Suddenly Anthony Boyne, a young man, springs from the crowd, traverses the choir, rushes to the altar, snatches the host from the hands of the priest and cries, as he turns towards the people: "This is not the God whom you should worship. He is above in heaven and in the majesty of the Father, and not, as you believe, in the hands of a priest." (Vol. IV, p. 260, D'Aubigne Ref.) Imagine the effect. The mass was interrupted, the chantings ceased and the crowd, as if struck by a supernatural intervention, remained silent and noiseless. Farel, who was still in the pulpit, immediately took advantage of this calm and proclaimed that Christ, "whom the heaven must receive until the restitution of all things, is the being they should worship." Today Romanists are left undisturbed in their delusions.

Alexander VI was pope. It is impossible to paint a picture too black for him. He has been justly called "one of the greatest and most horrible monsters in nature, whose beastly morals, immense ambition, insatiable avarice, deliberate cruelty, furious lusts, and even his incest with his daughter Lucretia, make him the synonym of all that is vile-a man who left no wickedness unpracticed; yet he was in the place of God, while Savonarola was pleading with men for the redemption of the church.

A stream rises no higher than its fountain. Like priest, like people. We are what we tolerate. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Romanists are ruined by Romish errors. Let a people accept such terrible delusions and they pronounce their own doom. About us are millions thus deluded. How can they be reached and saved? Who is constrained to preach to those in Rome also? God grant that workers may be found.

Savonarola disclosed the horrors of Romanism.

He did not re

veal the remedy. He did not know it. Could he but have seen Christ as did the woman from Samaria, all Italy would have been helped. This gift of God is the need of millions in this land. They are out of Rome, and are atheists and what not. Only those in Christ are new creatures, and are the bearers of hope. Savonarola was true to truth as he knew it. He lived up to the light he had. When Luther was on his way to a post of peril some one handed him a portrait of the Italian martyr. Luther took it into his hands and pressed it to his lips, and paid a fitting tribute to the man who proclaimed the gospel as best he could, and died a martyr to the system

of error then in existence. Only the divine power of God can penetrate and illumine the night of Rome.

Let us
He is

The brave preacher uncovered Alexander VI. It did no good. Rome did not care for that. Like pope, like people. The masses flocked to hear the denunciations of the preacher. His words lacked the life of the gospel. It is the word of God that saves. Demolish Romanism, and but half the work is done. Proclaim the truth. Tell men of their need of Christ. Get them to receive him into their hearts, and then shall they have power to become the sons of God. It is Christ within that saves and that is the hope of glory. embrace every opportunity to bring Romanists to Christ. their Saviour, as He is our Redeemer. We now see Savonarola in adversity. The great trial by fire had proven to be a farce. The preacher had refused to go on without a The fickle public likes pluck. Its Savonarola was condemned to banishment. He would not go, but shut himself up in the convent and gave himself up to prayer and to the completion of his great work, the "Triumph of the Cross." The people turned from him. The hour for his persecutors had come. retirement. He had no real friends. were political and not spiritual.

cross and without the wafer. idol, lacking this, lacks all.

They refused to let him stay in

The reforms wrought by him They had to do with the head and

The enemies of the They found SavonThey maltreated him.

not with the heart. It is the religion of Christ that saves, that begets love. It furnishes a foundation for hope. preacher planned an attack upon the convent. arola at prayer. They dragged him forth. They gave him up to the Inquisition. The inquisitors tortured him with devilish ingenuity. They wrung, it is said, a confession from him that he wrought for great purposes affecting his own fame and the glory of the state. They compelled him to make, it is said, an admission that he was ambitious for power, for the place held by the pope, or for a higher one; that he wanted his influence to stretch out to other states and to lift the world to a new altitude. No one claimed that he was dishonest, impure or selfish.

The pope demanded his surrender. The Florentines refused it, but allowed the two papal delegates to share in the trial or manage it. The trial was held. The great preacher appeared without a defender and without a friend. He was not permitted to confront those who brought charges against him.

See him in the hands of the in

quisitors. He has borne indescribable tortures. His strength fails. He has not the help that comes from on high, which enabled the martyrs for Christ to sing for joy while the body was enduring indescribable torture. Stephen, with his face mantled with glory even while being stoned to death, shows what the religion of Christ can do. Savonarola surrendered, and signed a paper which clouds his fame. It may have had its interpolations and erasures after he put his hand to it. The paper preserved declares him to have said:

"I have preached with the design of being famous in the present and future ages; and that I might win credit in Florence; and that nothing of great import should be done without my sanction." They who are charged with ambition, whenever they lift their voices against wrong, know whence this came. “And when I had thus established my position in Florence I had it in my mind to do great things in Italy and beyond Italy, by means of those chief personages with whom I had contracted friendship and consulted on high matters, such as this of the general council. And in proportion as my first efforts succeeded, I should have adopted further measures. Above all, when the general council had been brought about, I intended to rouse the princes of Christendom, and especially those beyond the borders of Italy, to subdue the infidels. It was not much in my thoughts to get myself made a cardinal or pope; for when I should have achieved the work I had in view I should, without being pope, have been the first man in the world, in the authority I should have possessed and the reverence that would have been paid me. If I had been made pope I would not have refused the office; but it seemed to me that to be the head of that work was a greater thing than to be pope, because a man without virtue may be pope, but such a work as I contemplated demanded a man of excellent virtues." It is not improbable that these words express his ambitious purposes in part. It was the habit of his mind to conceive great things and to feel that he was the man to do them. "In moments of ecstatic contemplation, the sense of self melted in the sense of the unspeakable; but in actions the man spoke."

Savonarola's crime consisted in demanding a general council to try the pope.

There was no denying that concerning Alexander VI he told the truth, and encountered his hate. As a patriot he hated the sins, the heinous crimes, of such a pope. Florence had heard him, and had

well understood what he meant, when he said "that he would not obey the devil." It was a death struggle between the frater and the pope. He had labored for the very highest end-the moral welfare of men-not by vague exhortations, but by striving to turn belief into energies that would work in all the details of life.

After suffering indescribable tortures, it is said he wailed out, "It is true, what you would have me say; let me go, do not torture me again." After this he was left alone in his prison, and allowed a pen and ink for a while, that, if he liked, he might use his poor bruised and stricken arm to write with. He did not try to prove his innocence, nor did he protest against the proceedings used towards him ; it was a continued colloquy with that divine purity with which he sought complete reunion; it was the outpouring of self-abasement; it was one long cry for inward renovation. How poor Romanism looks in such a light. He knew nothing of the rest of faith exercised in Jesus Christ, apart from penance and human suffering.

"After so many benefits," he writes, "with which God has honored thee, thou art fallen into the depths of the seas; and after so many gifts bestowed on thee, thou, by thy pride and vain glory, hast scandalized all the world."

There was no bright outlook for him, as for Luther, Zwingli, Latimer, Ridley and others. Purgatory was beyond, and a church that hated him was to be his almoner. The best side of Romanism is a bad side. The hopes of Romanism are all deceptions.

"

On May 23, 1498, a long narrow platform stretched across the great piazza. Above it rose a gibbet with three halters on it; by one of them Savonarola was hung. Afterwards his body was burned. He was led out in Dominican garb. The bishop stripped off his black mantle and the white scapulary was laid aside. The man who had been the idol of the people found out how fickle is the goddess of public opinion. Yesterday he rode the wave of popularity; today there is none so mean as to do him reverence.

Contrast a reformation without Christ, a political revolution if you choose to name it, with a reformation with Christ or with a revival of religion.

Rome cannot be overcome by law, nor by denunciation. If the work is achieved, we must preach the truth and introduce the deluded to Jesus Christ. It must be expected that the vile, the characterless, the lovers of sin, will go to their cwn and will defend Rome.

Be not disappointed at this. Christ said, "I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled."

Savonarola was slain because men loved sin rather than holiness, in their carnal state. Alexander VI is the epitome of infamy. Romanists dare not apologize for him. He had every vice, and yet. because Savonarola opposed him and told the truth about him, he was put to death.

The distress and calamity of those times are beyond all power of description. All sense of religion was extinguished, and profligacy went to such excesses that the most hardened became alarmed. Savonarola had lifted up his warning voice. He did not have the light of Wycliffe or of Luther. But he spoke the truth as he had learned it. Rome had taken him in hand. We have seen his tortures and heard his cry. See him wrecked in frame, broken in heart, brought out before the multitude to die. Of course he is without pity, because he is among Romanists, who know no pity. Off comes the white tunic that tells of his sacred office. He stands. in a close woolen under tunic that tells of no sacred office. He has been degraded and excommunicated. He had listened to his sen

tence.

He had mounted the steps. He looked around upon the multitude. He saw torches waving to kindle the fuel beneath. His body was given up to death. His face was covered, and Savonarola's voice passed into the eternal silence. Alexander VI had one less enemy, Rome one more martyr, and the world another illustration of the truth that Romanism, empty of Christ and a persecutor of the truth, hates those who proclaim it, whether they seek to remain true to Rome or, like Savonarola, seek to expose her shame and denounce her iniquities.

The religion of Jesus Christ alone can save Romanists.

Let it be our privilege to proclaim the truth while we may, and save the lost. as best we can.