said not a word, and tears of sympathy stood in her soft eyes. After the lapse of a minute or two, she held some jelly to my lips, and I swallowed it eagerly. There was so much sweetness and dignity in her countenance, so much unaffected simplicity and quiet thoughtfulness in her manner, that I could not refrain from asking to whom I was indebted for all this kind care. She gently took my hand and said, "My name is Elizabeth; but I am your sister and your friend." My only answer was a shower of grateful tears. She told me that her brother, who was a very good physician, had often said that when once the fever of illness was conquered, the fever of debility could easily be removed by fresh air, and animal food taken in very small quantities at a time.

Those ladies told me, what I had long suspected to be the case, that the school I had come to was one of an inferior order. They advised me strongly to go back to England in August when the holidays began, even though I should lose the hundred francs to be paid for two months in order to complete my year. From all I have since learned in different quarters, I fear that, generally speaking, the health and comfort of the inmates, whether they be pupils or teachers, are not always looked upon as matters of the first importance in continental schools. If I knew any young woman who thought of fitting herself in one of those establishments for the duties of an English governess in an English family, I should feel that the kindest, the wisest advice to give her, would be to stay quietly in her own country and to learn well what she could be taught there. The slight knowledge of French to be acquired by a short residence in a French school is more than counterbalanced by the possible destruction of health, by the discomfort and privation which cannot be avoided without very considerable expense, and, above all, by the unEnglish habits likely to result from living in a state of false independence amongst foreigners.

I wrote to Dr. and Mrs. Fielding to consult them as to my movements. Their opinion agreed so entirely with that of my friends on the spot, that I had the happiness of taking a final leave of Madame the week before her pupils dispersed for the vacation. During the last three or four weeks the whole school was engaged in preparing for the annual distribution of prizes. I took some interest in looking on, and I was present at the examination held by one of the professors. This consisted in his opening at random a volume of French poetry, and reading aloud some one line. The pupil was expected to take up the subject from that line, and to repeat as much as was sufficient to prove either the strength or the weakness of her memory, as the case might be. The book made use of on this occasion was Boileau's "Art of Poetry," which one would suppose could not have been very attractive to youthful minds.

Thanks to Mrs. Fielding's exertions on my behalf, she obtained for me a situation as governess in a family residing in the north of England; but before I entered upon my new life she invited me to spend a short time with her. My opening career was naturally the subject of frequent conversation between myself and my friends. While fully acknowledging the irksomeness of some of the

duties that awaited me, and the innumerable little trials arising from a dependent position, they at the same time dwelt upon the noble work before me, and made me feel that the real aim of a governess should be not merely to cultivate the talents and understandings of her pupils, but to train their hearts by the unseen but powerful influence of her own Christian spirit and character. Dear Mrs. Fielding accompanied me to all my favourite old haunts. The air seemed as it were peopled with the spirits of those whose memory I lived upon, and whom I now felt were invisibly present with me.

The family I entered as governess received me very cordially. My pupils were two promising little girls, who soon found out that I was disposed to love them tenderly, so that I had no difficulty in winning their young affections. Their parents treated me like a young friend in all matters that did not interfere with the station I held in their household. Happily for myself, as well as for those I was to instruct, my duties were quite within the compass of my powers. An elder sister of my pupils is married to a neighbouring country gentlenian, and has two little daughters of her own. She sometimes reminds me that when my present pupils shall have outgrown my care and teaching, I may look forward to assisting her in bringing up her little ones.

GOOD WORDS FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR.

NOVEMBER 24.

"Whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight."-1 JOHN iii. 22.

There are then right and wrong ways of asking. There are those who receive not when they ask, as well as those who can say with the apostle, "whatsoever we ask we receive of Him." It is important to discover why these things are so, lest our prayers should be vain, or lest our just confidence in God's promises should be weakened by unnecessary fears that we may be asking so as not to receive. St. James gives the reason why some prayers are rejected; he says, Iye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts;" they asked not according to the mind of God, or the teaching of His Holy Spirit ; they asked for earthly things with earthly and sensual purposes, having neither the glory of God, nor the good of their souls at heart; and this was not that believing prayer in the name of Christ, to which the promise was given. But I cannot suppose that this would forbid our asking, in humble submission, for temporal blessings: for I observe, that the instance given of an effectual fervent prayer that availed much, is one of this Would that very kind, the prayer of Elias for rain. we were as like him in our prayers as we are in our passions!

NOVEMBER 25.

"And Stephen kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And, when he had said this, he fell asleep." ACTS vii. 60.

Wonderfully indeed was the dying prayer of the holy Stephen answered, and though he lived not to see its

MARTYRDOM was the common fate of the early Christians. To what extent this was the case, it is perhaps difficult for us now to realize. Christianity has been so long the settled faith of the Western world, professed by its various nationalisies, entwined with its laws, and nominally at least controlling its governments, that it requires some effort of imagination, on our part, to conceive a state of things wholly opposite-where life, law, and government in all their dominant expressions were not only indifferent to Christianity, but fiercely hostile to it; when to profess the Christian faith

was to profess an illicit religion—a religion placed not only beyond the pale of protection, but expressly excluded from it, and laid under civil and social ban, so that its members, viewed as such, were treated as criminals. And yet this was the state of Christianity everywhere, more or less, for three hundred years. Throughout the Roman empire, it was a proscribed faith during all this time

hated by Jew, and abhorred by Gentile. Its adherents were declared to be the enemies of social order and government. The most atrocious accusations of cruelty and licentiousness were freely laid

to their charge, and widely and confidently believed; and not merely by imperial prefects, but by the bulk of the populations,-not merely by isolated acts of authority, but by the consent and approbation of the common public feeling,-they were everywhere proclaimed and understood to be anarchists or worse, atheists, and haters of their species, to be hunted down and extirpated as wild animals.

It is not wonderful, then, that so much of the literature of the Early Church should consist of what are called Martyrologies. As martyrdom in diverse shapes represented so much of the history of Christendom, we can only expect that its literature should bear the stamp of this. While of all the acts of Christians, the most significant, impressive, and memorable were the bitter and cruel deaths which they died, in testimony of their faith and their devotedness to a proscribed cause, it was very natural that Acta Martyrii should compose a great proportion of such reading as circulated in the Church, in addition to the Scriptures. The memories of the faithful were not only refreshed and their minds informed by these simple histories, but their own faith and piety were quickened in return, as they dwelt upon the brave sufferings of those who had gone before, and felt that the fate | of which they read might be any day their own, that they might be appointed any moment to the same death, and made a like "spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men."

We can easily understand, in the same manner, how many of the early martyrologies should have become in course of time greatly corrupted, and the doubtful elements of tradition and mythical embellishment have mingled with the simple and touching facts of the original stories. When martyrdom had lost its first character of honest heroism, unsought yet unshunned,-bravely endured when it came, yet not coveted as a mark of distinction and posthumous fame; when it had lost this primitive character, and become a badge of peculiar saintship, of diseased ambition,-it is obvious that temptation would arise to tamper with its records, to add to their terrible pathos by touches of fiercer hate or more resigned agony, and especially to enhance their marvel by accessories of supernatural machinery, or startling conjectures half-fact, halffable. Even very recent times has shown that there is no kind of literature so liable to exaggeration and misrepresentation as martyrological literaThe production of uncritical and excited times, when the imaginations and passions of men are violently agitated, such literature addresses itself to the feelings more than to the judgment; originating in excitement, it calls forth excitement, and in the blended haze of admiration, reverence, and grateful affection, the clear and definite outline of facts is but too readily obscured and forgotten. Men re-read into the original lines of the narrative, their own pictured dreams and fancies; and to the historian it becomes a hard and sometimes impossible task to disentangle the two, and to seize the truth, all the truth, and yet nothing more than the truth in the mingled record.

ture.

Every student of the early martyrologies of the church must bear in mind this tendency to exaggeration and imaginative embellishment characteristic of such writings. It is sure to be forced upon

him, if he has any critical eye or perception of historical difficulties; and the result with some is seen to be a depreciatory and even contemptuous estimate of such records. The aim to exalt and glorify the objects of persecution is in many cases so obvious, and the subordinate accidents are made to fit in with such an apparent inventiveness to this end, that the cold gaze of inquiry is apt to turn away in disgust from recitals in which mythical feeling or pious fraud may be so plainly traced. This, however, is a quite unwarranted course; and such scepticism is at least as unfair and untrue to facts, as the most unhesitating credulity, History would be still more impossible on the one basis than the other; and particularly all history of spiritual life and moral heroism would suffer irretrievably from such a mere negative and repulsive spirit. It is in the very nature of both of these to perpetuate themselves, not only in dry fact and historical accident, but in trait and story, in symbol and myth, which may convey to future times a far more real and accurate impression of what they were, than any number of mere annalistic details carefully weighed in the balance of criticism,-but out of which the colour and life have been pressed. The duty of the historian is neither to accept nor reject on any general principle, but to test all that has descended to him by his own sympathetic feeling, and the most likely and credible standard of the time.

Among the martyrologies of the primitive church, there is one of the second century which has been long esteemed by scholars and historians as bearing the most obvious traces of authenticity. In comparison with the Acta Martyrii of Ignatius, or even of Polycarp, which we have already set before our readers, it is supposed to present in very faithful and unaffected language a naked statement of facts. In every point of view, it is a very interesting document, in its supposed authorship, in the simple and touching pictures of Christian heroism which it suggests, as well as in the light which it throws upon the propagation and progress of Christianity.

In our two previous sketches our view has been confined to the East. Smyrna and Ephesus were the centres of our pictures; but we are now carried westward to the banks of the Rhone; and in the same age which brings before us Polycarp at Smyrna, and Justin at Ephesus, and subsequently at Rome, we are enabled to contemplate a strong, devoted, and simple-minded Christian community settled at Lyons and Vienne, in the south of what we now call France. Everything tends to show that this western seat of Christianity had been planted by missionaries or emigrants from the great eastern centres of the new faith. The document is addressed by the "Servants of Christ dwelling at Lyons and Vienne, in Gaul, to the Brethren in Asia (Minor) and Phrygia holding the same Faith and Hope of Redemption." It is as if, in their great fight of afflictions, the Christians of the West naturally turned homeward for advice, counsel, and encouragement. Along the Mediter ranean, and up the blue waters of the Rhone, the messengers of "peace and grace from God the Father and Christ the Lord" had come to them, merchants of Smyrna, perhaps, and traffickers of

Ephesus, or adventurous spirits from Pergamus, bearing the precious seed of the kingdom which they had deposited in willing hearts; and now, when the trial of their faith had overtaken them, and the fruit, "in some thirty, in some sixty, and in some an hundredfold," which had sprung from the good seed was being rudely shaken by the fierce blasts of persecution, these hearts instinctively looked towards the East, whence their joy had come, to sympathize and share with them in their troubles. The letter itself, so remarkable in its simple and graphic earnestness, is attributed to Irenæus, at that time a presbyter in the Church of Lyons, and afterwards its famous bishop. He had been a disciple of the blessed Polycarp, and this was a further and a special bond of connexion between the Lyonese Christians and their brethren in Asia. The authorship cannot be said to be clearly established, but there are good grounds for it. It would impart a further interest to the document if we were sure that it was the production of one of the great fathers of the church. But apart from this assurance, it stands forth as one of the most memorable and trustworthy of all the primitive records of the church.* "A most ancient and excellent monument," says one historical critic,t "the merit of which, although many have proclaimed it, none have appreciated to the full extent. The more frequently we read and study it," he adds, "the more excellent shall we find it."

It sets before us a crowded and solemn picture of suffering, in its preparation, its progress, and consummation. We see the first gathering of the storm the Christians prohibited from appearing at the baths or market, or any public place whatever, and shut up in their own houses; the shouting and blows of the outrageous multitude; the examination in the forum by the Tribune and civic authorities; their imprisonment till the arrival of the Governor; their appearance and savage treatment before him; the indignant remonstrance and defence of Vettius Epagathus, a noble Christian youth, a man of family and distinction, yet at once rudely silenced and condemned on his mere confession that he was a Christian; the lapse of ten of the Christian band, to the sorrow and grief of some, and the discouragement of others; the seizure, torture, and lying confessions of the heathen slaves, accusing their Christian masters of abominable crimes; the excitement even of the moderate and respectable portions of the heathen community in consequence, and the repeated and aggravated cruelties that follow. The martyrs rise before us in succession, in various attitudes of touching dignity and quiet and holy resignation. Sanctus of Vienne, the "deacon;" Maturus, a "recent convert, but a noble champion of the faith;" Attalus of Pergamus, "a pillar and foundation of the Church there;" Pothinus, the aged bishop of Lyons, upwards of seventy years of age, "yet strong in spirit and panting after martyrdom;" Biblias, a female who had lapsed, but regained, in the midst of her sufferings, strength to confess and endure; but especially Blandina, a

Like so many other documents, it has been preserved to us by Eusebius, Book v., and the student will find it there, or in Routh's Reliquiæ Sacræ, vol. i. +Valesius.

female slave who, in the midst of physical weakness that had at first suggested doubts of her endurance, stands forth as the central and most radiant figure of the whole-a miraculous example of sustaining grace, of meek simplicity and saintly courage. Then follow the frightful indignities carried beyond the grave. The bodies of the saints mutilated and thrown to the dogs, and finally burnt to ashes and scattered into the Rhone, that not a particle of them might reappear on the earth. It is a painful and dark picture, filled with agonies from which we would fain turn away; yet by doing so we would be unable to understand what the Cross really was to the early Christians. We would hide from ourselves both the true lineaments of the Church, and of the heathenism opposed to it, and with which it was struggling in such deadly conflict,-weak apparently in its grasp, yet in its very weakness, in the moral glories of its submission,-laying the foundation of its approaching triumph. It is well even for the secular student to remember, by way of contrast, that this picture of Christian suffering, with all its hideous accompaniments, was in the close of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (177), the princely Stoic, the philosophic and pacific blessings of whose rule, as they stand depicted in the pages of a Gibbon, are apt to engage his warm admiration and attention. It is not necessary to underrate these blessings, but it is right to be fair and comprehensive in our historical estimates; and while we do not deny the cold and passive moralities of Stoicism, and its vague and darkened gropings after the Divine, we should also not forget its cruel and bitter treatment of an antagonistic and higher morality than its own.*

The succession of incident and interest of character displayed in our martyr record will be best shown in detail, under special headings. We shall endeavour at the same time to preserve, as far as possible, the continuity of the narrative. It opens with a description of the Church fronting an excited and alarmed heathenism.

THE CHURCH AND HEATHENISM.

"The Servants of Christ dwelling at Lyons and Vienne in Gaul, to the Brethren in Asia and Phrygia holding the same faith and hope of redemption; peace, grace, and glory from God the Father, and Christ our Lord.-We cannot sufficiently declare and express the severity of affliction and extent of animosity exhibited here by the heathen against the saints, and the sufferings of the blessed martyrs in consequence. The adversary hath assailed us with all his might, giving us at the very first a warning of the dreadful character of his approaching assaults, and by every means habituating and training his followers to act against the servants of God. We were driven from the baths, and the market, and every public place, and could nowhere show ourselves. But the grace of God contended for us, rescuing the weak and preparing the strong, who, like pillars, were able to receive with endurance the whole shock of the wicked against themselves. These, like good soldiers, nobly endured every species of pain and reproach, showing in reality that

* The persecution of the Christians at Lyons received the open sanction of the Emperor.