File:Voices from the Orient; or, The testimony of the monuments, of the recent historical and topographical discoveries, and of the customs and traditions of the people in the Orient, to the veracity of (14784602142).jpg

Identifier: voicesfromorient00burnuoft (find matches)
Title: Voices from the Orient; or, The testimony of the monuments, of the recent historical and topographical discoveries, and of the customs and traditions of the people in the Orient, to the veracity of the sacred record
Year: 1884 (1880s)
Authors: Burnfield, George
Subjects: Middle East -- Description and travel
Publisher: Toronto C.B. Robinson
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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heathen gladiators have met death within those lofty walls.
Ignatius of Antioch is said to have perished here. The lions
devoured his flesh, and the Christians gathered his bones under
the safe covering of night. *At the entrance to the Coliseum
and at the foot of the statue of the Sun, men and women per-
ished in the names kindled by hopeless ignorance and heathen
bigotry. Many, like Ignatius, for the love of God, were mar-
tyred by the most cruel tortures, by fire and iron, and by the
devouring jaws of wild beasts. If men who see in Christianity
only an ancient superstition, powerless for good, and hope for
the worlds deliverance from evil in the progress of nutellect
and in the refinement of Art, would stand in that area of the
Coliseum, and people it with its tens of thousands as of old, and
compare them in their character and their pleasures with the
citizens of European or American capitals, the refining and holy
influence of Christianity will clearly appear. Let them remem-
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* Walks in Rome, p. 137.

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28 IN AND ABOUT ROME.

ber that emperors in their purple sat there. Let them remem-
ber that the vestal virgins who devoted their lives to the ser-
vice of heathen religion, and the wealth and fashion of Rome
sat on those seats and spent weeks in succession gloating over
scenes of brutal carnage. Perhaps some Christian man or
woman is led into the arena whose only crime is, they fea
rGod, and live blameless lives. No eye of pity may look down
from that sea of faces on the defenceless victim. Alone he stands
and fearlessly faces the agonies of a terrible death. The wild
beast may hesitate to attack, and the human beasts in purple
and fine linen send out a shouting like the roar of thunder to
express their discontent and to enrage the beast. Though no
friend sits on those marble seats, One sits on a throne in glory,
who beholds the scene. He shall clothe the martyr with
strength so that he will not say I deny Christ. His body is
torn to pieces, and a roar of gratification thunders through
the air. But the martyr has been true to his faith and has
passed through the fearful sufferings of death to a better
life with God.

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