ounced in the strongest language those who dared to
show it honor. It was only by fleeing from the power of Rome that any
could obey God's law in peace.

The Waldenses were among the first of the peoples of Europe to obtain a
translation of the Holy Scriptures.(100) Hundreds of years before the
Reformation, they possessed the Bible in manuscript in their native
tongue. They had the truth unadulterated, and this rendered them the
special objects of hatred and persecution. They declared the Church of
Rome to be the apostate Babylon of the Apocalypse, and at the peril of
their lives they stood up to resist her corruptions. While, under the
pressure of long-continued persecution, some compromised their faith,
little by little yielding its distinctive principles, others held fast the
truth. Through ages of darkness and apostasy, there were Waldenses who
denied the supremacy of Rome, who rejected image worship as idolatry, and
who kept the true Sabbath. Under the fiercest tempests of opposition they
maintained their faith. Though gashed by the Savoyard spear, and scorched
by the Romish fagot, they stood unflinchingly for God's word and His
honor.

Behind the lofty bulwarks of the mountains,--in all ages the refuge of the
persecuted and oppressed,--the Waldenses found a hiding-place. Here the
light of truth was kept burning amid the darkness of the Middle Ages.
Here, for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient
faith.

God had provided for His people a sanctuary of awful grandeur, befitting
the mighty truths committed to their trust. To those faithful exiles the
mountains were an emblem of the immutable righteousness of Jehovah. They
pointed their children to the heights towering above them in unchanging
majesty, and spoke to them of Him with whom there is no variableness nor
shadow of turning, whose word is as enduring as the everlasting hills. God
had set fast the mountains, and girded them with strength; no arm but that
of Infinite Power could move them out of their place. In like manner He
had established His law, the foundation of His government in heaven and
upon earth. The arm of man might reach his fellow-men and destroy their
lives; but that arm could as readily uproot the mountains from their
foundations, and hurl them into the sea, as it could change one precept of
the law of Jehovah, or blot out one of His promises to those who do His
will. In their fidelity to His law, God's servants shou