to prison. Then a cruel
stratagem was adopted that looked to the discovery of those who
secretly cherished faith. A decree went forth forbidding the jailer to
furnish food, making the prisoners 'dependent' upon friends without.

To come forward as a friend of these endungeoned was to incur the risk
of arrest and death, while to remain in hiding was to leave friends to
die of starvation. Then men counted life not dear unto themselves.
Heroism became a contagion. Even children dared death. An old
painting shows the guard awakened at midnight and gazing with wonder
upon a little child thrusting food between the iron bars to its father.
In the darkness the soldiers sleeping in the corridors heard the
rustling garments of some maiden or mother who loved life itself less
than husband or friend. These tides of sympathy made men strong
against torture; old men lifted joyful eyes toward those above them.
Loving and beloved, the disciples shared their burdens, and those in
the prison and those out of it together went to fruitful martyrdom.

When the flames of persecution had swept by and, for a time, good men
had respite, Apollos recalled with joy the heroism of those without the
prison who remembered the bonds of those within. With leaping heart he
called before his mind the vast multitudes in all ages who so fettered
through life--men bound by poverty and hedged in by ignorance; men
baffled and beaten in life's fierce battle, bearing burdens of want and
wretchedness, and by the heroism of the past he urged all men
everywhere to fulfill that law of sympathy that makes hard tasks easy
and heavy burdens light. Let the broad shoulders stoop to lift the
load with weakness; let the wise and refined share the sorrows of the
ignorant; let those whose health and gifts make them the children of
freedom be abroad daily on missions of mercy to those whose feet are
fettered; so shall life be redeemed out of its woe and want and sin
through the Christian sympathy of those who "remember men in the bonds
as bound with them."

Rejoicing in all of life's good things, let us confess that in our
world-school the divine teachers are not alone happiness and
prosperity, but also uncertainty and suffering, defeat and death.
Inventors with steel plates may make warships proof against bombs, but
no man hath invented an armor against troubles. The arrows of calamity
are numberless, falling from above and also shot up from beneath. Like
Achi