parent of every virtue. Side by side with the terrorism and the superstitions of dogmatism, there have ever existed in Christianity those who would echo the wish of St. Theresa, that she could blot out both heaven and hell, to serve God for Himself alone; and the power of the love of Christ has been displayed alike in the most heroic pages of Christian martyrdom, in the most pathetic pages of Christian resignation, in the tenderest pages of Christian charity. It was shown by the martyrs who sank beneath the fangs of wild beasts, extending to the last moment their arms in the form of the cross they loved;(7) who ordered their chains to be buried with them as the insignia of their warfare;(8) who looked with joy upon their ghastly wounds, because they had been received for Christ;(9) who welcomed death as the bridegroom welcomes the bride, because it would bring them near to Him. St. Felicitas was seized with the pangs of childbirth as she lay in prison awaiting the hour of martyrdom, and as her sufferings extorted from her a cry, one who stood by said, “If you now suffer so much, what will it be when you are thrown to wild beasts?” “What I now suffer,” she answered, “concerns myself alone; but then another will suffer for me, for I will then suffer for Him.”(10) When St. Melania had lost both her husband and her two sons, kneeling by the bed where the remains of those she loved were laid, the childless widow exclaimed, “Lord, I shall serve Thee more humbly and readily for being eased of the weight Thou hast taken from me.”(11)