Martinus

“ Martini, "but times change men, as men change the times; so, I make no more manifestoes for my master, than for myself."
"But I wish you had taken more care of him!" returned Louis, rising from his seat; "Indeed Martini, after his having been once assailed, you ought not to have allowed him to set out alone."
"Allowed him!" retorted the Italian, "allowed my master! He has never been allowed in his life! He has always done just as his will impells him: and, I know not the man on earth, who dare to say to him, I withhold, or I allow!" ”

“ Let your worldly great men lead before their chariots captives with their hands bound behind their backs. Those accompanied the body of Martin who, under his guidance, had overcome the world. Let madness honor these earthly warriors with the united praises of nations. Martin is praised with the divine psalms, Martin is honored in heavenly hymns. Those worldly men, after their triumphs here are over, shall be thrust into cruel Tartarus, while Martin is joyfully received into the bosom of Abraham. Martin, poor and insignificant on earth, has a rich entrance granted him into heaven. ”

“ Martin, bishop of Rome, was born at Todi, in Italy. He was naturally inclined to virtue, and his parents bestowed on him an admirable education. He opposed the heretics called Monothothelites, who were patronized by the emperor Heraclius. Martin was condemned at Constantinople, where he was exposed in the most public places to the ridicule of the people, divested of all episcopal marks of distinction, and treated with the greatest scorn and severity. ”

“ And though he did not believe in the Incarnation, yet he held deity to be in a sense manifest in humanity; its saints and heroes became, in spite of innumerable frailties, after a sort divine; man underwent an apotheosis, and all life was touched with the dignity and the grace which it owed to its source. The 19th century had no more reverent thinker than Martineau; the awe of the Eternal was the very atmosphere that he breathed, and he looked at man with the compassion of one whose thoughts were full of God. ”

“ Martini learnt from the servants of the prison, that the priest's denunciation was no vain threat; for preparations were silently making for the Duke's removal to the Inquisition, as soon as the King could be brought to sign the warrant. All knew that such a warrant was the signal of death; and of such a death, that human nature shuddered at the bare idea of its horrors. Martini hastened to his master with the intelligence. He found him leaning over a map of the world, which lay on the table before him. Ripperda attended to all he said, with profound attention. ”

“ Drink it, Roberts!—That I should measure my life in terms of one night! One night with Martin, with his [302] young face and old eyes. With his laughter and his understanding. What agony to be born one night and die the same! Better not to be born at all.... Why, Martin, did you swagger through the door with your flapping dungarees and proud head?... Angels dancing in the eyes that hold only devils now. Such insolence! A bright, beautiful distillation of evil. Martin—the god of selfishness, salt to the desire. A blinding picture that grows with absence. ”

“ I questioned.
"Now let us divide our treasure, Martin—"
"But I bartered my share for the lives of—"
"Tush!" says he, and reaching a valise from shadowy corner he opened it and I beheld such a glory of flashing gems as nigh dazzled me with their splendour. "Look at 'em, Martin, look at 'em!" he whispered. "Here's love and hate, life and death, every good and all the sins—look at 'em!" And catching up a handful he let them fall, glittering, through his fingers. "Lord love me, Martin," he whispered, "'tis enough to turn a man's brain! Have ye counted 'em over, comrade?" ”

“ Around him the tops of the forest trees
Waving, made the sign of the Cross
And muttered their benedicites.
The woods were God’s first temples; and even now where does one feel so alone with one’s Maker? How sweet the solemn silence! where the freed spirit, freed from external influences, can hold communion with its heavenly Father. So felt Martin. The very birds seemed to him to be singing carols; and the insects to join, with their hum, the universal hymn of praise.
Oh how the serpent lurks in Eden—beneath earthly beauty lies the mystery of pain and suffering. ”

“ The old monk was launched on an endless subject when he began with St. Martin.
“But, alas!” he sighed in conclusion, “times are changed. The ravages of the barbarians and the exactions of the Romans have impoverished us all; and now the frightful hordes of these savage Huns may be on us any day. Perhaps also we are poorer in ourselves; we care more for the splendour of our churches than for the poverty of our brothers. We want Martin’s poverty of spirit to make us rich as Martin to help and save. We want his love and faith before we can see the visions he saw. ”

“ Martini coloured, and throwing a proud glance over his embroidery, exclaimed—"Signor, I have been some years with my master; and seniority of services, with some great men, has more consequence than short duties in higher posts."
"I wish it were the rule with all great men!" replied Louis, "And be assured Martini, I shall always have too much respect for your tried fidelity to your master, ever to wish to rival you in his good graces. ”

“ And running to Colombaik, on whose neck she threw herself, Martine cried out: "Did you hear your father? There is to be no war! What happiness! It is over! Let's rejoice!"
"Upon my soul, dear Martine, so much the better!" remarked the young tanner, returning the embrace of his wife. "We shall not recoil before war, but peace is better. So, then, father, everything is adjusted? The bishop pays, or surrenders the horse? Justice will be enforced against that scamp of a Black John? And the King, true to his oath, backs the Commune against the bishop?" ”

“ This comprehensive adaptation to the exigencies of mankind is a reasonable object of admiration. But nothing can be more absurd than the appeal to it in proof either of preternatural guidance, or of human artifice, in the constitutive process of the Roman Church. There is nothing very surprising in the fact, that a system which is the product of three factors should contain them all. No doubt if these factors are, as we contend, primary and indestructible features of our unperverted nature, no religion can be divine and completely true which refuses to take any of them up ”

“ No one in my city of Tronyem now fears the angry and cunning fire-giant Loke; but every citizen closes his eyes in peace when he hears the midnight cry of the watch, 'Except the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.' [6] In the wilds of the country every man's faith will hereafter be his watchman, crying out upon all that happens, 'It is the Lord's hand: let Him do what seemeth to Him good!' This might have been said, Erica, as it appears to me, at every turn of your story, where you and your friends were not in fault. ”

“ Génifrède! We may sleep in peace. General Brunet will hardly be able to digest your hospitality, my Margot; but you may sleep. Who else?” he asked, as he looked round upon his trembling household.
“We are following,” said Monsieur Pascal, who had his wife and Euphrosyne on either arm.
“Pardon me,” said General Brunet. “Our orders extend only to General Toussaint and his family. You must remain. Reverend father,” he said to Father Laxabon, “you will remain also—to comfort any friends of General Toussaint whom you may be able to meet with to-morrow. They will be all inconsolable, no doubt.” ”

“ Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar second only, in Mediæval art, to the Gospel records of the Lord’s own acts of tender grace and Divine self-emptying. As we trace, step by step, the unceasing service of Henry Martyn to men for love of his Master, we shall find a succession of modern parallels to the act of St. Martin, who, when a lad of eighteen with his regiment at Amiens, himself moneyless, answered the appeal of a beggar, shivering at the city gates in a cruel winter, by drawing his dagger, dividing his military cloak, and giving half of it to the naked man. ”

“ With a thousand wily arts did the treacherous devil
strive in some way to deceive the holy man,
and he showed himself visible in divers phantasms
to the saint, in the appearance of the gods of the heathen;
sometimes in Jove's form, who is called Thor,
sometimes in Mercury's who is called Odin,
sometimes in that of Venus, the foul goddess,
whom men call Fricg; and into many other shapes
the devil transformed himself in the bishop's sight.
Against this Martin always marked himself
with the sign of the cross, and sang his office,
remaining undismayed, and ever trusting in God. ”

“ The Lord’s chosen would stand fast. A seed would be left in England,—and also in Scotland,—from which a harvest might arise to the Lord at some future day: but was England going to allow her kings to hand her over to Rome, as a tenant hands over his Michaelmas gift to his landlord? Was such a lapse as this a fitting result of the conflict the last generation had waged, and of the death the father of these two kings had died?
Some murmurings of emotion had been heard at former points of the discourse: and now several voices exclaimed that a Protestant king must be had. ”

“ James Martineau, a man universally honoured in all sections of the universal church, confesses:—“I am constrained to say that neither my intellectual preference nor my moral admiration goes heartily with the Unitarian heroes, sects, or productions of any age. Ebionites, Arians, Socinians, all seem to me to contrast unfavourably with their opponents, and to exhibit a type of thought and character far less worthy, on the whole, of the true genius of Christianity. I am conscious that my deepest obligations, as a learner from others, are in almost every department to writers not of my own creed. ”

“ XXXIII. The holy man was once travelling with his company,
when there came to him suddenly a great crowd of men,
and filled the field through which Martin was passing
as if for wonder at the holy man;
they were all heathen, and no man of the town
to which they belonged knew the Saviour.
Then Martin perceived that he ought to work a miracle,
and preached the Lord's word to the foolish heathen,
and with frequent sighings sorely bemoaned
that so great a multitude should not know the Almighty God. ”

“ Then sprang up over all the world the Arian heresy,
and Martin with faith strongly contended against it
until he was tortured with cruel torments,
and openly scourged and driven out of the city.
Then he went back again to the Italian land,
and reared for himself a monastery in Milan,
because the aforesaid Hilary was gone into exile
by reason of the same heresy which then erroneously sprang up;
but the heretics soon drave him thence,
and so he departed thence to an island
called Gallinaria, with a holy mass-priest
who had lived long in the desert on roots of vegetables. ”

“ Martin on the mind of Christendom,—is, very absolutely, the business of every rational being in any Christian realm.
You are to understand, then, first of all, that the especial character of St. Martin is a serene and meek charity to all creatures. He is not a preaching saint—still less a persecuting one: not even an anxious one. Of his prayers we hear little—of his wishes, nothing. What he does always, is merely the right thing at the right [Pg 16] moment;—rightness and kindness being in his mind one: an extremely exemplary saint, to my notion. ”

“ About that same to-morrow morning, I want both you and Martini to understand clearly that I am quite happy and satisfied, and could ask no better thing of Fate. Tell that to Martini as a message from me; he is a good fellow and a good comrade, and he will understand. You see, dear, I know that the stick-in-the-mud people are doing us a good turn and themselves a bad one by going back to secret trials and executions so soon, and I know that if you who are left stand together steadily and hit hard, you will see great things. ”

“ So Martin's coming was made known to the priests
through the devil's roaring, though they knew it not before.
As often as he desired to cast out devils from the insane,
he prostrated himself on the church-floor,
clothed with hair-cloth and bestrewed with ashes,
lying in his prayers with locked doors,
and the devils afterward were immediately driven
from the afflicted men with wonderful gesticulations;
that the saying might be fulfilled in Martin,
that holy men shall judge angels. ”

“ He sent forth in his priests' garments, in sight of the Romans; and when they saw that he was a man of peace, full of years also and wasted with hunger, they allowed him to go whither he would.
"Though I well know," he said, "that in all this tribulation the word of the Holy One is fulfilled, and though I believe that in his gospel there is an abundant recompence unto all, my spirit is heavy within me. The blood of my people is before me, and their wailings are in mine ear, and I would fain know the issue of these troubles. ”

“ What says the Pope!”
“Does he suppose us deaf,” replied Toussaint, “that we have not heard of the fate of our race in Guadaloupe, and Martinique, and Cayenne? Does he suppose us blind, that we do not see the pirates he has commissioned hovering about the shores of Africa, as the vulture preparing to strike his prey? Ignorant as we are, does he suppose us stupid enough to be delighted when, free already, we find ourselves surrounded by fifty-four war-ships, which come to promise us liberty?”
“He does not know, apparently, how our commerce with the world brings us tidings of all the world.” ”