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Dwight and Hamlin made a visit, about this time, to Nicomedia. Their intercourse with the native brethren there was generally private because of persecutors, but it was in the highest degree satisfactory. The first meeting was on the Sabbath, in a retired garden, where they sat four successive hours, in the middle of a circle of hungry souls, expounding to them the Gospel.
Humfrey was obliged to quit the apartment, cruelly wounded, sometimes wondering whether he had really acted on a harsh selfish punctilio in cutting off the dying woman from the consolations of religion, and thus taking part with the persecutors, while his heart bled for her.
Being sorely tired with their day's hard riding, they were wroth and blasphemous against all the Covenanters for the trouble they gave them; and I thought when I heard them venting their bitterness, that they spoke as with the voice of the persecutors that were the true cause of the grievances whereof they complained; for no doubt it was a hateful thing to persons dressed in authority not to get their own way, yet I could not but wonder how it never came into the minds of such persons that if they had not trodden upon the worm it would never have turned.
The victims of persecution had now turned persecutors on their own account, and persecutors of the most terrible description. Not the Inquisition of Seville, nor the German Vehm-gericht, nor the Secret Societies of Italy, were ever able to put a more formidable machinery in motion than that which cast a cloud over the State of Utah.
First there were texts written by invisible hands on city walls, on the signposts and cross-roads, on the crosses in the cemeteries: these warnings, like the 'Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin' of Belshazzar, even pursued the persecutors into the midst of their feasts and orgies. Now it was the threat, "Jesus came not to send peace, but a sword."
The two former of these five empires were Pagan, the two next Mahometan, the last Christian, but schismatic; all have been persecutors of the Church, or, at least, instruments of evil against her children. The Russians I shall dismiss; the Turks, who form my proper subject, I shall postpone.
These two Apostles' later history was full of proofs that Christ's claim was valid. Peter is shut up in prison and delivered once, at the very last moment, when hope was almost dead, in order that he might understand that when he was put into another prison and not delivered, the blow of martyrdom fell upon him, not because of the strength of his persecutors, but because of the will of his Lord.
For the first time, public opinion, at white heat, was brought to bear upon the decision of the persecutors. Calas was dead, but the decree of the Parliament of Toulouse which had sentenced him, was quashed by act of the council: his memory was cleared, and the day of toleration for French Protestants began to glimmer, pending the full dawn of justice and liberty.
Prudence, gentleness, modesty of speech, and many another, circle round their queen, holy charity, who is indeed the life and soul of them all. Charity it is which bids us bless those who curse us, and pray for those who persecute us; and this same charity not unfrequently transforms our persecutors into protectors and changes slanderous tongues into trumpets to sound our praise.
All these referred to me and uttered what I could not clearly distinguish, but knew must be imprecations. Ghostly rappings on the walls and ceiling of my room punctuated unintelligible mumblings of invisible persecutors. I remember distinctly my delusion of the following day Sunday. I seemed to be no longer in the hospital. In some mysterious way I had been spirited aboard a huge ocean liner.
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