d to have a copy in his
possession, let him be put to death.'

Horrible as it seems, all these wicked commands were carried out. A
sow was slaughtered on the altar, and an image of Jupiter set up in
God's Holy Temple. More cruel than all, the Book of the Law was torn
and trodden underfoot.

Throughout Jerusalem and all the cities of Palestine bands of soldiers
went everywhere searching for copies of the Scriptures. Torn to
fragments, burnt with fire, often, alas! drenched with the life-blood
of those who loved them, now, indeed, the Books of the Bible were in
terrible danger, for the most powerful king of the fierce heathen world
was fighting directly against them!

'_O God, the heathen are come into Thine inheritance; Thy holy Temple
have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps.... The blood of
Thy servants have they shed like water round about Jerusalem; and there
was none to bury them._' (Psalm lxxix.)

So the cry went up from those faithful hearts who still dared to serve
the true God.

The altar--the Temple itself--was now defiled, made 'unclean'; the Book
of the Law had been torn to fragments; but His people could still cry
to the Lord, and He heard.

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, a