(the Story of Bohemia Continued)
OUR last talk closed with the close of a noble life. That end was the beginning of many things, which are not ended yet. But before we return to the land Hus loved and labored for, we must take one more look at the guilty Council. A year later it added to its iniquities the judicial murder of his friend and pupil, Jerome of Prague, who, in his effort to save him, had become involved in his doom. Jerome underwent a long and most cruel imprisonment, until at last his faith and his courage gave way under his sufferings, and he consented to retract the opinions of Hus, and to acknowledge the justice of his condemnation. This last was the hardest thing of all for him to do, for he loved Hus as his own soul. He soon repented, and retracted his retractation. Then he had to die. As the executioner was going to light the fagots behind his back, he said to him, “Do it before my face. If I had been afraid to die, I need not have come hither.” To him also is attributed a saying which we should have expected rather from the lips of his self-forgetting friend and master. Seeing a poor husbandman bringing a faggot to the pile, he is said to have exclaimed, “Oh, holy Simplicity! Thrice more guilty is he who deceives thee.”
But the Council had other things to do beside the condemnation of heretics and the suppression of heresy. It had been called together to put an end to the schism in the Papacy, and to reform the abuses of the Church. All honest men everywhere acknowledged these abuses and bewailed them. But before proceeding to reform the Church, the Council should have reformed itself — and this was just what it was neither ready nor willing to do. Many of its members were amongst the worst men in the Church, and setting the worst example. The thing they most hated and dreaded in all the world was the cry for reform, so they raised a counter cry to stop it — “We will first elect a Pope. Without that the Church is a body without a head. It can do nothing. We will have a Pope — a lawful Pope — whom all men will obey. And he will reform the Church.”
But the more upright amongst them feared, and with good reason, that once the new Pope got his foot in the stirrup there would be no more talk of reform. They made stout answer, “No, let us reform the Church first, and then elect a Pope, a good man, who will promise to carry out the reforms, and will keep his word.”
They were the best men in the Council who said this, but they were the minority. One of the foremost amongst them was our countryman, Robert Hallam, Bishop of Salisbury. His unwearied efforts for moral reform are worthy of all praise. But not quite two months after the death of John Hus he died also very suddenly: it has been said that the tragedy he witnessed hastened his own end. But I know not if this be true.
Another earnest advocate for reform was Jean Gerson, the Chancellor of the Sorbonne, of whom Hus had said that if he lived he would answer his accusations, if he died God would answer for him at the Day of Judgment. Gerson’s heart was true to God and to righteousness, although — as a soldier might do in the din and smoke of a battle — he had mistaken a brother for a foe. He never ceased to press for reform, but the Council would have none of it. They turned against him — him, the champion of orthodoxy, and actually accused him of heresy! They could not sustain the charge — it was insult they meant and not injury — but the insult cut deep. Moreover, the year Hus died was the year of the Battle of Agincourt; and we all know that then England conquered France. Gerson, a patriotic Frenchman, felt most bitterly the humiliation of his country; and besides, he himself lost everything — his office of Chancellor and his home in Paris. It seemed as if the Church and the world had combined to crush him. He refused tempting offers of asylum and preferment from some of the princes at the Council, who respected and admired him; and, having dismissed all his attendants, he left Constance alone and on foot, in the disguise of a pilgrim. He had always esteemed himself a pilgrim and a stranger upon earth, taking his surname of “Gerson” from the Hebrew “Gershom” — “A stranger here.” Thus, poor and solitary, he returned to France. He went to Lyons, where his brother was Prior of the Cistercian Monastery, and spent his last days with him, very humbly and quietly. He used to take pleasure in teaching the poor little children of the town to know and love their Saviour. Some things he said which make us think he was sorry for what he had done to Hus — such as this: “If John Hus had had proper advocates he would not have been condemned.” Still more significant are other words of his: “That man who is put to death in hatred of justice and of truth, which he honors and defends, is worthy in the sight of God of the name of martyr, whatever be the judgment of man.” It was a labor of love to him to teach the little children, but he asked them for a recompense. They were to say for him a short prayer, “O Lord, have pity on Thy poor servant, Gerson! “God, indeed, had pity on His poor servant — as He has on all His servants, whatever mistakes they may make. His tomb in Lyons bears the inscription, “Repent, and believe the Gospel,” and also his favorite motto, “Sursum Corda” — “Lift up your hearts.” To that voice, that speaks to us across the centuries, we make our glad response — “We lift them up unto the Lord,” in thankfulness for all His servants who have departed this life in His faith and fear, and rest with Him now in His home above. For aught we know, John Gerson and John Hus may have met together there.
We turn back to Bohemia. There the tidings of the death of Hus called forth a wail of sorrow — ay, and a cry of indignation too — which might well have “echoed to the tingling stars.” All ranks, all classes united in loving his memory, and execrating his murderers. And there were many amongst the warlike barons and the stout burghers and peasantry who burned to avenge him. These sentiments ere long were intensified by persecution. For the Council proceeded to condemn the writings and the doctrines of Hus, to fulminate against those who held them, and to order their punishment. The new Pope, Martin V., confirmed the decree of the Council, and Wenceslaus, the weak and wicked king of Bohemia, let Pope and Council have their way. Then martyrdoms began; and the story of one of these shall be given, on account of the Romance in it.
The burgomaster of Leitmeritz was a bitter persecutor. He condemned a band of Hussites (as they now began to be called) to be drowned in the river, which had certainly the advantage of being a more merciful death than burning. Amongst them was a young man to whom his own daughter was betrothed. The girl had prayed her father with many tears to spare him, but he was obdurate. Then she held her peace and dried her eyes, for she thought of something she could do. When the heretics were bound hand and foot and thrown into the river, she watched her opportunity, slipped somehow through the line of soldiers on the bank, and swam out to her lover. With the sharp knife she had hidden in her bosom she cut the cords that bound him. She thought she could have saved him thus. But nothing more is known save that, next morning, the two were washed ashore together —
“Locked in one another’s arms, and silent in a long embrace.”
There were other martyrdoms too. But the people of Bohemia — like those of Holland, only more quickly — began to say to each other, “These things shall not go on.” And presently they said too —
“We have steel in our hearts and our hands,
We are thousands that fear not to die.”
Eventually they took up arms; and a man arose to lead them. This was the celebrated John Ziska, “the terrible blind man.” Already he had lost one eye, and he lost the other during the war, and became quite blind. But he continued to lead the army with undaunted courage and with consummate skill, and to do wonderful feats of arms. It may well be said that —
“His oaken spear
Was true to that knight forlorn,
When the hosts of a thousand were scattered, like deer
At the blast of the hunter’s horn.
When he strode on the wreck of each well-fought field
With the raven-haired chiefs of his native land,
His lance was not shivered on helmet or shield,
And the sword that seemed fit for archangel to wield
Was light in his terrible hand.”
Ziska of the sword, as he truly was, is called also Ziska of the Cup. The giving of the Cup to the laity in the Holy Communion had been introduced, or rather reintroduced, amongst the followers of Hus during his imprisonment. He had never done it himself; but he approved it by letter, saying it was a primitive custom and conformable to Holy Scripture. So the Cup grew rapidly to be the watchword and the symbol of his followers. Ziska had the Cup on his standard, and a gigantic Cup adorned the tower of the Tein Church, the chief church of the Hussites in Prague. It is still the emblem on the seal of the Reformed Church of Bohemia.
Over many a well-fought field, in those strange, wild years, did the Standard of the Cup wave in triumph, and the famous song of Ziska and the Cup sound forth from the victors’ lips—
“Soldiers of God arise,
And combat for His laws!
Implore His present help,
Maintain His holy cause
For he who holds the Lord his friend
Must ever conquer in the end.
Dread not the foeman’s might,
Nor fear his vast array!
Lift up your hearts to God,
And fight for Him this day
No foot breadth to the foeman yield,
But die or conquer on the field.”
Three crusades were proclaimed against the Hussites, and three times the brave Bohemian nation — they were a brave nation — made stout resistance to the invaders, and drove them back from their frontiers; they even retaliated, and invaded the German territories in their turn.
But amidst and underneath these scenes of strife and bloodshed, what we seek, and what we desire to find, are the evidences of that faith and love and loyalty to Christ in which Hus lived and for which he died. Amongst the Hussites there soon arose the two parties sure to be found in free communities — the party that wanted to stop, and the party that wanted to go on. These were called respectively Calixtines and Taborites — the Calixtines from Calix, a cup — the giving of the Cup to the laity being the reform they most desired; also the acknowledgment of the supremacy of the Holy Scriptures, and the free preaching of the Word of God — if these were granted them, they had no wish to separate from Rome. The Taborites went much farther — as far, it seems, as we Protestants do now. They got their name from a hill called Mount Tabor, which was in the midst of a district where Hus used to preach, and the people were devoted to his doctrines. Mount Tabor became a gathering-place whither multitudes used to flock, and to hold great Revival meetings, as we should call them now — only these were monster meetings indeed, like ten or twenty rolled together. Mount Tabor itself and the district around it would be filled with the crowds of people, and many seem to have encamped and stayed there permanently. We cannot doubt that it was the scene of a genuine Revival, though there was also, as was inevitable under the circumstances, an admixture of wild excitement and of fanaticism. There sprang up in the minds of these persecuted people a thought — a hope — which has often throughout the Church’s history been sent to her in times of special trial and difficulty. They looked for the Second Coming of Christ. They believed it must be near — and it might be immediate. Any day, any hour the heavens above them might open, and then they would see Him — Him whom their souls loved —
“The Lamb for sinners slain;
Redeemer, King, Creator,
In bliss return to reign.”
But the heavens did not open, as we know. They have not opened yet. Nearly five hundred years have passed away since those men of Bohemia looked for Him, watched for Him, waited for Him, and died in faith, “not having received the promise.” And still we watch and wait — crying to Him often, “Lord, behold, the world which Thou lovest is sick — wilt Thou not come and save it?” And still He “abides in the place where He is,” — not two days, but nigh upon two thousand years. Yet for those who, loving His appearing, have died, or have still to die in faith, there is nothing lost. For each of these Death is but the messenger whom the Master “sends to fetch the willing one home. The same preparation suffices for both, and the loving heart is satisfied with either.” Yes, and in His own time the whole Church shall be satisfied too.
We have a curious and interesting glimpse of these Taborites, as seen from the outside. They were once honored by the visit of a Cardinal, the learned, accomplished, and amiable Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterward Pope Pius II. The Cardinal, traveling for his amusement, happened to find himself near Mount Tabor, and felt curious to see what these Bohemian Hussites were like. So he paid them a visit, and was received not only with the utmost courtesy, but with warm and openhearted hospitality. They supplied all his wants, and won from him an unstinted meed of praise. He bore witness that these peasants in ragged frocks “showed the good manners and the courtesy of nobles and of princes.”
As time passed on there were many troubles, and much contention between the Calixtines and the Taborites. Rome tried to attract the Calixtines to herself by a few concessions, soon to be withdrawn; and she was in great measure successful. She even induced them to join her in persecuting the Taborites. Yet all the time those that in both parties feared the Lord and clung to Christ above all things “spake often one to another.” They even began to unite, and to call each other Brethren. They were chiefly amongst the Taborites, but no doubt some of the Calixtines joined them also; and one of the Archbishops of Prague, named Rockyzana, was their friend, though a rather lukewarm one. But he had a nephew named Gregory, an earnest, devoted man of God, who was to him as a son.
At one time, in Prague, a partial persecution arose against these Brethren, who were accused, quite falsely, of disloyalty to the King. Gregory, who chanced to be in the city, was present at a devotional meeting which was broken in upon by the magistrates, and those present taken to prison. Here they were put to the torture, to wring from them the evidence of political designs which in fact did not exist. Gregory was racked so cruelly that he fell into a death-like swoon.
Meanwhile the Archbishop, who had been ignorant of the whole, was told by some one of the danger of his nephew. In much distress he rushed off to the prison, and saw his kinsman, as he thought, lying dead. With tears and lamentations he bewailed him, crying out in his anguish, “Would to God I were with thee, my Gregory!”
But Gregory was not dead, nor his work done yet. He recovered, and resumed his position as a leader amongst his brethren. He obtained for them from his uncle the gift of the Castle of Lititz with the surrounding district. To this lonely place, the safer for its loneliness, those who sought a pure faith and a simple worship thronged from other parts of Bohemia, and also from Moravia. There they found shelter from persecution, brotherly counion and sympathy, and opportunity for the study of God’s Word and for prayer.
They soon began to say to one another, “We no longer belong to the Church of Rome; but some Church, some organization we ought to have. We ought also to have a regular Ministry, duly ordained to administer the Sacraments and to preach the Word of God, and we wish to have bishops, presbyters, and deacons, as there were in the early days of the Church.” But how were they to accomplish this? “We must get,” they said, “someone who has himself been consecrated as a bishop to consecrate two or three of our brethren, who will then be our bishops, and ordain our pastors for us.” So, after much deliberation, they chose out nine of their most saintly and eminent members. Then they took twelve slips of paper, on three of which they wrote the word est; the rest they left blank. They put in the three extra slips because they said, “If God does not wish us to proceed farther in this matter, He will cause the three ests not to be drawn.”
They gave the bag with the papers to a little boy who did not know the meaning of what he was doing, and told him to give one to each of the nine men. All the three ests were drawn, and by excellent men, well suited to the office they were destined for. They did actually receive consecration as bishops, at the hands, as it would appear, of two Waldensian bishops who belonged to a colony of Waldenses settled in Moravia. This was the formal beginning of the Church of the United Brethren of Bohemia and Moravia, which has rendered such faithful, loving, devoted and heroic service to God and to His cause. From amidst the turmoil and confusion of that evil time it arose pure and peaceful, as the dove from the heap of refuse with “her wings covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold.”
During the remainder of the fifteenth century and part of the sixteenth, the Church of the United Brethren — or the Church of the Unity, as it was commonly called — endured much persecution. One story of that time I should like to tell. The Brethren had a bishop named John Augusta, a born leader of men, with great abilities, untiring energy and splendid virtues, though not quite without what the French would call “the defects of his qualities.” The Emperor Ferdinand I., whom we know already as the brother and successor of Charles V., was also King of Bohemia. He was a bigot and a persecutor, and his hatred of the Bohemian Protestants was aggravated by the suspicion (unjust, as we believe) that they were plotting to dethrone him, and to make our friend, John Frederick the Great-hearted, king in his place. Augusta was the special object of his wrath, but he did not find it easy to get him into his power, so well was he sheltered by his devoted flock. At last however, by means of a plot devised by one Schtineich, with what has been truly called “Satanic treachery,” he and his deacon Bilek were both arrested. They were brought to the “White Tower” in Prague, where both of them were tortured, and with the most horrible and ingenious cruelty. The accounts of the bishop’s sufferings will indeed scarcely bear perusal. He endured them with splendid heroism, refusing steadfastly to deny his Faith, to confess a treason of which he knew himself innocent, or to say a word which could imperil any of his brethren. When asked what they were doing, his answer was, “They are seeking refuge everywhere in impassioned prayer to God.” Bilek also behaved with very noble constancy. Twice over were the cruel tortures repeated, till both the victims were left almost dead, though still unsubdued in spirit.
The grand old castle of Pürglitz, about twenty-five miles west of Prague, stands on the top of its conical hill, girded around by lesser hills covered with dense forests. To this fortress-prison, for what reason we know not, the exhausted sufferers were brought, weak as they were, and covered with horrible, untended wounds. They were brought in separate wagons, so they had not even the consolation of exchanging a word or a look; and on their arrival they were thrust into separate dungeons. Small as were the windows of these cellars, they had been carefully blocked up, so that all the light that came into each was through an opening four inches square. For years they never left their dungeons; they never saw each other’s faces. They never saw anyone, indeed, except the gaoler and the guard. Their imprisonment lasted, in the bishop’s case sixteen, in Bilek’s thirteen years — happily not in all its horrors all the time.
A frequent visitor to Pürglitz was the Archduke Ferdinand, the Emperor’s son, who came to hunt in the forest that surrounded the castle. Some years before, this young prince, on a visit to Augsburgh, saw on a balcony the fair face of Philippine Welser, daughter of one of the famous “merchant princes” of that city. He saw — and he loved, with an honorable, constant, chivalrous love. The Emperor stormed, the Court lifted up its hands in horror at the mésalliance. Nevertheless, though not until after much delay and many difficulties, the Emperor’s son and the merchant’s daughter were wedded, and lived together most happily. The Archduchess Philippine—
“Shaped her heart with woman’s meekness
To all duties of her rank,”
and has left behind her a fragrant memory, which lingers still. At last, in a good hour for the prisoners of Pürglitz, the Archduke brought her with him there.
The story of the bishop and his companion awakened in her compassionate heart a great pity, not unmixed with reverence. She showed them every kindness in her power; she even made, then and afterward, earnest endeavors to procure their liberation. But for that the time was not yet. When Easter drew on — the Easter of 1561 — she came herself to the bishop’s dungeon, and asked him what he desired most by way of an Easter boon, promising to get it for him if she could.
In answer, the bishop prayed that he and Bilek might be permitted to spend the Easter festival together in fellowship and in freedom, reminding her that the Roman governor of old was wont to release a prisoner at the Passover Feast. She promised it should be done; and then she went, with the same inquiry, to the dungeon of Bilek. He asked for the same boon as the bishop, and almost in the same words; which surprised her greatly, for she knew there could not have been any communication between them. She herself was going to Prague to spend Easter there with her husband, and she obtained his permission for the favor. Her letter to the governor announcing it came to Pürglitz on Good Friday. He happened, when he received it, to be in the dungeon of Bilek. He told him the good news, and led him out himself into the courtyard, where two chairs had already been placed. He bade him sit down.
“How long is it since you have seen the bishop?” he asked.
“It is eight years,” said Bilek.
“Would you know him if you saw him? “
Before he answered, Bilek looked up. Two were approaching — the governor’s wife and the bishop, with his white hair, worn frame, and feeble step. Next moment he and Bilek were locked in each other’s arms, with a gush of happy tears. The governor and his wife wept with them. There, in the fresh air and under the open sky, which for so long they had not seen, they were allowed two blessed hours together; but their promised days of grace did not begin until Easter Sunday. For that day, and the two that followed, they were allowed the freedom of the castle, and treated by the governor as guests. With such dignity, courtesy, and modesty did they bear themselves that they won all hearts; and when they had to return to their dungeons they were not the only ones to regret it. From that time their captivity was softened in many ways; but weary years had yet to pass before the obdurate Emperor would yield to the pleadings of his son and grant their release. However, it was granted at last, and they died among their own people.
The Emperor Ferdinand I. was succeeded, both as Emperor and King of Bohemia, by his son, Maximilian II., an enlightened and amiable prince, under whom the Churches had rest. The latter part of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth century were the halcyon days of Bohemian Protestantism, and indeed of Bohemian nationality.
The Church of the Unity was the most numerous and the most active Protestant Church in the country. But it was not the only one. The Lutheran and the Reformed Churches were also largely represented there. So the three Communions very wisely made a “concord” or alliance together; they were not one, but they were united in faith, hope, and charity; and thus they were enabled to live together in peace, and to pursue the work of God in harmony. They were at this time the majority, probably the great majority, of the nation. A golden age for Bohemia seemed to be beginning; the country grew in wealth and prosperity, in art, in literature, and in learning— above all, in the best kind of learning.
Our great Reformer, Tyndale, when he resolved to translate the Bible, boasted that he would make “the boy that driveth the plough” know more of religion than those who were then the Doctors of Divinity. It was said that in Bohemia at that time the boy that drove the plough could not only read the Bible in his own tongue, but could read it in Latin also, and take his part intelligently in any dispute about its meaning. Men may have thought then — probably they did think — that Bohemia was destined to take a high place in the coming age and to fulfill a noble destiny. But this was not to be. A. great curse fell upon the land, destroying all its progress in the present, all its hope for the future. And so the glory departed, never since to return.
Some years ago the river upon which Prague is built — the Moldan — overflowed its banks, and a good deal of damage was done. Our friend the Bohemian pastor mentioned before, wrote to us about it, telling how the beautiful Bridge of Prague, adorned with splendid statues, had been broken; but he added, with evident satisfaction, that not one of the statues was carried away by the flood except that of Ignatius Loyola, “ the scorch of Bohemia.” He meant to say “the scourge of Bohemia,” but, though he writes English exceedingly well for a foreigner, he made a slip there. Yet it only brought him nearer the truth. The Jesuit was a “scorch” more than a “scourge” by so much as the anguish and the destruction of fire are worse than the blows of the scourge or the rod.
After the good and wise Emperor Maximilian came his son Rudolph, a dreamer and astrologer, who took little interest in the affairs of State. After him again came Mathias, who died childless, nominating as his heir his cousin Ferdinand. This Ferdinand was the pupil and the tool of the Jesuits; they had him soul, body, and estate. The Bohemians had obtained a charter guaranteeing their liberties, civil and religious. It was called the “Majestäts Brief” or “Letter of Majesty,” and they looked upon it very much as we do upon Magna Charta. But Ferdinand, under the baneful influence of the Jesuits, began to violate its provisions, one after the other, and especially to oppress and persecute the Protestants. They bore it for a time, but the sons of Ziska and his Hussites were brave men, strong of heart and hand. They remonstrated, and their remonstrances were disregarded. Then they formed a League for the preservation of their liberties. At last came the outbreak. The League sent its deputies to bring their grievances before the Council of Ferdinand in Prague, and to demand justice from it. This Council, composed of the tools and ministers of Ferdinand, called “Regents,” sat in a high chamber of the Hradschin, the palace and fortress of Prague. Thither came the deputies, forcing the unwilling doorkeeper to open to them. So they stood face to face with their enemies — the worst of these being two nobles, Martenitz and Slavata, who had been cruel oppressors. The deputies did not spare them their reproaches. The nobles retorted, and a furious altercation ensued. Deeds followed words. Someone voiced the name of an old Bohemian method for getting rid of obnoxious persons with speed and sureness—Defenestration. It comes from the Latin fenester, a window. “To the window! — To the window!” angry voices shouted. Martenitz and Slavata were seized in spite of their desperate resistance, dragged each to a window and flung down to the depth below. Their secretary, Fabricius, was flung after them to keep them company.
You think they were killed by the fall? Not they! There chanced to be a heap of refuse just beneath the window; so they fell soft, and were not much hurt, save that Slavata in falling struck his head against the wall. This extraordinary preservation the Catholics attributed to the grace of the Virgin, the Protestants to the power of the devil. The three men escaped from the country, not without the aid of some kind-hearted Protestants. The secretary, Fabricius, was afterward ennobled by the Emperor, who gave him the appropriate title of Baron von Hohenfall — Lord Highfall!
The Defenestration of the Regents took place on May 23, 1618, and that day stands marked in history for evermore as the beginning of the great “Thirty Years’ War.” Since that was a war between Protestants and Roman Catholics, it pertains to our subject on one side; while on the other the element of Romance is by no means absent, centering chiefly around the career and character of the Protestant hero, Gustavus Adolphus. But we must confine our thoughts to Bohemia.
The flood-gates of war were opened now. Protestant Bohemia threw off the yoke of Ferdinand and the Jesuits, and exercising her ancient right of electing her sovereign, chose for herself a Protestant king Frederick, Elector of the Palatinate. Frederick’s mother was the daughter of William the Silent, and — what is of still more interest to us — his wife was the daughter of James I. of England, and the sister of Charles I. It is through her descendants that the crown has come down to King Edward VII.
Between the hosts of Ferdinand and those of Frederick a terrible battle was fought, at a place near Prague, called the “White Mountain.” It ended, for the Bohemians, in utter disaster. It was indeed one of those events in history which tempt us to ask, with the poet—
“O righteous Heaven, ere freedom found a grave,
Why slept the sword, omnipotent to save?
Where was thine arm, O Vengeance, where thy rod,
That smote the foes of Zion and of God —
That crushed proud Ammon, when his iron ear
Was yoked in wrath, and thundered from afar?
Where was the storm that slumbered till the host
Of bloodstained Pharaoh left their trembling coast,
Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow,
And heaved an ocean on their march below?”
These are questions for which we have no answer — yet. But we know there is an answer, and we know that we shall find it — in the day of “the revelation of the righteous judgments of God.”
Bohemia lay now at the feet of Ferdinand and of the Jesuits. Their reign began with the trial and execution of twenty-seven of the most distinguished men in the kingdom of Bohemia. It was as if some foreign nation conquered England, and immediately sent to the scaffold, for the crime of having resisted the invaders, all the Ministry of the day, with the heads of the Opposition to keep them company, and the foremost men of the great professions, of science and of literature, to complete the tale. The victims were most of them old men — one of them was eighty-six, others over eighty. They had all served their generation well, some with signal distinction.
Sixteen of the twenty-seven belonged to the Unity, ten to the Reformed or Lutheran Churches, and one was a Catholic. But the whole of that illustrious band, without a single exception, died in steadfast faith and in holy peace. During their imprisonment they were continually beset by the Jesuits, who not only tried by every argument they could think of to shake their faith, but tempted them by offers of mercy to forsake it. Not one of them yielded a hair’s breadth; and, what was strange, the single Roman Catholic amongst them rejected the ministrations of the Jesuits, and expressed his simple faith in the salvation of Christ. No pastor of the Unity was allowed to visit them in prison, but some Lutheran pastors were permitted to do so, and these, on the last day of their lives (Sunday, June 20, 1621), gave them the tokens of the dying love of Him whom they were so soon to see. All partook joyfully, except Dionys Czernyn, the Catholic, who stood apart with tears in his eyes. The rest invited him to join, but he did not feel free to do so. “I am satisfied,” he said, “with what I have in my heart,” meaning that he had Christ there.
Next morning, in the Grosse Ring of Prague, the solemn sacrifice of blood was offered. As one by one each victim left his fellow-sufferers to mount the scaffold, he spoke words of faith and hope which have been carefully preserved.
“I now venture to die for Christ,” said one. “Do Thou, Lord Jesus Christ, receive my soul!” said another. “Do Thou, O Sun of Righteousness, grant that I may, through the shadow of death, come to Thy Light,” prayed a third. So was it with them all. The one Name was on every lip; the one trust was in every heart. All the salvation, all the desire of these illustrious Bohemians of three hundred years ago, could not be better summed up than in the simple words which the brave men who died the other day in that coal-mine of Hamstead wrote beneath their names, “We are trusting in Christ.”
“Through the yesterday of ages,
Jesus, Thou hast been the same,
Through our own life’s chequered pages,
Still the one dear, changeless Name.”
That first holocaust was followed by seven terrible years of misrule, oppression, and cruelty. At the end of those seven years Ferdinand boasted that there was not a Protestant left in Bohemia. But then, when those years began, the population of the country was about five millions: when they ended, it was not more than eight hundred thousand. This was the work of the Jesuits — and it was worthy of them!
Of course the Church of the Unity was broken up. The pastors were banished — when they were not slain; and the people emigrated — when they could. They had at this time for their presiding bishop a very eminent man, John Amos Comenius. His ability was remarkable, and his learning not less so; he wrote many books, especially on the subject of education, about which he was an enthusiast. He had now to leave the country he loved, and he did it with a breaking heart. As he traversed the mountains that separate Bohemia from Germany, he came to the spot whence, for the last time, Bohemia could be seen. There he knelt down, and prayed that the Word of God in that land might never be extinguished, but that it might burn on from generation to generation. And it has. In spite of Ferdinand’s boast he had not killed Protestantism — it is the very hardest thing in the world to kill — in Bohemia it lived on; and it lives on yet, thank God.
But when Comenius reached the land of his exile, his heart was sore and bitter within him. He thought that the Church of which he was the head — the beloved Church of the Unity — was dying, without earthly hope of revival. And so, very sorrowfully, he wrote, “The last Will and Testament of the Church of the United Brethren.” But years passed away. As he grew old and patient, he learned more of God’s will and ways, and then he came to think that the Church of the Unity was not dead — that God would not let it die. He was dying; but his Church would live on. So instead of the Church’s Testament, he wrote his own. He bequeathed the Church as a precious and sacred legacy — and to whom? Let us hear his own words. “To you our friends (the Church of England) we leave and commit.. our dear Mother, the Church herself. Whether God will deem her worthy to be revived in her native seats, or let her die there and resuscitate her elsewhere, in either case do you in our stead care for her. Even in her death, which seems to be approaching, you ought to love her, because in her life she has gone on before you, for more than two centuries, with examples of faith and patience.” He reminds the Church of England that the Church of the Unity is one with her in doctrine and in discipline, having the three Apostolic Orders — bishops, presbyters, and deacons.
So the Church of which Hus was the spiritual father was actually bequeathed to the Church of England. But, sad to say, the bequest was never claimed. It lay unheeded; it was allowed to lapse.
After some sixty years however, one arose to claim it. God had touched the heart of a rich young noble of Saxony, not only to believe in Christ for his own salvation, but to lay all he was and all he had unreservedly at His feet. Count Zinzendorf had but one thought, one aim — how to serve Him best. He read the book of Amos Comenius which contained the bequest. With a thrill of solemn joy the thought came to him that this was the work Christ meant him to do, and for which He had been preparing him. So he knelt down and, as in His presence, registered his vow: “Though I have to sacrifice my earthly possessions, my honors and my life— so long as I live, and as far as I shall be able to provide, even after my death, for such a consummation — this little company of the Lord’s disciples shall be preserved for Him, until He come.”
Nobly did he keep his word. In Bohemia and Moravia the “Hidden Seed,” as it was called, however oppressed and persecuted, had never ceased to exist. In secrecy and suffering many men and women continued to hold the Faith they loved. The Jesuits were untiring in their efforts to seize and burn every Protestant book, especially every Bible or part of the Bible they could find — and to punish the possessors with severity. But in vain. They could not burn the words of God out of the hearts of the people. Great were the stirrings of heart, and wild the throbbings of new hope, amongst this sorrowful remnant, when the news passed secretly from lip to lip that God had raised up a friend for them at last — that if they could only make their way across the mountains to Saxony they would find a welcome there, and a place which a rich nobleman had prepared on purpose to receive them. So they came by twos and threes, and sometimes in larger numbers, across the Saxon mountains from Bohemia, and from other countries also, to this new Land of Promise. So began the settlement of Herrnhut. At first it looked a dreary solitude, but very soon, under the willing hands of the happy and grateful exiles, it began to rejoice and blossom as the rose. It became the cradle of the resuscitated Church of the Unity — that splendid missionary Church which has done so much for God and for His cause, and has been foremost in the blessed work of gathering in the heathen. The great martyr Church of the past is the great missionary Church of the present. It is said that one in every sixty of the members of that Church is a missionary. These — with those who came before and shall follow after — are the “Painters” Hus saw in his prophetic vision, who are painting the image of Christ upon the hearts of men in countries he never knew or heard of. May God bless abundantly all their work for Him, and may He bless also His faithful servants in the land of their fathers! There also they are a living Church, growing and spreading. They cherish fondly and proudly the memories of their heroic past; and we believe they are earnestly desiring and seeking to “follow those who through faith and patience have obtained the promises.” May God’s blessing rest upon both the branches of this ancient Church — the oldest Reformed Church in existence — upon that which is still rooted in its native soil, and upon the fruitful bough which “hangs over the wall!”
And for ourselves — can we conclude with better. words than those of the Moravian Easter Morning Litany? — “Keep us in everlasting fellowship with our brethren and our sisters who have entered into the joy of their Lord, and with the whole Church triumphant: and let us eternally rest with them in Thy presence.
“Glory be to Him who is the Resurrection and the Life; He was dead, and behold! He is alive for evermore; and he that believeth in Him, though he were dead, yet shall he live.
“Glory be to Him in the Church which waiteth for Him, and in that which is around Him, forever and ever! Amen.”
“We know the arduous strife, the eternal laws
To which the triumph of all good is given.”
WORDSWORTH.