Yesterday was the martyrs’ feast, and so is to-day. Would that we could be always keeping the feast of the martyrs! For if those who are mad after theatres, and who gape open-mouthed at horses racing, cannot have enough of those foolish spectacles, how much more should we be insatiable for the feasts of the saints. In the one place there is a diabolical pomp, in the other a Christian feast: in the one place devils are revelling, in the other angelic choirs are singing: in the one place souls are lost, in the other there is salvation for all who are gathered together. Do not theatres offer any pleasure at all? If they do, not such as the other. What pleasure, indeed, is there in seeing horses running senselessly to and fro? In the other case, you see, not brute animals yoked together, but countless chariots of martyrs, and God as charioteer in the midst of them, leading the way to heaven. Listen to the prophet saying that the souls of the saints are God’s chariot: _God’s chariots are ten thousand fold, and thousands those who rejoice_. That which He has made a gift to the powers above, He has granted to our nature also. He sits upon the cherubim, as the psalm says: _He ascended upon the cherubim, and He flew_; and again: _He who sitteth upon the cherubim and looketh into the abysses_. This He has given to us also. He sits on them, He dwells in us. _I will abide in you and will walk in you_, He says. They have become His chariot, let us become His temple. See you how these honours are akin? See you how He has reconciled the things above and the things below? Therefore, if we choose, we are in nothing removed from the angels! As I began by saying, yesterday was the martyrs’ feast, and to-day is the martyrs’ feast: not the martyrs who are amongst us here, but those who are in the country, or rather, they also are with us. Town and country, in the business of this life, are distinct from each other, but as far as piety is concerned, they meet on the same ground. Tell me not, then, that they have the tongue of barbarians: look rather at their mortified minds. How does unity of language serve me where the spirit is not one? How does a different speech hurt me where there is harmony in the things of faith? According to this reasoning, the country is in no sort of way worse off than the town: they enjoy equality of privileges in the head and chief of good things. So it was that Our Lord Jesus Christ did not confine Himself to cities, and leave country places empty and deserted, but He went about through cities and villages, preaching the Gospel, and curing every sickness and disease.... This is why God sowed martyrs not in cities alone, but in the country too, so that we may use their feasts as a necessary opportunity of meeting each other, and oftener in the country than in the city. For God gave the greater honour to the inferior, as this member is weaker, and therefore enjoyed more attention. Dwellers in