St. Stephen's Day.

DECEMBER 26.

T

HE great Festival of Easter is the only Christian commemoration which rests upon absolute Scripture precept and Apostolic injunction :-" Christ

our Passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast” (1 Cor. v. 7, 8). For no other specific day, whether an anniversary in honour of Christ or of one of His followers, can so venerable a sanction be brought forward. Nevertheless, the feasts of the Martyrs may, in the aggregate, claim something like the prestige of an Apostolic exhortation. Remember them," says St. Paul, “ which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God; whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation" (Heb. xiii. 7).*

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It is not without reason that St. Paul is thought hereby chiefly to hint at the martyrdom of St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, who not long before had laid down his life for the testimony of Jesus. Hence proceeded the great reverence people then had for those who suffered for the profession of Christianity, and laid down their lives for the

*The above passage is more conclusive in the Greek; our English version having the misfortune of ambiguity in two or three particulars. Μνημονεύετε τῶν ηγουμένων υμῶν, οἵτινες ἐλάλησαν ̔υμῖν τὸν λόγον τοῦ Θεοῦ· ὧν ἀναθεωροῦντες τὴν ἔκβασιν τῆς ̓αναστροφῆς, μιμεῖσθε τὴν πίστιν.

confirmation of it."* The martyrs were affectionately revered as the disciples and followers of their Lord; and on account of their exceeding great devotion to Him it was thought becoming to do all possible honour to their memories, whether as a tribute to which they were justly entitled as the posthumous reward of their virtue, or for the purpose of encouraging others to like patience and fortitude. If it be lawful to justify the commemoration of any instance of self-sacrifice by the Pauline admonition just quoted, à fortiori will such justification include the commemoration of the proto-martyr, who was emphatically the greatest because the first, and who in no respect whatever could be degraded to a rank lower than the highest. The moral features of his death were simply and literally unsurpassable; and if, in a merely physical aspect, it may have lacked the acute and protracted agonies of such a death as that, say, of St. Laurence, it is impossible to doubt that in St. Stephen was a reserve of heroism equal to any demands which the ingenuity of persecuting or demoniac ages has ever exacted from humanity. St. Stephen, we repeat, was the greatest of martyrs, because he was the first. If robur et æs triplex were necessary to the breast of the man who first tempted in a frail skiff the perils of the deep, with what supreme hardihood must not his heart have been fortified who first adventured the pains and the issues of martyrdom for a faith, the sustaining power of which—with one Divine exception, and practically speaking, without any exception at all-in such circumstances, was all untried!

The annual solemnities in honour of martyrs are ascertained to have been observed in a Christian antiquity so remote that it is impossible to say, not so much when the practice was first instituted, as when it was not already established. It is as lawful as it is picturesque to imagine the first of such commemorations as possibly being by only one year more modern than the first of such martyrdoms. * Nelson's Festivals and Fasts; Preliminary Instructions.

FEASTS OF THE MARTYRS.

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Tertullian asserts that the Christians of the second century were wont to celebrate annually the birth-days of the martyrs, as a custom received by tradition from their ancestors.*

When we begin to know something of the manner in which these festivals were observed in the early Church, we find that the faithful were accustomed to meet once a year at the tombs of the martyrs, and "there solemnly to recite their sufferings and triumphs, to praise their virtues, to bless God for their pious examples, for their holy lives, and for their happy deaths. Besides, they celebrated these days with great expressions of love and charity to the poor, and mutual rejoicings with one another, which were very sober and temperate, and such as became the modesty and simplicity of Christians." +

"The feasts of saints," says Martene, " and especially of martyrs, were celebrated by an anniversary commemoration in the very beginning and birth-time of the Church, a circumstance which an Epistle of the Church of Smyrna concerning the martyrdom of Polycarp does not suffer us to doubt." The epistle thus referred to is preserved at full length by Eusebius. The following extract contains everything necessary for our present purpose:-" For Christ we worship as the Son of God; but the martyrs we deservedly love as the disciples and imitators of our Lord, on account of their exceeding affection to their King and Master, of whom may we only become true associates and fellowdisciples! [The execution of Polycarp being completed], we took up his bones-more valuable than precious stones, and more tried than gold-and deposited them in a place convenient. There, also, as far as we can, the Lord will grant us to assemble for the celebration of the natal day of his martyrdom in joy and gladness, both in commemo

De Corona Militis; c. 3.

Nelson's Festivals and Fasts; Preliminary Instructions.

De Antiquis Ecclesiæ Ritibus; lib. iv., c. 30., ¶ 2. .

ration of those who have already finished their contest, and to exercise and prepare those who shall be called upon to suffer hereafter." *

The martyrdom of Polycarp took place A.D. 168, and the Church of Smyrna, in making known the particulars thereof, had only followed the example of the Church of Antioch with reference to the martyrdom of St. Ignatius (about A.D. 110), whose Natal Day was published in order that the Syrian Christians might on its anniversary meet together in honour of the memory of so valiant a champion and witness for their Lord.

The birthdays of the martyrs were, in fact, the days on which they suffered, as being the days on which they were born into the glories of the life eternal. "As the Nativity of Christ," are the words of Durandus, "was His entrance into this world, so their departure from this world is said to be the nativity of the martyrs."

So far we have used the word martyr in its modern and acquired sense of one who bears witness to his convictions at the expense of his life-one who is thus regarded as the witness par excellence, and beside whom there are no other witnesses at all. But the word "originally signified simply a witness. It is used in the New Testament for living witnesses. It was used in the time of the Viennese and Lyons martyrs (A.D. 177) for living witnesses; and it was used some years after by a bishop as a designation of himself at the commencement of a letter. It was not till a century later that the term 'martyr' was confined to him who had sealed his testimony by his death."+

In the year 177, "the servants of Christ who sojourn in Vienna and Lugdunum of Gaul," addressed Letters to several churches, and especially a Letter, most of which is preserved by Eusebius, "to the brethren throughout Asia *Eusebius: Ecclesiastical History; lib. iv., c. 15.

+ Donaldson's Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine; vol. iii., p. 285.

PRIVILEGES OF THE MARTYRS.

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and Phrygia," giving an account of the sufferings-by death, torture, and imprisonment of the Christians during the violent persecution which broke out in Gaul in the reign of Marcus Aurelius. This Letter, which seems to have been conceived with the same general purpose as that to which we have seen the Letters of the churches of Antioch and Smyrna were devoted, throws considerable light upon the rise of that tendency to exalt those who suffered capitally for Christ's sake, and to expect blessings from them, which to so great an extent developed itself in the succeeding century. The privileges, as so developed, which were assigned to the martyrs were, "that upon their death they were immediately admitted to the beatific vision, while other souls waited for the day of judgment to complete their happiness. That God would grant chiefly to their prayers the hastening of His kingdom, and the shortening the times of persecution. That they should have the greatest share in the resurrection of the just, which is called the first resurrection, which was the more considerable because the primitive Christians looked upon the end of the world as near at hand; and many believed that those who were partakers of the first resurrection should reign with Christ a thousand years upon earth. That the martyrs and some other perfect souls should receive no hurt or prejudice from the general conflagration of the world, when others less perfect should be purged by that universal fire from the dross they had contracted in life. That martyrdom supplied the grace conveyed both by baptism and the holy Eucharist, and entitled men to the benefits of those Sacraments-viz., remission of sins. The martyrs had, also, a considerable hand in absolving penitents, who, through fear of suffering, had lapsed into idolatry, and in restoring them to the communion of the Church."*

The faith of the more youthful ages of Christianity * Nelson's Festivals and Fasts of the Church of England.