Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/301

 moment's cessation to exhort the multitude who were constantly thronging to the strange sight; till at last, on the third day, the whole city, moved beyond all control, by the miracle of energy and endurance, rushed in one mass to the proconsul, and demanded the liberation of the God-sustained apostle. The ferocious tyrant, overawed by the solemn power of the demand, coming from such an excited multitude, at last yielded; and to the great joy of the people, went out to the cross to release the holy sufferer, at the sight of whose enraptured triumph over pain and terror, the hard-hearted tyrant himself melted, and in sorrow and penitence he drew near the cross to exercise his new-born mercy. But Andrew, already on the eve of a martyr's triumph, would not bear to be snatched back from such glories so nearly attained; and in earnest remonstrance cried out, praying, "O Lord Jesus Christ! do not suffer thy servant, who for thy name's sake hangs on the cross, to be thus freed,—nor let me, O merciful God! when now clinging to thy mysteries, be given up again to human conversations. But take thou me, my Master! whom I have loved,—whom I have known,—whom I hold,—whom I long to see,—in whom I am what I am. Let me die then, O Jesus, good and merciful." And having said these things for so long a time,—praising God and rejoicing, he breathed out his soul, amid the tears and groans of all the beholders.

Here ends the tale of the fictitious Abdias Babylonius, of which this concluding abstract is another literal specimen, presenting its most effective part in the pathetic line, as the former does of its ludicrous portions. The story of Andrew is altogether the longest and best constructed, as well as the most interesting in the character of its incidents, of all contained in the book of the Pseudo-Abdias; and I have therefore been more liberal in extracts from this, because it would leave little occasion for any similar specimens under the lives of the rest of the apostles.

All this long story may, very possibly, have grown up from a beginning which was true; that is, there may have been another Andrew, who, in a later age of the early times of Christianity, may have gone over those regions as a missionary, and met with somewhat similar adventures; and who was afterwards confounded with the apostle Andrew. The Scotch, for some reason or other, formerly adopted Andrew as their national saint, and represent him on a cross of a peculiar shape, resembling the letter X, known in heraldry by the name of a saltier, and borne on the badges of the knights of the Scottish order of the Thistle, to this day. This idea of his cross, however, has originated since the beginning of the twelfth century, as I shall show by a passage from Bernardus.

The truly holy Bernard, (Abbot of Clairvaux, in France, A. D. 1112,) better worthy of the title of Saint than ninety-nine hundredths of all the canonized who lived before him, even from apostolic days,—has, among his splendid sermons, three most eloquent discourses, preached in his abbey church, on St. Andrew's day, in which he alludes to the actions of this apostle, as recorded in the "Passion of St. Andrew,"—a book which he seems to quote as worthy of credit. In Latin of Ciceronian purity, he has given some noble specimens of a pulpit eloquence, rarely equalled in any modern language, and such as never blesses the ears of the hearers of these days. He begins his first discourse on this subject with saying, that in "celebrating the glorious triumphs of the blessed Andrew, they had that day been delighted with the words of