A book of martyrs

by Cornelia A. P. Comer

Serene no longer looked interested. The woman rose, and walked about the room, examining the maps and time-tables. By and by she came back and stopped beside Serene.

“If we’ve got to wait till nobody knows when, we might just as well go over there and see what’s goin’ on—to the church, I mean. Mebbe ’twould pass the time.”

Inside the little church the light was so subdued that it almost produced the grateful effect of coolness. As they sat down behind the small and scattered congregation, Serene felt that it was a place to rest. The service, which she had never heard before, affected her like music that she did not understand. The rector was a young man with a heavily lined face. His eyes were dark and troubled, his voice sweet and penetrating. When he began his sermon she became suddenly aware that she was hearing some one to whom what he discerned of spiritual truth was the overwhelmingly important thing in life, and she listened eagerly. This was St. Bartholomew’s day, it appeared. Serene did not remember very clearly who he was, but she understood this preacher when, dropping his notes and leaning over his desk, he seemed to be scrutinizing each individual face in the audience before him to find one responsive to his words.

He was not minded, he said, to talk to them of any lesson to be drawn from the life of St. Bartholomew, of whom so little was known save that he lived in and suffered for the faith. The one thought that he had to give had occurred to him in connection with that bloody night’s work in France so long ago, of which this was the anniversary, when thousands were put to death because of their faith.

“Such things do not happen nowadays,” he went on. “That form of persecution is over. Instead of it, we have seen the dawning of what may be a darker day, when those who profess the faith of Christ have themselves turned to persecute the faith which is in their hearts. Faith—the word means to me that trust in God’s plans for us which brings confidence to the soul even when we stand in horrible fear of life, and mental peace even when we are facing that which we cannot understand. We persecute our faith in many ingenious ways, but perhaps those torture themselves most whose religion is most emotional—those who are only sure that God is with them when they feel the peace of His presence in their hearts. A great divine said long ago that to love God thus is to love Him for the spiritual loaves and fishes, which He does not mean always to be our food. But for those who think that He is not with them when they are unaware of His presence so, I have this word: When you cannot find God in your hearts, then turn and look for Him in your lives. When you are soul-sick, discouraged, unhappy; when you feel neither joy nor peace, nor even the comfort of a dull satisfaction in earth; when life is nothing to you, and you wish for death, then ask yourself, What does God mean by this? For there is surely some lesson for you in that pain which you must learn before you leave it. You are not so young as to believe that you were meant for happiness. You know that you were made for discipline. And the discipline of life is the learning of the things God wishes us to know, even in hardest ways. But He is in the things we must learn, and in the ways we learn them. There is a marginal reading of the first chapter of the revised version of the Gospel of St. John which conveys my meaning: ‘That which hath been made was life in Him, and the life [or, as some commentators read, and I prefer it, simply life] was the light of men.’ That is, before Christ’s coming the light of men was in the experience to be gained in the lives He gave them. And it is still true. Not His life only, then, but your life and mine, which we know to the bitter-sweet depths, and whose lessons grow clearer and clearer before us, are to guide us. Life is the light of men. I sometimes think that this, and this only, is rejecting Christ—to refuse to find Him in the life He gives us.”

Serene heard no more. What else was said she did not know. She had seized upon his words, and was applying them to her own experiences with a fast-beating heart, to see if haply she had learned anything by them that “God wanted her to know.” She had loved unselfishly. Was not that something? She had learned that despair and distrust are not the attitudes in which loss may be safely met. She had become conscious in a blind way that the world was larger and nearer to her than it used to be, and she was coming to feel a sense of community in all human suffering. Were not all these good things?

When the congregation knelt for the last prayer, Serene knelt with them, but did not rise again. She did not respond even when her companion touched her on the shoulder before turning to go. She could not lift her face just then, full as it was of that strange rapture which came of the sudden clear realization that her life was the tool in the hands of the Infinite by which her soul was shaped. “Let me be chastened forever,” the heart cries in such a moment, “so that I but learn more of thy ways!”

Some one came slowly down the aisle at last, and stopped, hesitating, beside the pew where she still knelt. Serene looked up. It was the rector. He saw a slender girl in unbecoming dress, whose wild-rose face was quivering with excitement. She saw a man, not old, whose thin features nevertheless wore the look of one who has faced life for a long time dauntlessly—the face of a good fighter.

“Oh, sir, is it true what you said?” she demanded, breathlessly.

“It is what I live upon,” he answered, “the belief that it is true.” And then, because he saw that she had no further need of him, he passed on, and left her in the little church alone. When at length she recrossed the street to the station, the train was ready, and in another hour she was at home.