III. To keep rank in actual conflict requires old-fashioned valour. The great trouble in the Church to-day is the cowards. They do splendidly on parade-day, but put them out in the great battle of life and they soon break rank. We confront the enemy, we open the battle against fraud, and lo! we find on our side a great many people that do not try to pay their debts. We open the battle against intemperance, and we find on our side a great many men who make hard speeches. Oh! for fifty thousand armed men, heroic men, self-denying men, who can go forth in the strength of the Lord God Almighty to do battle, able to keep rank! Men like Paul, who could say, “None of these things move me. Neither count I my life dear unto myself, so I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify of the gospel of the grace of God.” Men like John Bunyan, who, after lying years in a loathsome prison, said, “I am determined, God being my helper and shield, to stay here until the moss grows over my eyebrows, rather than surrender my faith and my principles.” Men like Thomas Chalmers, who, notwithstanding all the jeering in high places at his theory of reform and elevation of the poor, went right on to dohis whole work, until Thomas Carlyle, then a boy, wrote of him: “What a glorious old man Thomas Chalmers is!” (T. De Witt Talmage.)
