“True, child, no cost can be too great; for no one can leave father or mother, or brother or sister to join the Glad Kingdom but the reward shall be a hundredfold, both here and hereafter. The cost is but the trifling price we pay to pass through the portals to the Unseen Kingdom, whether here or hereafter; but why came you here?”
“To be baptized into that Kingdom before they whip you from the city to-morrow.”
“Bid your serving woman bring me the jar of drinking water.”
She kneeled at his feet. He dipped his finger in the jar and marked the sign of the Cross on her brow. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit into the service of the Glad Kingdom both here and hereafter, now and forever more,” he said. “Bid your woman hand me the bread and the cup of wine. Quaff now the Loving Cup with me, child!” He handed her a broken piece of bread. “In as oft as you do this, you do it in remembrance of the Crucified One’s Last Supper with His Loved Ones; but remember always, child—it is not the Doleful Supper, which these children of the Adversary say; it is the Loving Cup to commemorate His translation to the One and Only God.”
So in the darkened prison of Iconium between midnight and dawn, the first woman martyr to the new faith was baptized into the Unseen Kingdom and quaffed the Loving Cup to her Lord; and in the little modern city of Konieh, a thousand legends of Thecla, some true, some fanciful, are told among the mountain folk to this day. Sometimes, they have it, that the faggots were kindled in the Iconium Theater and the wild beast tournament held in Antioch; but each city marking the crumbling stones of the Old Roman Road has its own legend.
Thecla rose from her knees.
“My Master,” she said, “how can I serve the Kingdom if I am to be burned to-morrow?”
“That—I know not. God will lead you. If you are burned to-morrow, ’twill be but the fiery gate to the Unseen Kingdom and service there. If you are not burned, God will lead you to service here. I shall be whipped from the city at day dawn and go to Timothy, a child in years like yourself, at Derbe and Lystra; but at Antioch is the Brotherhood, where holy men and women plan our warfare against the Adversary—the World, the Flesh and the Devil; but hard by Antioch are the Gardens of Daphne, where many maids like you are forced to barter love for carnal gain. Go to them, child! You have been rescued! Rescue them! How, I know not. God will lead you and my prayers will follow you—a cloud of light to fore—follow it—a screen of protection behind—look not back—but press gladly forward to the high calling of a warrior for the Christ; and the Lord bless you and keep you in the inmost sanctuary of His Grace and Gladness! He shall renew your flesh as a little child’s and keep in your heart an eternal youth, long as you drink of the Living Waters of Life! Never repine! Never envy! Go forth rejoicing always! Rejoice, rejoice, child, again I say rejoice! For our suffering is but as idle passing dream, and we shall awaken to Eternal Day.”
All Iconium was agog. As far as it is possible to set down definite dates in this era, it was about 46 A.D.