Page:Bohemia's claim for freedom.djvu/13

 death at the stake in 1755 for reading the Bible, who by way of mercy was strangled before being burnt. The books seized upon were publicly committed to the flames, while missionaries addressed the people on the eternal punishments of heresy.

Some of the confiscated books were supplied by the emigrants who found a shelter either in Saxony or in Prussia and smuggled the books across the frontiers. Those who exported them did so in the very teeth of death, and their memory is kept alive by their martyrdom. To these dauntless men the later Protestant Church in Bohemia and Moravia owes a great debt. It was they who fed in the deep night the flickering lamps of faith, upraised the sinking hearts, until the day when the streaks of religious toleration shot above the horizon and announced the approach of religious liberty. But, alas! how sad and desolate was the country, once so flourishing, and what amends could ever be made for the irretrievable losses of the past!

Three books stand out as of striking importance and significance in the spiritual and moral development of the Bohemians: the Bible, the Postilla, and the Hymn Book.

Nowhere else does the Bible appear as such a mine of national instruction as in Bohemia.

The Bible influenced directly and indirectly a vast portion of the Bohemian literature. The Bible was the dearest treasure in every family, and the most precious bequest a father could leave to his son. Interesting are the passages in the last deeds of dying parents which make a 9