r men especially--stand up day by day
and bless God for the noble privilege which is yours, the privilege of
the patriot, of the man who sacrifices all, worldly possessions, even
life itself, for the sake of his beloved fatherland. Not many days
since I stood upon that spot, that holy ground, where five of your
fathers were cruelly done to death for no other crime than repudiating
the rule of a bloody-minded king, an English king who was not their
king, whose sovereignty they had never owned. There they were hung up
to the infamous gallows where they died the most ignominious of deaths,
with every circumstance of barbarity which could have been practised by
the savage heathen against whom they have ever striven. Standing upon
that spot I could see the whole of it again. I could see those five men
hauled beneath the English gallows-tree, I could see the brave and noble
fortitude wherewith they went to their death. I could see the weeping
crowd of their fellow-countrymen--of Our fellow-countrymen--and women--
gathered to witness their sufferings. And the five patriots--the five
martyrs--were dragged up by ropes to their doom. But, brothers, God
intervened. Heaven intervened. Even as the lions' mouths were shut to
Daniel--as the fiery furnace kindled by the idolatrous king passed over
the three servants of God unhurt--even so Heaven intervened to render
the slaughter instruments of the cruel English king of no effect. The
apparatus of death gave way, and the five patriot martyrs fell to the
earth unharmed. What then? What then, sons and descendants of those
great ones? Did the English recognise the hand of God? Did they
recognise that even their puny mockery of justice had to bow before the
manifestation of His will? They did not. In the face of the tears and
supplications and bitter grief of those who beheld; of those in whose
veins ran the blood of the martyred men, those five patriots were once
more put through the bitterness of death. This time Heaven did not
intervene. And why? In order that the death agonies of those tortured
patriots should be held in remembrance; that they should be ever before
the eyes of their descendants as an earnest of the death agonies of the
hated and hateful race which was their oppressor and is ours. Brothers,
I stood upon that ground, that very spot, that holy ground, and I prayed
and gained strength that I might fulfil the purpose for which I am here.
Slagter's Nek! Th