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our Lord say, " Verily all these things shall come upon this generation."
It is good for us all to mark this lesson well. We are too apt to think that " bygones are bygones," and that things which to us are past, and done, and old, will never be raked up again. But we forget that wdth God "one day is as a thousand years" and that the events of a thousand years ago are as fresh in His sight, as the events of this very hour. God " requireth that which is past," and above all, God will require an account of the treatment of His saints. The blood of the primitive Christians shed by the Roman Emperors,— the blood of the Vallenses and Albigenses, and the sufferers at the massacre of St. Bartholomew, — the blood of the martyrs who were burned at the time of the Reformation, and of those who have been put to death by the Inquisition — all, all will yet be accounted for. It is an old saying, that " the miU-stones of God's justice grind slowly, but they grind very fine." The world will yet see that " there is a God that judgeth in the earth." (Psalm Iviii. 11.)
Let those who persecute God's people in the present day take heed what they are doing. Let them know that all who injure, or ridicule, or mock, or slander others on account of their religion, commit a great sin. Let them know that Christ takes notice of every one who persecutes his neighbor because he is better than himself, or because he prays, reads his Bible, and tliinks about his soul. He lives who said, " he that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of mine eye." (Zech. ii. 8.) The judgment day will prove that the King of kings will reckon with all who insult His servants.