March 26

Revelation 17:6—Drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

Pagan and papal Rome have had to contend with an unbroken line of the witnesses of Jesus. In the words of an exiled Huguenot, "Since the birth of anti-Christianity, there have not been wanting those who have cried against its errors and idolatries." They have been called by various names—Paulicians, Waldenses, Albigenses, Wicliffites, Lollards, Lutherans, Zwinglians, Pietists, and Schismatics; but God never left Himself without witness. They might all have adopted the symbol and motto of one of them, "A lighted candle in a candlestick," with the words, "The light shineth in darkness."

But how terribly has the vision of the text been verified! Think of the persecutions under the Emperors, when the entire empire was filled with fire and sword. Take the single instance of the Empress Theodora, who slaughtered and drowned one hundred thousand of these Paulician Cbristians. During the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, Romanism, then in the plenitude of its power, gathered itself for a great, determined, and persistent effort to crush out all that opposed its supremacy, and to clear Christendom of heresy. And wherever any revival of true religion took place, or any confessors of Christ could be found, they were hunted, if possible, to death.

We have not yet resisted unto blood, in the strife against the sin and evil of our time. It is not that the world or the professing Church loves us better, but, probably, we are deficient in the spirit that lived in the martyr’s breast. O Spirit of the living God, kindle that flame of love again which shall make us willing to suffer the loss of all, even of life, for the sake of Jesus!