(Selected from a Lecture delivered by Dr. Heyman Wreford on November 29th 1877.)
WHAT wondrous words! There is a power and a majesty in them that speaks of the God Who breathed them. Mighty in their deep and blessed loveliness: powerful in all the glorious splendor of their significance. “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” What a promise! “God shall wipe away all tears.” Yes, though the tears be blood, wrung from the suffering heart by years of agony. Holy in His sight and precious are they — fragrant as the dew on Hermon, lovely as the mists before the morning sun. What an expression of paternal love, of our right to call him Father! —to go to Him with all our woes, to tell Him all our griefs, to pour our sorrows forth upon His breast and tell Him all — for He will wipe the tears away. O heart of Love how deep! Never to be fathomed by our puny plummet lines. Never to be known on earth — only to be fully known in Heaven. What tender care, what loving kindness—touching in all its divine simplicity. “He shall wipe all tears from their eyes.” The child runs with its infant sorrows to its mother’s breast, and the tears fall thickly there. How often has her tender hand wiped those tears away! Thus would He have us go to Him, when the weight of life seems more than we can bear — when the road seems darker, and the storms more wild — when we grope along the narrow way, crying for the light — for the guiding Hand that we have lost awhile — for the gentle Voice that leads us onward, speaking softly, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
How blessed is suffering sanctified by redeeming love. How blessed must it be to have a martyr’s faith and to wear a martyr’s crown; to follow thus in His steps Who was the “Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”; to suffer for Him Who suffered so much for us. Would it not make us love Him better, and link us closer to Him? for it is in the hours of sorrow, and in the night of weeping, that His love is fullest seen. The martyrs in the dungeon-darkness, and in the severest hours of agony, have felt Him very near, have gathered superhuman strength from fellowship with Him; and no wonder, then, that the burning pyre seemed like a bed of roses―no wonder that their persecutors marveled at a power they could not fathom — at a faith they could not daunt. “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee” were no idle words; they had a deep and glorious meaning exemplified in the experience of every martyr. There was one who, stretched upon a rack, after he had been tortured most severely for some time, was asked if he did not feel any pain. He answered, “No, for there was One Who stood beside me, and Who ever and anon wiped my brow.” What was pain when the gates of Heaven were opening, end the Angels were in sight? What was pain when Redeeming love had borne it all before?
“And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”
You must often have felt the deep significance of those Heaven-born words — you that have wept over the dead and spent your unavailing tears upon the lifeless clay — you must have felt then how real they are. “And there shall be no more death,” and how beautiful the close of that sublime verse, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain. These words seem to me like the soft notes of celestial harmony — the sublime breathings of the heart of God, like the music from the harps of Heaven. “No more pain.”
The story that I purpose to tell is the tale of ages — a tale that Angels must love to repeat in Heaven; that the ear of God never wearies of, the story of martyr suffering. They loved Thee, Lord, as those above can love Thee who have put all their trust in Thee. They believed Thy Word, and the sure promise never failed them. The last step on earth was the first in Heaven — the last shout of human hate died away in the echoes of the Heavenly Hallelujahs —the last throb of the broken heart was bound up by the tender Hand of the Son of God. O Heaven! the martyr feet will tread thy golden streets forever. O Paradise! thy glittering walls will ring with their triumphant adoration. They walk in white, “that blood bought throng,” for they are worthy. Now, in the peaceful quiet of our English homes, it seems hard to believe that such things as we read of really happened — that there was a time when this fair earth of God’s was desecrated by the slaughter of His people―that often-times the golden harvests waved the richer because the soil was fertilized by Martyr blood. Yet it is so. We read of days of terror and blood; of deeds of which it makes the heart weep to read; of martyr children, whose tender years were no excuse for trusting in their God; of aged men, and lovely women whose tender beauty had no charm against fanatical despotism, and whose only crime was that they loved their God so well.
We read of days when the Name of Christ was the password to the grave. When wives were torn from their husbands and their homes, when helpless babes were brained before their mothers’ eyes; when the light of torture filled the sky with its continued glare; when the streams of earth ran red with blood, and breaking hearts called death their clearest friend. Yes, we read all this, and History tells us more. It tells us of that hero race that never bent the knee to Baal — who loved their Saviour more than life, and who died rather than deny His Name. It is nothing to bear the Name of Christ now — time was when it was death to do so. God help us if we had to confess His Name upon the rack or with the flames rising around us. There was no going to Heaven in silver slippers then — no sailing quietly over life’s sea to the eternal haven. No peaceful Lord’s Day then for God’s people, as we have it now. In caverns, and in the recesses of deep woods, the early Christians worshipped, where, in the quiet hours of night, the torches threw a fitful glare around, and lit up the faces of those brave and earnest men and women. Thus they worshipped, often-times interrupted by the deep baying of the bloodhound as he tracked them to their hiding places, or by fierce oaths, and fiercer faces, of the savage soldiery, who came with hatred in their hearts, and murder in their eyes. Oh! the grandeur, the unspeakable grandeur of the Martyr story! Their names and deeds are known in every land. We read of them in distant Asia, and in far-famed Palestine; in Persia, and in sunny France. Amid the mighty Alps, whose pure vales crimsoned with their blood, and whose eternal snows were dyed with that red hue. In the valleys of Piedmont, and de la Torre — of St. Martin and Villars. In Lithuania, and in Ethiopia; in Japan, and in Calabria; in sultry India, and in sea-girt Madagascar; in the land in which we live, and where verdure smiles and day’s fair glory beams. Where superstition reared her slavish shrines, where kneeling millions bow to gods of stone, and invest created objects with the attributes of the Creator — the footsteps of that hero race are planted upon every shore. Their blood has stained the annals of all time. Their bones lie bleached ‘neath burning skies and buried beneath Alpine snows, the rushing torrents of the everlasting hills have been purpled with their blood. From pole to pole their dust has lain, the winds of Heaven and the breasts of mighty waters have carried it from land to land. A glorious band! by persecution purified to stand before their God, by pain and anguish, borne to Heaven to join the Seraph song.
They were the pioneers that stormed the bulwarks of Satanic hatred, and opened the way for us into the glorious freedom of religious liberty. Over the deluge of their blood we can raise altars of worship, while the covenant rainbow spans the Heaven of Eternal love. O sublime faith which gave the martyrs such superhuman strength — how true must thy tenets be — how true the God of which they tell! Had earth no preacher to proclaim the Saviour, were there no tongues to tell to man the story of the Cross, the silent voices of our martyred brethren, who being dead yet speak, would proclaim more eloquently than the voice of Angels that the despised and rejected Jesus was the Son of God — the Saviour of the world. The shadow of the Cross fell darkly on their lives, but God and their own hearts knew in what a circle of light they lived. He never sent them an affliction without the power to bear it nor gave a cup of woe for them to drink without sweetening it with His love. To Him they looked for help, and never looked in vain. His Hand it was that led them through the fire, and through the darkest shadows of the valley of death. To those that sought Him, He was always near, is always near today. The nearer death, the nearer Heaven, was their undaunted hope, and beyond the deepest darkness of persecution, they ever saw the undimmed brightness of the pearly gates — the shining of the Seraph hosts, and the resplendent gleaming of the golden streets; while to their ears came sweetly down the ringing melody of the Heavenly hallelujahs, the music of a thousand harps, and the rustling of rejoicing wings bending down to watch the spirit till the last sigh should have left the quivering lips; and to bear it up, onward, homeward, heavenward, beyond the hate of man, till with folded wings they stood with it before the throne of God.
“A glorious band, they gaze on God;
The Crown of Life they wear
Gemm’d with the glory of His blood.
All pain is over there:
With sweeping harps they worship Him;
Louder than lyres of Seraphim
Goes up from all th’ adoring strain,
‘Worthy the Lamb that once was slain.’
“One song they have of sweetest tone,
As worshipping they bow;
The Crucified is on the throne,
And they are with Him now.
And so iron; Heaven to Heaven the song
By countless hosts is borne along.
Angels know not how sweet the strain
‘Worthy the Lamb that once was slain.’
“They suffer’d and they reign with Him;
The trophies of His love,
Girt with adoring Seraphim,
They walk in white above.
For ever and for evermore —
The incense of their praise they pour —
Rings out the everlasting strain
‘Worthy the Lamb that once was slain.’
“From every age, from’ every clime,
Those hero spirits came,
Whose burning lives have left on Time
A purpose and a name.
The power and, aye, the bliss to die,
They learned it all from Calvary;
And the deep rapture of that strain,
‘Worthy the Lamb that once was slain.’”