.
The uniforms were old and faded from sun and rain. Only gun-barrel
and bayonet were bright. And the men were scarred and tired and
foot-sore, haggard from hard fighting and long, swift marches. For
these men had been trained to be hurried back and forth behind the
long line of battle, that they might be hurled into it wherever the
need was greatest. I do not suppose that one of them could have
delivered a fourth-of-July oration on Patriotism. They were trained
not to talk, but to obey orders. But they had stood in the "bloody
angle" at Spottsylvania all day and all night; and in the gray dawn
of the next morning, when strength and courage are always at ebb,
faint and exhausted, their last cartridge shot away, had sprung
forward at the command of their colonel to make a last desperate,
forlorn defence with the bayonet against the advancing enemy.
Numbers do not count against men like these. What made them such
invincible heroes? It was mainly the resolute will and long training
to obey orders. A Christian should never forget that he is a soldier
in the army of the Lord of Hosts; that enlistment is easy and
quickly accomplished; but that the training is long, and that he
must learn, above all, to "endure hardness."

And so, my brothers, I beg of you to preach a heroic Christianity,
for if there ever was a heroic religion it is ours. If you offer
merely free transportation to a future heaven of delight on "flowery
beds of ease," you will enlist only the coward and the sluggard. But
everyone who has a drop of strong old Norse blood in his veins will
prefer a heathen Valhalla, though builded in hell, to such a heaven.
And his Norse instincts will be nearer truth than your counterfeit
of a debased Christianity. But preach the city of God's
righteousness on earth and now among men, and call on every heroic
soul to take sides with God against sin within himself and the evil
and misery all around him. There is an almost infinite amount of
strength, endurance, and heroism in this "slow-witted but
long-winded" human race waiting to leap up at the appeal to fight
once more and win a victory after repeated defeats before the sun
goes down. Appeal to this and point to the great "captain of our
salvation made perfect through sufferings," and every man that is of
the truth will hear in your voice the call of the Master and King.
You will not be disappointed, but among the publicans and fishermen
of America you will find heroic soul