"You will say, 'It is the Name of the Founder of our religion, through Whom we approach the Divine Majesty, and as such we hold it in reverence.' It is that; but to thousands upon thousands it is something infinitely more. It is the name of their dearest, most beloved, and most trusted personal Friend--the Name of Him whom it is their deepest joy in life to serve, their sweetest hope in death to see. It was the poet gift of voicing the deepest longings of humanity that inspired the dying song we know so well,-- "'I hope to see my Pilot face to face, When I have crossed the bar.' "There is one test of love, usually accounted supreme. 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Freely and joyfully has Humanity poured forth her best blood for the Name of Christ. Those who have given Him this supreme proof of love we call His martyrs, or His witnesses. Other names, other religions, other causes, have had their martyrs too. Indeed, I think the word is true that all great causes have their martyrs. And I dare to think too that the wine of self-sacrificing love, though we may count it vainly spilled, cannot sink into the earth beyond His power to gather up who takes care of lost things. But I think also--nay, I know--that the martyrs of Christ stand apart from all the rest, in their immense multitude, in the joy and peace they had in suffering and in death, and in the sustaining, animating power of their love to Him for whom they died. "I have spoken to you, sometimes, of the martyrs of past days. I could not help it; their memory is very dear to me, and the records of their faith and their patience have touched and thrilled my own heart since childhood. But I never dreamed or guessed that even while I spoke,--now, in the end of this nineteenth century, this age of science and enlightenment, this age of pity and compassion, a new legion was marching on, through blood and fire, to join the noble army of martyrs before the throne of God." Here the grey head, which had rested bowed and motionless in that seat below the pulpit, was raised up suddenly, and the eyes that had witnessed so much agony sent a look into the preacher's face that almost stopped his words. But, after a scarcely perceptible pause, he went on,-- "It has been, to some of us, a pain all the greater because of our utter helplessness to read even the meagre accounts that have come to us of the massacres in Armenia. Now that I have heard from the lips of an eye-witness, who is here present amongst you this day, the details of _one_ such massacre, I am bound to tell you solemnly that the pain should have been greater still. The most awful, the most lurid accounts we have had, fall short of the terrible reality. The half has not been told us." Then he gave briefly, and as calmly as he could, the story of the massacre of Urfa, and of the burning of the cathedral, as John Grayson had told it to him.