Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 edition. Excerpt: ... FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH. "Woman's heart is tenderness, Yet woman weel may dare The deftest deed, an' tremble nane, Gin true love be her care." Scottish Ballad. HE fourth of November, 1698. This was the day on which Claude Brousson was to make the last sacrifice for the faith for which he had already given up friends and country, home and family, and ease of body and of mind. It only now remained that he should deliver up his life to Him who gave it, and by whose will he held it. Born in happier days, when Protestants could claim the protection of law, even though that law was harsh, Brousson spent his early manhood defending the Protestant faith in the law courts of his country. And when this was no longer possible, he became a leader of the persecuted people--a preacher of righteousness in a dark ened land. Even his enemies could not shut their eyes to the light of his pious and peaceful life--to the self-sacrificing love, that to our day throws hallowed splendour round the memory of this man. It was on the Peyrou of Montpellier that the sentence of the law was to be carried into effect. This sentence had been that he should first be tortured on the rack, then broken on the wheel, and finally strangled. Already the rack had been applied in vain, and in mercy the order of the remaining punishments had been reversed. To inflict these all was now prepared. The town flocked to see the sight. Men, women, and even children stood massed together on the barren tableland, which, rising above the city, was then the common place of execution for the whole of the surrounding district. In the centre of this long broad space of waste barren land a scaffold was erected. Workmen had been busy at it during the early part of the day; but it was now evening, ...