And worse will come than their not respecting us—­they will learn not to respect God.  If they see that we do not respect truth and honesty, they will not respect truth and honesty; and he who does not respect them, does not respect God.  They will learn to look on religion as a sham.  If we are inconsistent, they will be profane.

But some may say—­’I have no power; and I want none.  I have no people under me for whom I am responsible.’

Then, if you think that you need not be honest and brave for your own sake, or for other peoples’ sake, be honest and brave for God’s sake.

Do you ask what I mean?  I mean this.  Recollect that truth belongs to God.  That if a thing is true, it is true because God made it so, and not otherwise; and therefore, if you deny truth, you fight against God.  If you are honest, and stand up for truth, you stand up for God, and what God has done.

And recollect this, too.  If a thing be right for you to do, God has made it right, and God wills you to do it; and, therefore, if you do not do your duty, you are fighting against God; and if you do your duty, you are a fellow-worker with God, fulfilling God’s will.  Therefore, I say, Be honest and brave for God’s sake.  And in this way, my friends, all may be brave, all may be noble.  Speak the truth, and do your duty, because it is the will of God.  Poor, weak women, people without scholarship, cleverness, power, may live glorious lives, and die glorious deaths, and God’s strength may be made perfect in their weakness.  They may live, did I say?  I may say they have lived, and have died, already, by thousands.  When we read the stories of the old martyrs who, in the heathen persecution, died like heroes rather than deny Christ, and scorned to save themselves by telling what they knew to be a lie, but preferred truth to all that makes life worth having:—­how many of them—­I may say the greater part of them—­were poor creatures enough in the eyes of man, though they were rich enough, noble enough, in the eyes of God who inspired them.  ‘Few rich and few noble,’ as the apostle says, ‘were called.’  It was to poor people, old people, weak women, ill-used and untaught slaves, that God gave grace to defy all the torments which the heathen could heap on them, and to defy the scourge and the rack, the wild beasts and the fire, sooner than foul their lips and their souls by denying Christ, and worshipping the idols which they knew were nothing, and worth nothing.

And so it may be with any of you here; whosoever you may be, however poor, however humble.  Though your opportunities may be small, your station lowly, your knowledge little; though you may be stupid in mind, slow of speech, weakly of body, yet if you but make up your mind to say the thing which is true, and to do the thing which is right, you may be strong with the strength of God, and glorious with the glory of Christ.