AS ILLUSTRATED AT THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION.
II.

In 1715, a little before his death, Louis XIV published an edict in which he declared that the Protestant religion had disappeared from the soil of France. His efforts and dark deeds for forty years to blot the reformation out of his kingdom seemed crowned with success. The churches were demolished, the preachers executed or banished, and the congregations scattered.

But the proud assumption of that proud king was but a vain illusion if not an immense lie. God had reserved not only His "seven thousand" but over seventy thousand who had not bowed the knee to Baal, and who had survived the persecutions.

At this their darkest hour, God raised up among them an instrument fitted to serve them in their trying circumstances-Antoine Court by name. His parents were simple peasants, but faithful readers of the Bible. By the premature death of the father, the mother was left a widow with three children, and poor; but that pious woman so taught her children that they grew up to love the word of God, while they abhorred the superstitions of the Church of Rome. Often was Antoine's youthful soul set on fire as he heard his mother's friends, when secretly assembled together, relate the sufferings of the martyrs, and the courage of the Camisards.

One night, while lying awake he heard his mother preparing to go out. He begged to go with her.
She finally consented and silently they walked on and on, till, far in a desert place, they found others who, like themselves, had come from all directions to hear the word of God preached. From that time he began to follow, in their long and perilous journeys, one or the other of the few remaining servants of the Lord who took their lives into their hands to minister to their brethren. Then, alone, yet but a youth, across the forests, over the mountains, down the plains he traveled, comforting a lone believer here, addressing a few in the thick of the woods there, everywhere preaching and teaching what he knew of the Lord Jesus.

To his mother it was as Abraham when he offered up Isaac, and he himself knew his life was in incessant peril. Once he reached Marseille, went on board a galley, where 150 of his brethren were suffering for their faith, and with a strange audacity held a meeting with them in a retired part of the vessel. Everywhere his living faith and happy confidence in God encouraged and revived his brethren. Through his ministry they realized God had not forgotten them, and that He was able, spite of all opposition, to maintain the preaching of His word. They grew bold again, and while bolting their doors, they reopened their Bibles for family worship and for mutual edification.

The police soon noticed this revival, and a rich reward was offered for the arrest of young Court. Many a narrow escape did he have. Once, in the house where he was, he heard the click of arms, revealing the approach of soldiers. He had but time to slip away, and climb into the top of a tree, dense with foliage. From there he saw the soldiers breaking up the house with axes that they might discover his hiding-place.

He deprecated the taking up of arms as the Camisards had done, and he also rebuked the lukewarm-ness of many who, for fear of suffering, were hiding their faith and acting as hypocrites. He saw the necessity of order and discipline for the welfare of God's people, and the holiness of His house. This especially pressed upon him during a serious illness he passed through consequent upon his hardships and fatigues. Barely recovered, therefore, he opened his heart to a few devoted men, and on the 21st of August, 1715, a few days after the death of Louis XIV, their cruel persecutor, nine of them met together in an abandoned quarry in the neighborhood of Nimes, to confer for the welfare of their scattered and persecuted brethren. From that time onward the Huguenots began afresh to form congregations wherever a few could come together, and they grew rapidly. The older and most experienced among them watched over their brethren, looked after the sick, the poor, and those who fell by the way; they looked after meeting- places in the desert parts around them, then informed their brethren; they also informed the preachers, looked after their lodging-place, and sought to protect them from the incessant pursuit of their enemies. They also constantly exposed their lives in all this service. If discovered in it they were condemned to the galleys or to death.

There was also great danger from within in the exercise of discipline, for any one desiring to avenge himself had fearful power in his hands :he had but to denounce those who came together in their desert assemblies.

The dungeons of the land were filling fast with gentle and patient women; the galleys of Marseille, Dunkerke, and other seaports were spattered with the blood which the cruel lash drew from men whose only crime was to love and obey the word of God. Spite of all, the work grew. In 1729 there were in the south of France no assemblies of Huguenots, and these were constantly appealed to from other parts of the country for some of them to come and teach them the Scriptures, until an awakening was manifest to the extremities of the kingdom.

Many a devoted servant did the Lord, the Head and Lover of His Church, raise up at that time for His suffering but faithful people in that persecuting land. Prominent among them was Paul Rabaut. Eminently gifted, devoted and courageous, he labored for over fifty years with incessant zeal, amid manifold dangers from which nothing short of the almighty hand of God could have given him escape.

But many fell. Jacques Roger, seventy years of age, was finally arrested after a laborious ministry of forty years' duration. When asked by his judge who he was, he replied:" I am the one you have been pursuing these thirty-nine years. It is time you caught me." He was condemned to death. Calmly he heard his sentence and said God had shown him great grace in raising him up lately from a sick-bed to make him thus a witness to the faith of Christ. As the executioner drew nigh he exclaimed.:" Here comes the happy day so often desired. Let us rejoice, my soul, since the blessed hour has come to enter into the joy of the Lord." They left his body twenty-four hours hanging on the gallows, then threw it into the river.

Matthieu Mezal was an ardent preacher of the gospel. His preaching so captivated the hearts of his hearers that he was intensely loved by them all. When his arrest took place it was even difficult to prevent the Huguenots of those parts from rescuing him by force. From his prison in Vernoux he begged his friends not to take such a matter in their hands. Vengeance belonged to God alone in the concerns of His people. He was taken to Montpellier for trial, and when, after examination, the judges realized not only the innocence, but the excellence of the man and his associates, the chief wept as he said to him, '' Sir, it is with sorrow that I am compelled to condemn you, but it is the king's order." With his upper garments removed; his head and feet bare, he was taken to the public place where his funeral pile had been built. A vast multitude had assembled, and even his enemies were moved at the sight of that noble man, so calm, so serene on his way to death, yet so firm in resisting the importunities of the Jesuits to the very foot of the pile. Ascended to the top he desired to speak to the people, but the beating of fourteen drums drowned his voice. His peaceful, happy countenance to the end, however, preached more than words could have done to the multitude of lookers-on. His friends thanked God for adding such another witness to His truth from their ranks. It was great honor put upon them.

But violence increased. Neither sex nor age were regarded, and it became difficult to prevent the opposition of violence to such violence. It is here Rabaut became so prominently the servant of the
Lord Jesus to his brethren. Indefatigable, he went from place to place, comforting, reproving, praying, teaching. He exhorted to obedience to the authorities, even if unjust; to patience and firmness; opposed violence being done to the priests, even the most cruel. To Antoine Court, his bosom friend, he wrote, " Spies are incessantly on my tracks. They are disguised soldiers armed with pistols and ropes. I have also much increased in value, for the price of my head has risen from six to twenty thousand francs, and instead of the gallows, I am threatened with the wheel." The extraordinary escapes he experienced strengthened his faith, but never made him reckless. Repeatedly he sent petitions to the authorities and members of the royal family, stating well-proved facts concerning the faithful allegiance to the king of all the reformed; and the false accusation, malice and inhumanity of their accusers. Gradually the government withdrew its help from the priests, and their chief strength became the influence they could exercise on their people against the "heretics." In this way cruel excesses could still be and were perpetuated in different localities, and many suffered yet in patience.

The last was Jean Galas, a highly respected merchant of Toulouse, sixty years of age. His second son, through disappointment, became sullen and committed suicide by hanging himself. All their neighbors and friends deeply sympathized with the grief-stricken parents; when suddenly a rumor went round that Calas had assassinated his son because he refused to allow him to become a Catholic.

Calas was at once arrested, and the body of his son taken in great pomp to the Cathedral. Priests,
monks, and brotherhoods of the different orders vied with each other to celebrate the virtues of this pretended martyr to the Catholic faith. The chapel was hung in white, and at the head of the body lying there in state was a skeleton, with a palm in one hand, and in the other, an inscription with these words:"Abjuration from heresy." The people became delirious with rage against Calas, and there was no torture too cruel to inflict upon him. As nothing could be proved against him, all was done to make him confess his crime, while he, through all, affirmed his innocence. After all was tried in vain, he was condemned to the wheel; every bone of his body was broken, and for two hours he lay there in suffering, praying incessantly to the end.

Voltaire, confounding Romanism with Christianity, was then beginning to make himself heard against religion. He abhorred the hypocrisy of the ecclesiastics, and the case of Calas incensed him. He took up his defense, exposed with burning words the infamy and cruelty of a legislation which permitted such things. In result the good name of the family and their confiscated property were restored to them by a judgment of the court; the persecutions ceased for very shame, but the awful blot of it all was fastened upon Christianity itself, instead of upon the caricature of it which Romanism presents, and the mass of the French people became infidel. The cause of Christ-man's eternal blessing – suffered more by it than by all the persecutions.