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Agnes gave up suitor, home and wealth, and laid down her innocent young life, to become the spouse of Christ. The boy Pancratius faced the panther in the arena, and the yells of a bloodthirsty mob, rather than abjure his faith; and so won a martyr's crown. Perfection then is our destiny. In heaven we shall attain to it, and in this life we should begin to practice it.
When mounted and ridden by the satirist, in wrath at him for systematically feasting the pride of the martyr on the maceration of his animal part, he put on his martyr's pride, which assumed a perfect contentment in the critical depreciation of opposing systems: he was drawn to state, as he had often done, that he considered our animal part shamefully and dangerously over nourished, and that much of the immorality of the world was due to the present excessive indulgence in meats.
She cried out that she must not die without her father's leave. The girls triumphantly asserted that this was a paltry excuse, and let her go, with the scornful assurance that God would not accept as a martyr one who had so little of a martyr's courage. Poor little Jeanne Marie! This unjust ordeal had a painful effect on her joyous spirit.
"I may not take your hand until you know" he raised his voice so that all who chose might hear "until you know that here where I stand, here before this cross, died in the torment of fire that Captain Robert Baldry who was my private foe, who lay beneath my challenge, whom I betrayed to his agony and to his martyr's death.... Ah! I will hold you excused, Sir Francis Drake!"
It is silly to rave about the martyr's crown and the cruel stake, when nobody has the slightest intention of hurting a hair of your head; silly to talk of your paternal love when your provinces are in arms against your "cruel mercies;" silly to boast of your independence when you are guarded in your own capital against your own subjects by foreign troops; silly, in fact, to bark when you cannot bite, to lie when you cannot deceive.
Overshadowed by danger, his hope and faith menaced as by denying Fate, he rallied from the shock, trusted the unseen Power, and went serenely to a martyr's death. Jesus had roused a passion of personal devotion among the poor, the ignorant, the true-hearted whom he had taught and called. When he was dead, that devotion flamed out in the assertion, He lives again! We have seen him!
That is what is intended! Then they will hurry off to the Bishop with the great news and to crown one marvel with another, the reversion will be secured of a martyr's nimbus. And this is what all this zeal is for this and nothing else!" "You are speaking of my mother, remember!" cried Marcus, looking at his brother with a touching appeal in his eyes.
Even at the hour of his Ban the pyres of the Inquisition were flaming with Jewish martyrs, and his fellow-scholars were writing Latin verses to their sacred memories. And should the religion which exacted and stimulated such sacrifices be set aside by one providentially free to profess it? How should they understand that a martyr's death proved faith, not truth?
Did she give to God "that which belongeth unto God," as long as all her hopes, her thoughts, and her whole being revolved about this one earthly thing, her son, the child of her sorrow? She was not a nature to shrink from grave questions; no, she met them boldly, when once they were there, wrestled fiercely with them, was defeated, and again with a martyr's zeal rose to renew the combat.
May that malediction graven by some one of the first followers of the apostles upon a martyr's tomb never fall upon me! I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love. But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man.
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