But his courage was as nothing to that of Blandina. She was the bravest of the brave in the bravest of all armies--the “witnesses” of Christ. Her mistress and her fellow-Christians dreaded lest from her frail, sensitive frame she should give way, as ten stronger had done before. They misjudged, however, the power of love; the right hand of the Lord wrought strength in her. She had no words of surrender, no cry for mercy. From morning till evening she wearied out several sets of torturers, who retired baffled and amazed that she still lived. “I am a Christian and we do nothing wrong,” was her cry again and again amidst her pains; and fresh and fresh with each repetition came new strength and courage. Renan rightly says of her: “As to the maid-servant Blandina, she proved that a revolution had been achieved. The true emancipation of the slave, emancipation by heroism, was in great measure her work. The pagan slave was supposed to be essentially wicked and immoral. What better way to rehabilitate and free him than to show him capable of the same virtues, the same sacrifices, as the freeman? How were these women to be treated with disdain, who had been seen acting with even more sublime heroism than their mistresses in the amphitheatre? The good Lyonese maid-servant had heard it said that the judgments of God are the overthrow of human appearances, and that God is often pleased to choose that which is humblest, ugliest, and most despised to confound that which seems beautiful and strong. Inspired by her rôle she called for the torture and burned with eagerness to suffer.” It is the glory of Christianity to have raised the off-scourings of mankind to such sublimity. Galen acknowledged that the conduct of the ordinary Christian was as noble as that of the most enlightened of the philosophers. He wrote as one who had been a contemporary of Epictetus and physician to Marcus Aurelius and intimate with the best lives which paganism produced. We who read the lives of the martyrs whole and appreciate the motives of their heroism know that it is an irreverence to compare with their virtue the virtue even of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Yet it is well to have this testimony of an enlightened pagan contemporary to the elevating power of Christianity on the masses. The final execution was spread over several days. The legate made the occasion a public holiday; and delegates from all Gaul, then present at Lyons for administrative and religious purposes, witnessed the spectacle.