The Missionary by S. N. Haskell

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 16, 1883

The Missionary.

By S. N. Haskell

God Favors the Persecuted.

NOTWITHSTANDING God permitted such a terrible slaughter upon the people that inhabited the the Waldensian Valleys, at times he wrought for them wonderful deliverances. "Do not condemn us without hearing us," said they, "for we are Christians and faithful subjects; and our Barbes are prepared to prove, in public or in private, that our doctrines are conformable to the word of God. . . . Our hope in God is greater than our desire to please men; beware how you draw down upon yourselves his anger by persecuting us; for remember that, if God so wills it, all the forces you have assembled against us will nothing avail."

These words were put forth in faith, and courage, and in hope that God would vindicate his own work and truth with his own people. However, they were useless words to those who had brought upon them such great destruction. The march of their persecutors before this had been a victorious, though not a glorious one; and the victories which they had gained were over those who were helpless, having fled to the caves and dens of the earth. Seven hundred men were dispatched from the main army which had been so victorious, to destroy, as they supposed, another company of Waldensian heretics, but this effort did not meet with such success. The ascent of the mountains on the north side, to reach the Waldenses, was a mere foot-path formed by the herdsmen. The soldiers of the papal legate, bearing their weapons, to be employed, not in venturesome battle, but in cowardly massacre, toiled up the ascent of this foot-path. Above them were pinnacles of rocks, below them was a terrible precipice. It was a winding path, and they were obliged to go single file. Away to the east was a green meadow, level as ocean. It was to this point that they were making their way. Sometimes they would climb on their hands and knees over some difficult rock.

While they were in this path, ambitious to begin their work, the Lord interfered in behalf of his people. After passing this place of danger, they rushed upon the people with a confident expectation that they would have but an easy task in destroying them. A battle was joined at the hamlet of Pommiers. "The weapons of the Vaudois were rude, but their trust in God, and their indignation at the cowardly and bloody assault, gave them strength and courage. The Piedmontese soldiers, wearied with the rugged, slippery tracks they had traversed, fell beneath the blows of their opponents. Every man of them was destroyed with the exception of one ensign. Of all the 700, he alone survived. He made his escape, and crept into a cavity which the summer heats had formed in a mass of snow. Finally cold and hunger drove him forth to cast himself upon the mercy of the men he had come to destroy. They received him generously, and pardoned this solitary survivor of the host that had come to massacre them." They sent him back to the main army to tell the tale.

The Waldenses still sought for peace, but their humble supplications were contemptuously rejected, and they were still given three courses either of which they could choose. First, come to mass; secondly, be butchered as sheep; or thirdly, fight for their lives. They decided to choose the latter. They took their kneading-troughs, their ovens, and their culinary utensils; they took their aged on their shoulders, and their sick in couches, and leading their children by their hand, climbed the hills and arranged themselves to fight for their lives. The bow was almost their only weapon of defense. The Piedmontese host pressed heavily after them. When they saw the danger which they were in, they fell upon their knees and cried, "O God of our fathers, help us. O God, deliver us." The God of battles heard their cry and granted them a glorious deliverance. Upon hearing their prayer, the leader, a bloodthirsty man of Mondovi, instantly shouted "that his soldiers would give the answer, accompanying his threat with horrible blasphemies." He raised his visor as he spoke, and at that instant an arrow from the bow of one of the Waldenses entered between his eyes and he fell to earth a corpse. Then they were driven back down the slopes, and the Vaudois descended

upon them like one of their own mountain torrents. Thus it pleased the God of their fathers to crown their efforts with success that day. They returned and met with their friends as the evening began to fall, to celebrate with songs on the heights where they had won it, the victory which it had pleased God to give them.

But their persecutors only burned with rage and shame at thus being defeated by these herdsmen. They reassembled their host, and again started upon their errand of blood. The Waldenses knew well how to traverse the mountains, and they had done this through rents in the mountains, and through long, narrow, and dark chasms, which led them to a place of security as they supposed; but their enemies found the entrance, and on they madly rushed. In this terrible defile the soldiers of the papal legate now marched. They advanced the best they could along the narrow ledge. It seemed impossible for their prey to escape them. No angel seemed to blockade the pass until they had fairly placed themselves in a terrible condition, providing God's providence should interfere in behalf of the innocent. Below them were a thousand feet of precipice, and above them was a cliff which could not be scaled, the only way to reach the Waldenses.

History says as they were wending their way around this mountain "a white cloud no bigger than a man's hand, unobserved by the Piedmontese, but keenly watched by the Vaudois, was seen to gather on the mountain's summit, about the time the army would be entering the defile. The cloud grew rapidly bigger and blacker. It began to descend. It came rolling down the mountain-side, wave on wave, like an ocean tumbling out of heaven—a sea of murky vapor. It fell right into the chasm in which was the papal army, sealing it up, and filling it from top to bottom with a thick black fog. In a moment the host were in night; they were bewildered, stupefied, and could see neither before nor behind, could neither advance nor retreat. They halted in a state bordering on terror." Some of the Waldenses went above them in passes with which they were familiar, and tore up large stones and rocks and sent them thundering down into the ravine. The papal soldiers were crushed where they stood. Others entered the chasm where they were and attacked them in front. Panic impelled the enemies to flee; but their efforts to escape from their position was far more fatal than the sword of the Vaudois, or the rocks that, swift as an arrow, came bounding down the mountain. "They jostled one another; they threw each other down in the struggle; some were trodden to death; others were rolled over the precipice, and crushed on the rocks below, or drowned in the torrent, and so perished miserably." One began to vent his curses on the "Waldensian dogs" and while the words were in his mouth, his foot slipped, and he rolled over the precipice and was carried away by the stream, and his body finally deposited in a deep eddy or whirlpool.

Of the 18,000 regular troops, and, it might be added, about an equal number of desperadoes, that entered upon this campaign "they left their bones on the mountains they had come to subdue; they were cut off mostly in detail," and but few ever returned to their homes. Thus from time to time God wrought for his suffering people, showing that there was a God that heard prayer, and one that delivered those who trusted in him. S. N. HASKELL.