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Instead of the martyr's palm, we have the Berdan breech-loader and the flash of petroleum. "Anointed of the Lord, ministers of Him who died invoking blessings on His enemies, kindle the fires of fratricidal strife, which they call a sacred war, and lead on and inflame their dupes by the pretence that the gates of Paradise are to be forced open by gunshot.
Such justice, such self-repression, such fairness make me almost forgive him for riding around the scaffold on which his fellow-clergyman was being executed for witchcraft, and urging the crowd not to listen to the poor martyr's dying words. I can even almost overlook the mysterious fables, the outrageous yarns which he imposed upon us under the guise of history.
What was his first notable service in the Covenant? Where did he study theology? How did he testify against the errors of the Church of Holland? What success did he have in his ministry? What was his great sorrow? Wherein lay his unwavering strength? Renwick received the martyr's crown at the age of twenty-six. His limp body was borne from the scaffold to Greyfriar's churchyard.
When I recall his steadfast prayer, his pious words, and his generosity in giving gifts, I am extremely pleased with his holy purpose, but also with my own good fortune in having known him. I witnessed him perform acts that entitled him to nothing less than a martyr's death.
Tender, perilously alive to sensation, strangely retentive of kindness as she was by nature, the very solitude to which she had been condemned had gifted her, young as she was, with a martyr's endurance of ill, and with a stoic's patience under pain. 'Do not mourn for me now, she pursued, gently interrupting some broken expressions of compassion which fell from the lips of the young Goth.
But Douglass would not be persuaded. His abandonment of his old friend on the eve of a desperate enterprise was criticised by some, who, as Douglass says, "kept even farther from this brave and heroic man than I did." John Brown went forth to meet a felon's fate and wear a martyr's crown: Douglass lived to fight the battles of his race for years to come.
Unquestionably, our Lord is here speaking with special reference to the Apostles, who, in a very tragic sense, were 'sent forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. If we may trust tradition, every one of that little company, Speaker as well as hearers, died a martyr's death, with the exception of John himself, who was preserved from it by a miracle.
They dwelt with God, lived in Jesus Christ, felt the raptures of the Holy Spirit; they knew the mystery of the cross, the value of the Blood, and the power of the spiritual resurrection. Therefore were they swallowed up in love to God and man. Are we amazed at the divine beauty of the martyr's life?
I thought of the stories the Abbess used to tell me years before about the martyrs who were burned at the stake. But I had not a martyr's faith, and I could not imitate their patience and resignation. The sores made on these occasions were long in healing, and to this day I bear upon my person the scars caused by these frequent burnings. I was often punished because I forgot to walk on my toes.
But a woman, more subtle and devious in her processes of mind, senses the dramatic effect that the spectacle of her suffering makes upon the spectators, already filled with compassion for her feebleness. She would thus much rather be praised for facing pain with a martyr's fortitude than for devising some means of getting rid of it the first thought of a man.
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