Page:For Remembrance (ed. Repplier) 036.jpg

 the hills of Judea seemed scarcely to exist at all, so insignificant they appeared to be; and then, as the years pass by, placing before our eyes as in a panorama the passion and death and resurrection of the Saviour, the hesitations and misgivings of the Apostles, the ascension into heaven, the coming of the Holy Ghost; the outburst of the divine enthusiasm which impelled the believers to go to the ends of the earth that by their words and deeds, by their lives and deaths, they might spread the glad tidings and bear witness to the supreme and awful fact that God had visited His children and redeemed them from the curse of sin, throwing open the gates of life to men of good will in the whole wide world, without distinction of race or tongue,—that the Church after the lapse of centuries is still able to speak to us and tell us, as though she were a divine person who had lived all the while, that of all this she was part, and to the truth of it all bears testimony, doubtless must uplift, strengthen and reassure whosoever gives due heed.

Our confidence in her increases as we behold her in mortal conflict with imperial persecutors and savage mobs, whose fury seeks the utter abolition of the name of Christian; while her faithful children—old men and young, matrons and maidens—gather round her to shed their blood in her defense; until finally, when three hundred years have passed and hundreds of thousands have offered their lives as a sacrifice and a testimony to God and the soul, she comes forth from the desert and the underground darkness unafraid and unhurt to enter on her great task of converting the world to the religion of the Son of Man. With what superhuman confidence and power she battles against ignorance and barbarism, lust and greed, violence and rapine! She grows not weary, but generation after generation sends her heroic sons wherever lies the shadow of the darkness of death, that they may bring all the tribes of the earth to see the new light which has shone from the throne of the Most High.

With a divine enthusiasm they turn from the pride of life, the thirst for gold and the pleasures of sense, abandon father and mother, country and friends, to give themselves wholly to the task the Master imposed upon His Apostles when He bade them go and 20