September 30

Daring to act alone

“Every man . . . shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone” (John 16:32).
“At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me” (2 Tim. 4:16).

There is a cowardice in this age which is not Christian. We shrink from the consequences of truth. We look round and cling dependently. We ask what men will think; what others will say; whether they will stare in astonishment. Perhaps they will, but he who is calculating that, will accomplish nothing in this life. The Father, the Father Who is with us and in us—what does He think? God’s work cannot be done without a spirit of independence. A man has got some way in the Christian life when he has learned to say humbly, and yet majestically, “I dare to be alone.”


The strength that is in a man can only be learnt when he is thrown upon his own resources and left alone. What a man can do in conjunction with others does not test the man. Tell us what he can do alone. It is one thing to defend the truth when you know that your audience are already prepossessed, and that every argument will meet a willing response; and it is another thing to hold the truth when truth must be supported, if at all, alone—met by cold looks and unsympathizing suspicion. It is one thing to rush on to danger with the shouts and sympathy of numbers; it is another thing when the lonely chieftain of the sinking ship sees the last boat-full disengage itself, and folds his arms to go down into the majesty of darkness, crushed, but not subdued.—F. W. Robertson.

Here, who follows Him the nearest,
Needs must walk alone.
—T. P.

AS FOR ME, I am resolved not to follow a multitude to do evil. I will keep to the old faith, and the old way, if I never find a comrade between here and the celestial gates!
—C. H. Spurgeon.

Moral courage is obeying one’s conscience, and doing what one believes to be right in the face of a hostile majority; and moral cowardice is stifling one’s conscience, and doing what is less than right to win other people’s favor.
—Dr. John Watson.

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