Again and again the procession halted at the places of torture . Upon reaching their starting point at the royal palace , the crowd dispersed , and the king and the prelates withdrew , well satisfied with the day ' s proceedings and congratulating themselves that the work now begun would be continued to the complete destruction of heresy . The gospel of peace which France had rejected was to be only too surely rooted out , and terrible would be the results . On the 21st of January , 1793 , two hundred and fifty-eight years from the very day that fully committed France to the persecution of the Reformers , another procession , with a far different purpose , passed through the streets of Paris . " Again the king was the chief figure ; again there were tumult and shouting ; again there was heard the cry for more victims ; again there were black scaffolds ; and again the scenes of the day were closed by horrid executions ; Louis XVI , struggling hand to hand with his jailers and executioners , was dragged forward to the block , and there held down by main force till the axe had fallen , and his dissevered head rolled on the scaffold ." --Wylie , b . 13 , ch . 21 . Nor was the king the only victim ; near the same spot two thousand and eight hundred human beings perished by the guillotine during the bloody days of the Reign of Terror .
The Reformation had presented to the world an open Bible , unsealing the precepts of the law of God and urging its claims upon the consciences of the people . Infinite Love had unfolded to men the statutes and principles of heaven . God had said : " Keep therefore and do them ; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations , which shall hear all these statutes , and say , Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people ." Deuteronomy 4:6 . When France rejected the gift of heaven , she sowed the seeds of anarchy and ruin ; and the inevitable outworking of cause and effect resulted in the Revolution and the Reign of Terror .
Long before the persecution excited by the placards , the bold and ardent Farel had been forced to flee from the land of his birth . He repaired to Switzerland , and by his labours , seconding the work of Zwingli , he helped to turn the scale in favour of the Reformation . His later years were to be spent here , yet he continued to exert a decided influence upon the reform in France . During the first years of his exile , his efforts were especially directed to spreading the gospel in his native country . He spent considerable time in preaching among his countrymen near the frontier , where with tireless vigilance he watched the conflict and aided by his words of encouragement and counsel . With the assistance of other exiles , the writings of the German Reformers were translated into the French language and , together with the French Bible , were printed in large quantities . By colporteurs these works were sold extensively in France . They were furnished to the colporteurs at a low price , and thus the profits of the work enabled them to continue it .
Farel entered upon his work in Switzerland in the humble guise of a schoolmaster . Repairing to a secluded parish , he devoted himself to the instruction of children . Besides the usual branches of learning , he cautiously introduced the truths of the Bible , hoping through the children to reach the parents . There were some who believed , but the priests came forward to stop the work , and the
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