s not merely a passive, but equally *an active virtue*.
Inevitable events impose imperative duties. In the direction which they
indicate there is work for us, of self-culture, of kindness, of charity.
Our characters can be developed, not by yielding, however cheerfully, to
what seem misfortunes, but by availing ourselves of the opportunities
which they present, in place of those of which they have deprived us. When
the way we had first chosen is barred against us, we are not to lie still,
but to move onward with added diligence on the way that is thus opened to
us. If outward success is arrested and reverted, there is only the more
reason for improving the staple of our inward being. If those dearest to
us have passed beyond the reach of our good offices, there are the more
remote that may be brought near, and made ours, by our beneficence. If our
earthly life is rendered desolate, the affections, hopes, and aims thus
unearthed may by our spiritual industry and thrift be trained heavenward.
All this is included in full submission to the will of the Divine
providence; for that will is not our loss, disappointment, or suffering,
but our growth, by means of it, in quantity of mental and spiritual life,
in capacity of duty, and in the power of usefulness.

Section III.

Courage.

Patience, as its name imports, is a passive quality; Submission blends the
passive and the active; while *Courage* is preeminently an active virtue.
Patience resigns itself to what must be endured; submission conforms
itself to what it gladly would, but cannot reverse; courage resists what
it cannot evade, surmounts what it cannot remove, and declines no conflict
in which it is honorable to engage. It is obvious that the occasions for
these virtues are widely different. Patience has its place where calm and
cheerful endurance is the only resource; submission, where there must be
voluntary self-adaptation to altered circumstances; courage, where there
is threatened evil which strenuous effort can avert, mitigate, or subdue.

*Courage is a virtue, only when it is a necessity.* There is no merit in
seeking danger, in exciting opposition, in courting hostility. Indeed,
conduct of this description more frequently proceeds from persons who know
themselves cowards and fear to be thought so, than from those who are
actually possessed of courage. But there are perils, encounters, enmities,
which cannot by any possi