to him that overcometh; should tell you that if we suffer, we shall also reign with Him; or should say, Well, that after all, you might sacrifice now, and make your peace with GoD afterwards; that it was impossible to endure such tortures: that God would forgive you for yielding to them; and all the rest of such devices as the devil would not fail to find us in plenty. But I hope that, even if I did, some there would be among you who would answer, as S. Paul once said, "Though you, or an Angel from heaven preach any other doctrine than that we have received, let him be accursed."

These things came, then, really to pass, at Agen on this very day. Faith, remembering our LORD's commandment not to run into temptation, would not of her own accord come forward and give herself up to the governor. Therefore, like Mary, she sat still in the house. But a Priest named Caprais, who dwelt in the same city, had not the same courage. He, no doubt, had often exhorted Faith to deny herself, to take up her cross, to follow CHRIST: he had no doubt again and again given to her His Precious Body and Blood: he was a man, and she a mere girl and she only a common Christian. to tremble, while she stood firm. GOD was in him. If he was afraid to suffer, he was more afraid to sin. He escaped from the city by night, and went into a wood on the brow of a hill hard by.

:

he was a Priest, And yet he began But yet the grace of

Morning came: the 6th of October. There sat Dacian the Governor in all the glory of the world. Christian after Christian came before him, confessed CHRIST, and was beheaded. At last some one that stood by told the Governor of Faith. "She is a girl," they said:

"she has been delicately brought up; she will yield if she be threatened with torture." And Dacian thought so too. For he knew not that God hath chosen the weak things of this world to confound the things that are mighty.

So Faith was sent for, came, and had her choice, to sacrifice to the idol, or to be broiled alive. What she said we know not; it is sufficient for us to know what she did.

All this while Caprais was watching from the wood, to see what would happen. Towards noon he saw multitudes of people flocking together to a small common outside the town. He saw some bringing heaps

of wood, he saw others carrying straw, and others oil; he saw the billets set in order on the ground, the oil poured in, and the straw chopped up. Then he heard a sound as of blacksmiths, and saw them hanging a great iron frame over the heap. He saw the fire and the wood; and soon also he saw the lamb for the burnt offering. They brought Faith to the place, and there, for many hours, hanging on that iron frame, she passed through the fire.

agony.

And it did kindle upon her. We nowhere read of her, as of some other Martyrs, that she did not feel its How then was the promise fulfilled, "When thou passest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned?" That, by God's grace, we must consider another time, as another Martyr shall give us the opportunity. Now we will only see what was the end of this fierce and long battle with Satan.

Some of the heathen that stood by, seeing how, hour after hour, Faith endured her torments, perceiving the wonderful courage that was given her, and the love, stronger than death, that she bore to her LORD, cried

out that the GOD Whom Faith worshipped was the True God; that as for the gods of the heathen, they were but idols; and that they themselves were Christians. Dacian, enraged beyond measure, gave orders that they should be beheaded. They had no time to be baptized; but the Church teaches, as I shall have occasion to tell you more at length, that, in the case of such as these, their baptism of blood at their Martyrdom was sufficient.

Caprais saw all this; not only S. Faith's triumph when he was afraid to draw nigh, but he beheld the very heathen entering into the kingdom of heaven before him. The grace of GoD and his own fears long struggled for the mastery; but at last the grace of GoD prevailed. He came down, and professed himself to be a Christian, and was beheaded. And with him Faith also was beheaded; and thus both entered into the joy of their LORD.

Both entered it but not alike gloriously. She that had the hardest battle in this life, doubtless has now the more exceeding reward. "One star differeth from another star," S. Paul teaches us, " in glory. So also is "in the resurrection of the dead." Here the first was last. The first in age, the first in honour, as being a Priest, the first in this world's strength, as being a man, was the last in confessing CHRIST, the last in the glory of suffering for Him,-the last, because he followed the example, and S. Faith set it.

Yet they are both blessed for evermore; and GOD grant that we may come only within a hundred degrees of either of them in glory!

And now to the King of Martyrs, JESUS CHRist, be ascribed, with the FATHER and the HOLY GHOST, all honour and glory for ever. Amen.

SERMON XXIX.

S. PAUL ON MARS' HILL.

S. Dionysius the Areopagite. October 9.

"HOWBEIT CERTAIN MEN CLAVE UNTO HIM, AND BELIEVED; AMONG THE WHICH WAS DIONYSIUS THE AREOPAGITE."-ACTS XVII. 34.

ATHENS was the most learned and most beautiful city in the world. It was a kind of University for the whole earth. Men went up from all other nations to study there. There were magnificent temples to the gods, the ruins of some of which remain to this day. There the greatest painters and the greatest poets had lived. There, too, had been wise men, who had spent all their lives in feeling after GOD, in trying to discover whether there were, or were not, a future state; men, whose books we have now, and whose writings, for their beauty and their eloquence, surpass every other.

It is no wonder, then, that the Athenians believed themselves to be wiser and better than the rest of the world, and looked on all others with great contempt, as ignorant and barbarous people. What do you think, then, they must have felt, when one day it was noised about the city, that a poor Jew had come there, who

gave out that he was sent to teach a new religion; who said that all the temples of the gods would soon perish; that the idols were the work of men's hands-wood and stone; that they who made them were like unto them, and so were all such as put their trust in them. "He preaches," one of the philosophers said, "that we are to worship one GoD only; and that this God was crucified, about twenty years ago, at Jerusalem." We can imagine the shouts of laughter among all that heard: how some called the Apostle mad, some took him for an impostor, some said that it would be amusing to hear what such a person could say, some answered that they would not degrade themselves by going near him. "Oh, but," another of the philosophers would say, "that is nothing in comparison of somewhat else that he teaches. He says that we are to believe in the Resurrection." "What is the Resurrection ?" asked another. "Is it a goddess?" (It is said, you must know, by old writers, that the Athenians, at first, thought that S. Paul was preaching to them a goddess of that name.) "A goddess! no!" the philosopher answered. "What he says is this,-that, after we are buried, at the end of the world, our bodies will come together again, and will breathe, and will live, and will be just the same as they are now, only more glorious, and that they can never die any more. "The Jew is mad," they all cried out. "The thing is too absurd even to laugh at. It were best to send the poor man to his friends, if he has any, or else to have him shut up." Well," the first philosopher said, "all I know is, that he has drawn away multitudes of people to believe in CHRIST, that they have given up the gods of their fathers, that the more they are punished, the faster

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