is only one straight line, but there may be many crooked lines. The truth is always a single thing, but the error,――no man knows what it may be. No compromise makes possible unity of accord by giving people one standard on which they can rely, and by supplying confidence in the stability of men and their convictions. But we cannot follow the compromising man, for as soon as he gets out of our sight we do not know where he will be. It is the man who makes no compromise, who stands fast by truth, that we know we can locate. It was that which gave Stonewall Jackson his huge power as a leader of men in the Civil War. He was a man of the most unflinching Christian convictions. He was one who never moved the breadth of a hair from his loyalty to his Lord or to truth as he saw truth in the presence of his Lord. Colonel Henderson draws for us a rich picture of the great soldier’s character and it is full of genial and kindly touches, but it is faithful also in its account of the man’s rigid and inflexible righteousness.