Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 36.djvu/358

342 struggle, the sorrow, the constancy demanded for it. You must be true to it before it becomes a truth for you; becomes your own. Supremacy which endures is fruit of struggle with agonies which wrestle against it. There is no alternative in this world, between the steady fight for higher things and the steady rot into lower. You who at Chancellorsville rolled in rout across the Rappahannock, like a scroll when it is rolled together, odds against you more than two to one, now, in this moral battle are welcomed to a victory of equal lustre. To "the quintessence of selfishness" oppose, as your great captain did, the quintessence of heroism. A greater than your enemies has planted injustice like the sands of the sea around you that you may triumph over it. In your passion read the prophecy of your resurrection. In the crux of trial to be unconquered by the pang is to conquer. This is the image of the Divine. The heavens have decreed you worthy of it. Make of your humiliation a meritorious cross and passion. Endure it. "despising the shame."

Out of the injury of wounds whose marks he cherished as armorial bearings; out of wounds and prison, Payne returned to stand with worn strength and torn heart against more bitter battles. As he had fought bravely he as deeply mourned the cause which had gone down. The warrior scars upon him, the warrior soul within him, commissioned him to lead. He had returned to see the natural enemies of government in control of government. There loomed before him, and others in like case with him, the figure of a wrathful Nemesis, commissioned to smite hip and thigh the tradition of the past, and bury it face downward. A mother State, chastened by the sanctity of sorrow, held out her hand. There could be but one course for Payne. The word tergiversation was not in his lexicon. Apostacy was not his long suit. With a stern repression of that which admitted not of suppression; with a kind of mail-clad resolution; with an intrepid calm, through which one almost saw the gauntletted hand still resting on the sword hilt, he took his place in the conflict, where all that was lofty was at stake. He had the faith of courage, the courage of faith. Faith without courage is dead.