IN THE FACE OF DEATH 89 
these he also declined. He was then threatened with all their 
weight of vengeance; and still remaining firm to his deter- 
mination, he was banished from his father’s house, and 
forced to leave the neighborhood. 
“Not satisfied with this, that rage and malignant hatred 
of Christianity which is gendered by ignorance and idolatry, 
and cherished by satanic infatuation, pursued him still. A 
heathen ceremony was at hand, for which a human victim 
was required, and this young man was selected by his perse- 
cutors because he professed to be a worshiper of the true 
God. A more acceptable sacrifice, they thought, they could 
not offer, as the revenge they should thereby wreak upon 
him would not only gratify their own insatiate malice, but 
be so acceptable to the gods, whom he had rejected, as cer- 
tainly to render them propitious. It is probable they also 
expected, by this summary vengeance, to deter others from 
following his example. 
“On the evening of the day preceding that on which the 
ceremony was to take place, the young man, as his custom 
was, had retired to the brow of a hill that overlooked the 
valley where he dwelt, and there, seated beneath the embow- 
ering shade of an elegant clump of trees, was absorbed in 
meditation previous to offering up his evening supplications 
to his God. While thus engaged, his seclusion was invaded 
and his solitude disturbed by the appearance of a band of 
the servants of the priests and chiefs, who approached the 
young man, and told him that the king had arrived, and, 
wishing to see him, had sent them to invite him down. 
“He knew of the approaching ceremony, that a human 
sacrifice was then to be offered; and he no sooner saw them 
advancing to his retreat than a sudden thought, like a flash 
of lightning, darted through his mind, intimating that he 
was to be the victim. He received it as a premonition of 
his doom; and in reply to the request, told them calmly that 
he did not think the king had arrived, and that therefore it 
was unnecessary for him to go down. 
