Northern Weekly Gazette. — 1899-04-01 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

BANKER.  Some time ago a large calvacade might have been observed proceeding towards the seashore, a heterogeneous assemblage, composed of soldiers, priests, men clad in the garb of the law, and peasantry, together with a few who from their appearance were probably representatives of highborn families. In the midst of the procession was a yeung girl, fair and beautiful, ef perhaps eighteen or nineteen summers, guarded by armed men, and surrounded by ecclesiastics, who appeared to be alternately threatening and entreating her, but to whom she turned a deaf ear, disregarding their threats, and scorning their demands, while her eyes, directed upwards to heaven, revealed a fixed resolve to steed firm to the holy faith she professed, notwithstanding that she was fully aware that her decision would involve all the agony of a terrible death, while if she recanted, her life would be spared, her liberty regained, and her happy home-life restored to her. At length they reach the water's edge, and a number of workmen immediately dig a deep hole in which they place and securely fix a large stake, to which the brave and pious maiden is firmly bound. The tide is now rasing, and as the eccle siaetice retreat before it they ply her with their solicitations to abjure her faith, and to embrace the religion which, by means of fire and sword, persecution and oppression, they were endeavourLog to establish in the land, and at the same time eesaying to root cut and extirpate the pure and scriptural faith which was so rapidly spreading over Europa But all their entreaties were to no purpoee. She utterly refused to partake of a rite which she regarded as the most awfully blasphemous fable ever invented since this earth was created by the Almighty, and their offer to for. give her sins if ehe would only make her conies,ion to them was treated with a scornful refusal, for she believed the words of her Bible that God only could forgive sins, and that as her Redeemer had died for her. thereby suffering in Himself for her mieleeele, no absolution of any mere man could be of the slightest benefit to her. Still higher and higher the advancing waters continue to rise; they reach her knees, her girdle is now immersed, but she shakes her head in reply to the cello of the priests; on the shore if she will now recant. The sea has now reached her shoulders, and the waves beating against the steadfast heroine begin to wash over her face and head, but although sometimes nearly choked by the sea-viater, the noble girl, undaunted by any fear of death—for she knew that the angels of God were hovering around her, and that her special guardian angel would soon escort her released spirit into the presence of her Redeemer --rejects the offer of those in the boat to cut the rope which held her down if she would but promum to conform to their religion and accept its rites. But not even the slow and torturing pangs of this terrible death move her, she remains firm and steadfast through all the prolonged horror, as now for a moment the hollow of the wave allows her a moment's breathing time, and now nearly suffocating as the relentless wave rises over , her face until at length the fell work of those go iltymurderers is accomplished, and the pure spirit of the saintly and heroic maiden is released from its mortal tenement, and is received into realms of glory, with perhaps as glad and joyous a welcome as has been accorded to any one ' amongst the noble army of martyrs sine, the heathen persecutiens of the Roman Emperors. All this is no fancy tale, but a record of historical facts which took place in Britain only three el.ort centuries ago. And the blood of those innumerable martyrs of Christ proved to be but the seed of the Church. Alas! now, however, tares are springing up amongst the good seed, choking it and destroying the real spiritual life in it, and supplanting the faith founded solely npon the Word of God, by a faith based upon ecclesiastical decrees and encumbered with dogmas and doctrines unknown to the Primitive Church, May England rise in its might and, with no uncertain voice, insist upon the Immediate rooting out of all these weeds and exereeeenees which have been springing up in her established Church. For if she do not, the doom of that Church is sealed, and a mighty agency for good is metamorphosed into a retrograde power in the land.