No ruinous gift, nor even enthusiastically generous: Sydney's cup of
cold water needed more self-denial; and I am well assured that many a
Christian child of our day, himself well warmed and clad, meeting one
naked and cold, would be ready enough to give the _whole_ cloak off
his own shoulders to the necessitous one, if his better-advised nurse,
or mamma, would let him. But this Roman soldier was no Christian, and
did his serene charity in simplicity, yet with prudence.

Nevertheless, that same night, he beheld in a dream the Lord Jesus,
who stood before him in the midst of angels, having on his shoulders
the half of the cloak he had bestowed on the beggar.

And Jesus said to the angels that were around him, "Know ye who hath
thus arrayed me? My servant Martin, though yet unbaptized, has done
this." And Martin after this vision hastened to receive baptism, being
then in his twenty-third year.[6]

[Footnote 6: Mrs. Jameson, Legendary Art, Vol. II., p. 721.]

Whether these things ever were so, or how far so, credulous or
incredulous reader, is no business whatever of yours or mine. What is,
and shall be, everlastingly, _so_,--namely, the infallible truth of
the lesson herein taught, and the actual effect of the life of St.
Martin on the mind of Christendom,--is, very absolutely, the business
of every rational being in any Christian realm.

You are to understand, then, first of all, that the especial character
of St. Martin is a serene and meek charity to all creatures. He is not a
preaching saint--still less a persecuting one: not even an anxious one.
Of his prayers we hear little--of his wishes, nothing. What he does
always, is merely the right thing at the right moment;--rightness and
kindness being in his mind one: an extremely exemplary saint, to my
notion.

Converted and baptized--and conscious of having seen Christ--he
nevertheless gives his officers no trouble whatever--does not try to
make proselytes in his cohort. "It is Christ's business, surely!--if
He wants them, He may appear to them as He has to me," seems the
feeling of his first baptized days. He remains seventeen years in the
army, on those tranquil terms.

At the end of that time, thinking it might be well to take other
service, he asks for his dismissal from the Emperor Julian,--on whose
accusation of faintheartedness, Martin offers, unarmed, to lead his
cohort into battle, bearing only the sign of the cross. Julian takes
him at his word,--keeps