They did not obey the wicked heathen king; and the stories of their courage thrill our hearts as we read them, for they show us what those saints of old suffered rather than deny their God.
'They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy).' (Hebrews xi. 37, 38.)
It was of these times especially that the writer of Hebrews was thinking when he penned those words.
Seven young men, the sons of one woman, were with their mother brought before the king's officer—or, as some say, before the king himself—for refusing to break the laws of God.
They were cruelly beaten, but one of them cried:
'What wouldst thou ask of us? We are ready to die, rather than to transgress the laws of our fathers!'
The torturers thereupon seized the brave fellow, and so cruelly tormented him that he died, his mother and brothers being forced to look on.
But though their faces grew pale as death, and they quivered with anguish to see their loved one suffer, they gazed steadfastly at each other.
'The Lord looketh upon us, the Lord God hath comfort in us,' they said.
Then the second son was taken, and before he died he cried with a loud voice, looking his heathen judge full in the face: