Him their lives, misunderstood, despised, condemned, spat upon—a stranger even to His mother and His brethren—what a fate was this! And what consummate heroism was needed to meet it unafraid! In the face of such a supreme spectacle of sacrifice as this, how foolish, how unjust to identify the hero, to any degree of exclusiveness with the soldier. The soldier is a hero, without doubt, but greater than he is the hero who bears not arms but a cross, wears not a crown of laurel but a crown of thorns, and dies not on the field of battle but on "the field of the skull." "He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; one from whom men hid their faces; * * * he was oppressed, stricken, smitten of God * * * yet when he was afflicted he opened not his mouth"—of whom such things as this may be truly said, He is the noblest hero of them all. James Russell Lowell has set forth this abiding truth in his Present Crisis:

Such are the types of heroism which I have thought it well to bring to your attention this afternoon. Accepting the soldier as the traditional and not unworthy standard of all heroic types, I have nevertheless tried to show that there are other men who meet all the hazards of suffering and death which he encounters, and yet are denied the aids and comforts which are his. I have contrasted the utter commonplaces of the obscure heroisms of daily life with the pomp and pageantry of martial life. I have contrasted the awful solitude of the men who made new paths and faced unfamiliar perils on prairie, desert and arctic sea, with the cheerful comradeship which hallows the experience of the soldier. And I have contrasted the popular acclaim which is the very breath of the warrior's nostrils with the popular odium and hatred which kill the prophets of the new and better day. Thus have I moved from what I believe to be, from its very nature, the lowest, or "rudest," grade of heroism, to those which I believe to be the higher and finer grades. And it must have long since become evident to you, that every step that I have taken in the progress of my argument has been away from what we may well call the more physical expression of heroic endeavor, to those which are more moral, or spiritual. That the true soldier is possessed of something more than mere brute courage, I would be among the very last, I trust, to deny. But however fine and pure may be the valor of his soul, it still must be admitted, in the last analysis, that the soldier never rids himself of the material accessories and trappings of the world. The flag that greets his eye and the music that beats upon his ear, the personal contact of his fellows upon the march and in the trenches, the medals and monuments that embody a nation's applause and gratitude—all these things, with however high an admixture of spiritual elements, are still fundamentally "of the earth, earthy." And so essential are they to the soldier's life, that we cannot think of that life without them. But how different is the situation when we turn to these other types of heroism of which I have made mention! How do the earthly foundations seem to disappear, and those foundations which are only spiritual take their place! These unknown heroes, whose names and deeds are recorded on the tablets in the Postman's Park—what stirred them to action save the spontaneous promptings of their own hearts? Those "brave settlers," and "brave women" who "cleared fields" and "made homes" in solitary places—Captain Scott who faced death all alone in terrifying storms of the Antarctic—what sustained them but the secret counsel of their inward spirits? And Jesus of Nazareth as he hung upon the cross—upon what did he rely, if not upon God and his own soul? The heroism of the soldier, even at its best, is more or less a fleshy, worldly thing. The heroism of these others is more and more a spiritual unworldly thing, until, at the topmost grade of all, we meet the prophet, the saint, the martyr, who matches his naked soul against the world, and gladly loses the one that he may save the other.

It is when we attain to this viewpoint, that we begin to understand the mistake of ordinary opinion in identifying the hero with the soldier. Especially in this age of waxing militarism, it is well for us to note the fallacy which is involved in this primeval superstition. Heroism, at its truest and best, is spiritual. It is "an obedience," says Emerson, "to a secret impulse of an individual's character." It needs no other stimulus, hides in no gorgeous trappings, craves no companionship in suffering, accepts no rewards of merit or applause. Contemptuous of "external good," it seeks its own counsel and obeys the mandates of its own spirit. Heroism of this kind flourishes in times of war as in all times of terror. But so essentially brutal, hideous, cruel is every circumstance of war, that even the noblest heroism is degraded and defiled by it. It is only when the arms of the flesh are broken and cast aside, and the soul stands naked before its Maker, that heroism becomes transcendant in obscurity, loneliness, persecution; when all things that the world can give have failed and dropped away it reveals itself, like a star at midnight, shining to the glory of Almighty God. Emerson has summed it all up, in his introductory lines to his essay on Heroism—

CHRISTIAN LIFE
by
Elbert Russell

THE QUAKER OF THE FUTURE TIME
by
George A. Walton

THE CHRISTIAN PATRIOT
by
Norman H. Thomas

THE CHRISTIAN DEMAND FOR
SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
by
Harry F. Ward

RELIGION AS REALITY, LIFE AND
POWER
by
Rufus M. Jones

HEROES IN PEACE
by
John Haynes Holmes

HIDDEN FROM THE PRUDENT
by
Paul Jones

William Penn Lectures are published by the Young Friends' Movement. Copies may be obtained from the Headquarters, at the Central Bureau Office, 154 N. 15th Street, or from Walter H. Jenkins, 140 N. 15th Street, Philadelphia, Pa. Paper-bound copies at — cents; in cloth, — cents.

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