led to notice of late an improvement in their tone, for which we
cannot be too deeply thankful. This does not arise solely from the
neglect which now prevails of the ancient and highly recommended plan of
imprisoning, torturing, and roasting such obstinate heretics as are too
obtuse or too sharp-sighted to yield to milder methods of treatment.
Such incidents in history as the exposure of Christians to hungry beasts
in the Colosseum, a Smithfield burnt-offering of persistent saints, or a
Spanish auto-da-fe, with attending civic, ecclesiastical, and sometimes
even royal functionaries, and wide-encircling half-rejoicing and
half-compassionate multitudes, were not without their charms and
compensations for victims blessed with a fervid fancy or a deathless
purpose. These cruel scenes associated such with the illustrious dead
who have held life cheaper than truth, and gave them an opportunity of
saying to countless multitudes such as no pulpit-orator could attract
and sway,--"See how Christians die!" The liability to such trials turned
away the fickle from the assembly of the faithful and attracted the
magnanimous. When grim Puritans, in our early history, broke the
stubborn necks of peace-preaching Quakers, the latter often thought it a
special favor from Providence that they were permitted to bear so
striking a testimony against religious fanaticism. They felt, like John
Brown in his Virginian prison, that the best service they could render
to the cause they had loved so well was to love it even unto death.
Indeed, martyrs in mounting the scaffold have ever felt the sentiment,--

"Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own."

Such heroic treatment always relieves any cause from contemptuous
neglect, the one thing which is always harder to bear than the fires of
martyrdom. Every reader of Bunyan knows that he complains far less of
his twelve years' imprisonment than he exults over the success of his
prison born, world-ranging Pilgrim. He would doubtless have preferred
lying in that "den," Bedford jail, other twelve years to being unable to
say,--

"My Pilgrim's book has travelled sea and land,
Yet could I never come to understand
That it was slighted or turned out of door
By any kingdom, were they rich or poor."

The dreariest period in religious discussion commonly occurs when men
have just ceased to inflict legal pe