battle-field ordained from of old, where there are no spectators, but
the youngest must take his side, and the stakes are life and death. And
he who roused this consciousness in them showed them, at the same time,
by every word he spoke in the pulpit, and by his whole daily life,
how that battle was to be fought; and stood there before them, their
fellow-soldier and the captain of their band. The true sort of captain,
too, for a boy's army, one who had no misgivings, and gave no uncertain
word of command, and, let who would yield or make truce, would fight
the fight out (so every boy felt) to the last gasp and the last drop of
blood. Other sides of his character might take hold of and influence
boys here and there, but it was this thoroughness and undaunted courage
which more than anything else won his way to the hearts of the great
mass of those on whom he left his mark, and made them believe first in
him, and then in his Master.

It was this quality, above all others, which moved such boys as Tom
Brown, who had nothing whatever remarkable about him except excess of
boyishness; by which I mean animal life in its fullest measure; good
nature and honest impulses, hatred of injustice and meanness, and
thoughtlessness enough to sink a three-decker. And so, during the next
two years, in which it was more than doubtful whether he would get good
or evil from the school, and before any steady purpose or principle grew
up in him, whatever his week's sins and shortcomings might have been, he
hardly ever left the chapel on Sunday evenings without a serious resolve
to stand by and follow the doctor, and a feeling that it was only
cowardice (the incarnation of all other sins in such a boy's mind) which
hindered him from doing so with all his heart.

_Tom Brown's School Days_.