MARTYRDOM.

AND others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment:

They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tor. mented;

(Or whom the world was not worthy;) they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. HEBREWS, Xi, 36–38.

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel mourning for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not. MATTHEW, ii, 18.

I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the Word of God. REVELATIONs, xx, 4.

IN rendering to the Lord what is the Lord's,

Doth not the thought of violence bring shame?

Think ye, He gave the branching forest-tree
To furnish fagots for the funeral pyre,
Or bid His sunrise light the world, to see
Pale, tortured victims perish there by fire?

MRS. NORTON.

THE Sacred Book, its value understood,
Received the seal of martyrdom in blood.
Those holy men, so full of truth and grace,
Seem, to reflection, of a different race;
Meek, modest, venerable, wise, sincere,

In such a cause they could not dare to fear;
They could not purchase earth with such a price,
Or spare a life too short to reach the skies.

From them to thee conveyed along the tide,
Their streaming hearts poured freely when they died;
Those truths which neither use nor years impair,
Invite thee, woo thee, to the bliss they share.

20*

COWPER.

WHEN persecution's torrent blaze
Wraps the unshrinking martyr's head,
When fade all earthly flowers and bays,

When summer friends are gone and fled,
Is he alone in that dark hour,

Who owns the Lord of love and power?

Or waves there not around his brow,

A wand no human arm may wield, Fraught with a spell no angels know,

His steps to guide, his soul to shield? Thou, Saviour, art his Charmed Bower, His Magic Ring, his Rock, his Tower.

KEBLE

THY children, even as martyrs perished:
Those first-loved fruits that sprang from thee,
From which thy heart was doomed to sever,
In praise of God, shall bloom for ever,
Unhurt, untouched, by tyranny.

IN vain the Roman lord

Waved the relentless sword,

And spread the terrors of the circling flame;
In vain the heathen sought,

If chance some lurking spot,

Might mar the lustre of the Christian name:

The Eternal Spirit, by His fruits confessed,

VONDEL

In life secured from stains, and steel'd in death, the breast

AND when religious sects ran mad,
He held, in spite of all his learning,
That if a man's belief is bad,

It will not be improved by burning.

BP. MANT.

PRAED.

THE lion's feet, the lion's lips, are dyed with crimson

gore,

A look of faith, an unbreathed prayer, the martyr's pangs

are o'er.

Proud princes and grave senators gazed on that fearful sight,

And even woman seemed to share the savage crowd's

delight;

But what the guilt, that on the dead a fate so fearful

drew?

A blameless faith, was all the crime the Christian martyr

knew:

And where the crimson current flowed, upon that barren

sand,

Up sprung a tree, whose vigorous boughs soon over-spread the land;

O'er distant isles its shadow fell, nor knew its roots decay, E'en when the Roman Caesar's throne and empire passed HAMILTON BUCHANAN.

away.

THE fatal pile

Would be to me a car of joyful triumph,
Mounted more gladly than the laurelled hero
Vaults to his envied seat.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

I AM So pleased to die, and am so honoured

In dying for the pure and holy truth,
That nature's instinct seems in me extinguished.

JOANNA BAILLIE

MIRACLES.

JESUS of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you, by wonders, and miracles, and signs. AcTs, ii, 22.

God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and divers miracles HEBREWS, ii, 4.

O, WHAT a scale of miracles is here

Its lowest round high planted in the skies;
Its towering summit lost, beyond the thought
Of man or angel!

YOUNG.

WHEN God came down from Heaven, the Living God,
What signs and wonders marked his stately way?
Brake out the winds in music where he trode?
Shone o'er the heavens a brighter, softer day?

The dumb began to speak, the blind to see,

And the lame leaped, and pain and darkness fled;
The mourner's sunken eye grew bright with glee,
And from the tomb awoke the wondering dead.
H. H. MILMAN.

THE Lord of Hosts hath walked

This world of man; the one Almighty sent
His everlasting Son to wear the flesh,

And glorify this mortal human shape;

And the blind eyes unclosed to see the Lord,

And the dumb tongues broke out in songs of praise,
And the grave cast forth its wondering dead,
-And trembling devils murmured sullen homage.

H. H. MILMAN.

"COME forth!" He cries, "thou dead!"

O God, what means that strange and sudden sound, That murmurs from the tomb? That ghastly head, With funeral fillets bound?

It is a living form

The loved, the lost, the won,

Won from the grave, corruption, and the worm "And is not this the Son

Of God?" they whispered, while the sisters poured Their gratitude in tears, for they had known the Lord

SEE, from the yawning tomb,

Bound in the solemn vestments of the grave,

Comes forth the living Lazarus! Ah! sce
Upon his pallid cheek returning life

DALE.

Breathe roseate hues, and his unclosing eye
Beam with new radiance. Hail! thou mystic type
Of that great day, when, with the thunder's voice,
The King of kings to earth's remotest climes
Shall speak His will; when the unpeopled graves
Shall render up their dead, and all shall stand,
Like Lazarus, before a judging God.

WILLIAM BOLLand.

AT His command fled fever, thirsty fiend,

Whose parching fire dries up the wholesome blood:
And madness wild, whose moon-struck eye-balls glare,
With steady gaze, on vacancy: His touch,

With healing virtue, from the withered limbs
Drove nerveless palsy, that with fatal stroke.
'Numbs every fibre, grafting death on life
Unnatural union! Scaly leprosy,

At His appearance, vanished: dropsy, swol'n,
Withdrew his bloated form, and each confessed
A present God.

WILLIAM BOlland.