again each led a brother. To them succeeded, a nursery
maid, bearing the little Johannes with his blooming angel face, who
smiled upon the crowd and by his happy unconsciousness stirred the
hearts of the people even more than the sight of the father and
sisters, who followed their best beloved to the grave with a full
knowledge of their irreparable loss.

An immeasurable line of neighbors and friends closed the procession,
whose tears and sighs, an ample testimony of the worth of the deceased,
solemnized the burial instead of tolling bells and funereal music,
which the rigor of the new church government denied to heretics.

The corpse had now reached the grave. The bearers sat it down and
removed the lid of the coffin, and a loud lament filled the air at the
sight of the martyr. The kiss of the angel of death had removed all
traces of her late sufferings from her countenance. With softly closed
eyes, and a heavenly smile upon her lips, she lay, as if awaiting that
blessed morning whose aurora seemed already dawning upon her spiritual
vision.

With outward composure the widower approached the coffin, clasped the
folded hands of the pale corpse, murmured, 'Farewell, thou true one;
soon shall we meet again,'--and silently retired.

The weeping children now rushed forward, but the clergyman, Beer,
directed the servants to lead them back. He then stepped to the coffin,
requested the audience to be silent, and with a loud voice addressed
them as follows:

''Father forgive them, for they know not what they do!' These words of
Christ, with which he prayed for his persecutors, were the last words I
heard from the blessed being whose earthly remains we are now about to
consign to the grave. My anger was inflamed by the atrocities which
were daily committed in our city under the mantle of religion, and I
prayed that the avenging fire of God's wrath might descend and consume
our tormentors. This deceased saint checked my imprecation by calling
to my mind the divine prayer of our holy Savior, and with a chastened
and humble spirit I repeated after her: 'Father forgive them, for they
know not what they do.'

'And so must you henceforth pray, my hearers. Of the men who now by
divine permission pursue and persecute us, by far the greater number
are acting not from inveterate cruelty but under the influence of a
mistaken sense of religious duty, and desire to lead us back to that
path which they deem the only safe one; and thi