For in fixity and resoluteness of character he likened himself to God; and having kept himself free from sin was united with God, and was empowered to grasp as it were the power and authority of wonders.
The boyhood and youth of Zachary Taylor were thus passed in the midst of the stirring frontier scenes of early Kentucky, and from this experience he acquired the hardihood and resoluteness that characterized his later life, although he inevitably lacked the advantages of a thorough education.
Christian Fortitude is essentially firmness in withstanding the seductions of good and evil fortune, resoluteness in the conflict perpetually waged against wickedness without carnal weapons - though Ambrose, with the Old Testament in his hand, will not quite relinquish the ordinary martial application of the term.
But he instinctively shrank from conflict; he lacked the resoluteness and the sterner sort of courage that grapples with a crisis.