Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/54

28 for men. The Devil, who was particularly envious of his virtues, detested above all his exceeding charity, because it was the most inimical to his own power, and one day reproached him mockingly that he so soon received into favour the fallen and the repentant. But St Martin answered him sorrowfully, saying, 'Oh most miserable that thou art! if thou also couldst cease to persecute and seduce wretched men, if thou also couldst repent, thou also shouldst find mercy and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.'"

In this gentleness was his strength; and the issue of it is best to be estimated by comparing its scope with that of the work of St. Firmin. The impatient missionary riots and rants about Amiens' streets—insults, exhorts, persuades, baptizes,—turns everything, as aforesaid, upside down for forty days: then gets his head cut off, and is never more named, out of Amiens. St. Martin teazes nobody, spends not a breath in unpleasant exhortation, understands, by Christ's first lesson to himself, that undipped people may be as good as dipped if their hearts are clean; helps, forgives, and cheers, (companionable even to the loving-cup,) as readily the clown as the king; he is the patron of honest drinking; the stuffing of your Martinmas goose is