We hence see why it is that periods of difficulty, and oppression, and persecution, are favorable to the exhibition of the moral sublime. They test the amount of attachment to principle which there is among men, and the sacrifices which they are willing to make for it. Accordingly, it has been in such emergencies that men have arisen, who, under the inspiration of the great principles of civil and religious liberty, have been ready to go in the face of every danger, wherever their duty should call them; as Luther was determined to go to the diet of Worms, though he should find as many devils in that city as there were tiles upon the houses. These are the men, who, though they have been opposed, and vilified, and persecuted in their day, have yet received the homage of after ages; who have stood as the beacon-lights of the world, and whose names have been the watchword of those who have rallied and struck for the united reign of liberty and law. Such men have almost always been in advance of their age, and the people of that age have not comprehended them. They have reverenced the great men of former times; they have built the sepulchres of the prophets, but have persecuted those who were sent unto _them_. It is not therefore surprising that Seneca has spoken so largely of the benefits of adversity, as alone giving an opportunity for the display of the heroic virtues, and has said that a good man, struggling with adversity, was a spectacle worthy of the gods.
But it is not necessary to the existence, though it may be to the exhibition, of moral heroism, that we should be placed in circumstances of external adversity. Wherever there is moral combat, there may be moral sublimity, and this combat is necessary for the accomplishment of that triumph which every man is called to gain over himself. The force and grandeur of virtue are then seen when we sacrifice to it our appetites, our avarice, our pride, our vanity, our ambition, our resentments, till every evil passion is brought into subjection to reason and conscience.
Such being the nature of the moral sublime, it is obvious that there is much less danger to morals from its perversion than from the perversion of the beautiful. There is here no natural passion to come in as an ally of principle; and which may take the place of it, but it is duty struggling single-handed, and triumphing over all the might of external nature, and all the force of human propensity. Virtue may indeed exist in perfect serenity, and be exercised without an obstacle; but in this world, and it is that which makes it a place of probation, there is little virtue except on the condition of struggling against and overcoming inclination or passion. If we succeed in this struggle, we feel in our own breasts a peace which is not only present happiness, but the promise of future reward; and we awaken in the breasts of others the emotions of moral sympathy, of approbation, of sublimity in its highest forms, till they are ready to welcome us with acclaim, and we find that virtue is not only happiness, but is also "glory, and honor, and immortality."