Preface [iii-v]
[iii] The title of this volume indicates its character: it is a record of the lives of certain men and women who have fought the good fight with zeal and constancy; true Heroes of the Cross, never swerving in their loyalty to the Standard they embraced. Enthusiasts these, whom the world laughs at or ignores, but whose self-denying labours have largely added to the sum of human happiness. Victors, whose successes are not always apparent to or understood by the critical historian or the so-called philosopher, but who have won “the crown” in right of their ardour and their courage, their humility and their long-suffering. We give freely of our admiration to brilliant soldiers and able statesmen; but is it less due to the religious reformer or the earnest confessor, who, in the service of Christ and for the welfare of his fellows, is prompt to endure all things, to strive and toil and wait, and to seal a life’s testimony by a martyr’s death? Biography has been defined as teaching by example. But what better examples can we hope to find than those of men who have shown the highest devotion, the purest generosity, the [iv] profoundest self-sacrifice? […] We may not be able to raise ourselves up to so lofty a level as they attained: but seeing what they achieved and endured, how they were tried and how they prevailed, we may take heart to meet with calmness and patience our own smaller troubles and temptations, and run the race set before us with a clean conscience and a braver spirit. We may seek to imitate them, not in the grandeur of their works, or in the wonderful sanctity of their lives, but in their forgetfulness of self, their trustfulness, their meekness, their charity, and, above all, in their obedience to the voice of duty, their submission to the will of God. In selecting my examples, I have studied, first, variety, and second, novelty. […] [v] […] Upon the lives and characters, and upon the gifts and graces, of the Christian heroes whom I have sought to commemorate, it has been my delight to dwell, and not upon their religious systems. But while I have refrained from theological bitterness, and from that violent language against the Roman Church which, in some quarters, is considered a mark of true Protestantism, I must own that, throughout, I have written from the standpoint of an English Churchman, and in entire and unhesitating sympathy with the teaching of the Church of England.
W.H.D.A.
Contents
I. S. Columba: Apostle of Caledonia. 521–597 1II. S. Bernard of Clairvaux: The “Man of God.” 1091–1153 51
III. S. Francis of Assis: Founder of the Franciscans. 1182–1226 105
IV. S. Catharine of Siena: “La Beata Popolana.” 1347–1380 153
V. Girolamo Savonarola: The Reformer of Florence. 1452–1498 199
VI. S. Francis Xavier: The Apostle of the Indies. 1506–1552 285
VII. Anne Askew: An English Martyr. 1520–1546 323
VIII. S. Francis de Sales: Bishop of Geneva. 1567–1622 349
IX. S. Vincent de Pau: The Religious Philanthropist. 1576–1660 385
X. Henry Martyn: Scholar and Missionary. 1781–1812 415
XI. John Colderidge Patteson: Missionary Bishop of Mela Nesia. 1827–1871 441