g its power and holiness, after thousands had been drawn by
its divine beauty, after cities and hamlets had been illuminated by its
radiance, had turned away, choosing darkness rather than light. They had
put from them the heavenly gift, when it was offered them. They had called
evil good, and good evil, till they had fallen victims to their wilful
self-deception. Now, though they might actually believe that they were
doing God service in persecuting His people, yet their sincerity did not
render them guiltless. The light that would have saved them from
deception, from staining their souls with blood-guiltiness, they had
wilfully rejected.

A solemn oath to extirpate heresy was taken in the great cathedral where,
nearly three centuries later, the "Goddess of Reason" was to be enthroned
by a nation that had forgotten the living God. Again the procession
formed, and the representatives of France set out to begin the work which
they had sworn to do. "At short distances scaffolds had been erected, on
which certain Protestant Christians were to be burned alive, and it was
arranged that the fagots should be lighted at the moment the king
approached, and that the procession should halt to witness the
execution."(341) The details of the tortures endured by these witnesses
for Christ are too harrowing for recital; but there was no wavering on the
part of the victims. On being urged to recant, one answered: "I only
believe in what the prophets and the apostles formerly preached, and what
all the company of saints believed. My faith has a confidence in God which
will resist all the powers of hell."(342)

Again and again the procession halted at the places of torture. Upon
reaching their starting-point at the royal palace, the crowd dispersed,
and the king and the prelates withdrew, well satisfied with the day's
proceedings, and congratulating themselves that the work now begun would
be continued to the complete destruction of heresy.

The gospel of peace which France had rejected was to be only too surely
rooted out, and terrible would be the results. On the 21st of January,
1793, two hundred and fifty-eight years from the very day that fully
committed France to the persecution of the Reformers, another procession,
with a far different purpose, passed through the streets of Paris. "Again
the king was the chief figure; again there were tumult and shouting; again
there was heard the cry for more victims; again there were black
sca