MANY a tale of blood and tears has come to us of late from far Euphrates, and from the regions round about. It is not so much the aim of the following pages to tell these over again as to show the light that, even there, shines through the darkness. "I do set My bow in the cloud" is true of the densest, most awful cloud of human misery. As in the early ages of Christianity, "what little child, what tender woman" was there
“Who did not clasp the cross with a light laugh,
Or wrap the burning robe round, thanking God"?
As in later times, of no less fervent faith, "men took each other's hands and walked into the fire, and women sang a song of triumph while the gravedigger was shoveling the earth over their living faces," so now, in our own days, there still walks in the furnace, with His faithful servants, " One like unto the Son of God.'
Every instants of faith or heroism given in these pages is not only true in itself, but typical of a hundred others. The tale is told, however feebly and inadequately, to strengthen our own faith and quicken our own love. It is told also to stir our own hearts to help and save the remnant that is left. The past is past, and we cannot change it now; but we CAN still save from death, or from fates worse than death, the children of Christian parents, who are helpless and desolate orphans because their parents were Christians, and true to the Faith they professed and the Name they loved.
D. ALCOCK.