Hebrews 11:37

Hebrews 11:37

Martyrdom.

The word "martyr" properly means "a witness," but it is used to denote exclusively one who has suffered deathfor the Christian faith. Let us consider what it was in the early Christian ages to be a martyr.

I. First, it was to be a voluntarysufferer. Men, perhaps, suffer in various diseases more than the martyrs did, but they cannot help themselves. The martyrs lived under a continual trial, a daily exercise of faith, which we, living in peaceable times, can scarcely understand. To be a martyr is to feel the storm coming, and willingly to endure it at the call of duty, for Christ's sake and for the good of the brethren; and this is a kind of firmness which we have no means of displaying at the present day, though our deficiency in it is evidenced as often as we yield to inferior or ordinary temptations.

II. The suffering itself of martyrdom was in some respects peculiar. It was a death, cruel in itself, publicly inflicted, and heightened by the fierce exultation of a malevolent populace. The unseen God alone was their comforter, and this invests the scene of their suffering with supernatural majesty, and awes us when we think of them. A martyrdom is a season of God's especial power in the eye of faith, as great as if a miracle were visibly wrought. It is a fellowship of Christ's sufferings, a commemoration of His death, a representation filling up in figure "that which is behind of His afflictions, for His body's sake, which is the Church." And thus, being an august solemnity in itself, and a kind of sacrament, a baptism of blood, it worthily finishes that long searching trial which was its usual forerunner in primitive times.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. ii., p. 41.

Reference: Hebrews 11:37. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxvi., No. 1528.