The hidden treasure

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

Jack's mind was at first hardly in a state to enjoy his ride. He had a sharp battle with himself before he could subdue the anger and wounded pride which stirred within him; and his conscience told him that he had not been without blame. He had spoken harshly and scornfully to his sister, and made an ungenerous use of the secret she had confided to him.

Anne was deeply angered at him, that was plain; and he had, by offending her, lessened his chance of influencing her for good. He had another cause of disturbance. It seemed to him that much as he had thought on the subject, he had never realized before, the trouble he was likely to bring on his friends, especially on his father, by accepting the new doctrines, as they were called. He said to himself, as he rode along, that he might be taken up and thrown into jail any day, and that there would be probably no release from prison for him, save by the ignominious death of the stake, or the still more shameful and fatal way of recantation.

He pictured to himself the stake and chain, the crowd of scornful gazers and the blazing torch, or the scaffold set up in the market-place where the apostate must stand bearing his fagot while a monk preached from the pulpit over his head.

"It would kill my father in either case," said he to himself. "He would never recover the grief and the disgrace. And if it should prove a delusion after all! If Anne should be right and Master Fleming and the others wrong!"

It was a fearful combat that Jack fought out with the Tempter that sunny autumn day, as he rode over the heath and along the still green hedgerows. The travellers he met saw in him some youth going out on a holiday excursion, and marvelled at his sombre face and compressed lip.

It rarely happens in these days that any young person is called to really give up all for Christ, to choose between His love and service and the love and respect of all nearest and dearest friends; and when it does so chance, there is usually everything in the sympathy of Christians to make the task as easy as it can be made. Moreover such a choice, though it may bring grief and estrangement, involves no actual loss or disgrace.

But in the time whereof I am writing, the case was very different. The man or woman who embraced the new doctrines, as they were called, not only came out from all the dear old customs and sanctities of the familiar home life, not only broke up "the old sweet habit of confidence," but he brought shame and public disgrace into his own family circle, if he did not entail upon his friends absolute pecuniary loss and serious danger to life and liberty.

I have sometimes heard it said, that those martyrs by the stake and the rack had an easier work to do, and deserved less credit therefore, than those have who bear with the trials and vexations of every-day life. I think those who say so forget one thing; namely, that the martyrs who perished on the stake or rack, had just the same wearying, worrying, every-day trials and cares that we have, in addition to the one great trial.

Anne Ascue had her household vexations, and those no small ones; her trials with husband and children and servants, lack of money, and uncertainty as to the future. Tyndale and Frith had to contend with misprints and misunderstandings, the stupidity and dulness of printers and proof-readers unused to the language in which they worked, with pirated editions, and all the other manifold annoyances which beset authors and publishers nowadays. Were these, think you, any easier to bear for the great trial which was always in the background? Were the clouds any the more transparent because of the total eclipse which was impending? I think not. How then were they borne?

I think the answer is to be found in this—that these men and women who thus took their lives in their hands, and went forth to witness for their Lord in the midst of an adulterous and perverse generation, lived daily very near to God. They realized in a wonderful way God's love for them, His constant care for them, His superintending providence which would let nothing happen which was not for their good.