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If a man, whilst professing to believe in "a God under whose beneficent government we know that all that is consistent with wise and omnipotent law is prospered and brought to perfection," yet has got himself to believe that such a God cannot introduce into any part of the universe a new power or force, as for instance that He is bound not to introduce vital force into a lifeless world, or mental power into a reasonless world, or moral power into a world of free agents, but must leave these forces to work themselves out of non-existence; if it man, I say, has got himself to believe in such a Being, he will not, of course, believe in any testimony to miracles as accrediting a Revelation from Him, and so he will do his best to get rid of them after the fashion in which we have seen the author of "Supernatural Religion" attempt to get rid of the testimony of Justin Martyr to the use of the Four Gospels in his day.
But see the turn religion gives to things in the world; his son, King Canutus, at first a Pagan and a tyrant, and the most cruel ravager of all that crew, coming to turn Christian, and being touched in conscience for the soul of his father, in having robbed God and his holy martyr St.
He giveth thee till the morn to decide Turk or martyr? With burning torches attached to thy limbs thou art to be whipped through the streets with fiery scourges in the sight of the people such is the Sultan's decree. He is a generous paymaster. After all, what need we pretend between ourselves, two Jews, eh?" And he winked drolly. "The sun greets Mohammed every morn, say these Turks.
On finding that the prospect was gloomy and full of bloodshed we protested against the honours which were intended for us, more especially when we reflected that the mother of the two witnesses was not menaced in Scripture with any particular discomfort. If we were to be martyrs, my mother ought to wish to be a martyr too, whereas nothing was farther from her intention.
The truth was, Ruth was shiveringly afraid of casting pearls before swine not that she put it in that way; but she would rather have been struck than to have been made an object of ridicule. And yet there were times when she wished she had lived in the days of martyrdom! The church of to-day is full of just such martyr spirits!
Post-carts are not particular to a day or so in the Transvaal. Old Silas Croft was to drive her with Bessie, who wished to do some shopping in Wakkerstroom, as ladies sometimes will; but at the last moment the old man felt a premonitory twinge of the rheumatism to which he was a martyr, and could not go.
Granvelle knew the man well, and, almost to the last, could not believe in the possibility of so unparalleled a blunder as that which was to make a victim, a martyr, and a popular idol of a personage brave indeed, but incredibly vacillating and inordinately vain, who, by a little management, might have been converted into a most useful instrument for the royal purposes.
Well, this Ballard teaches poor Antony, by way of gospel truth, that 'tis the mere duty of a good Catholic to slay the enemies of the church, and that he who kills our gracious Queen, whom God defend, will do the holiest deed; just as they gulled the fellow, who murdered the Prince of Orange, and then died in torments, deeming himself a holy martyr."
The second martyr, Rayfarolahy, a young man, suffered on the same place some time after. At the request of Rosolama when she was taken forth to death he had walked by her side to the place of execution and offered words of encouragement to her to the last.
That Christianity also was purest in these times, there can be no doubt. Let us look at the character which is given of the first Christians by Athenagoras, Justin Martyr, Minucius Felix, and others of the early Christian writers. According to these they were plain and neat in their apparel, and frugal in their furniture. They were temperate in their eating and drinking.
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