There is nothing more delicate, more defenceless, or more beautiful, than the young girl whose virtue has never been sullied by the corrupt influence of the world. The peerless soul of the virgin is the brightest spot on earth, and the most pleasing to God. He has frequently, in the history of the world, chosen the weak and humble frame of girlhood for the most extraordinary manifestations of His power or of His goodness. He has sent, from time to time, beings who seemed to be angels clothed in human form, to attract us by the loveliness of virtue, and to show us the great mystery of love in which He unites Himself to the human soul. God has ever been wonderful in His saints - He gave them His power when they asked it, and those extraordinary suspensions of the laws of nature which we call miracles were ordinary actions to them. But there was nothing so consoling as the power, the consolation and protection He imparted to the defenceless daughters of the Church in the terrible times of persecution. When dragged before tyrants for their faith and their virtue, He Himself took them as it were into His own hands, and made them not only triumph over the brutal rage of the pagan, but made them apostles and witnesses of the divinity of Christianity, the example, the glory, the crown of His Church. Their virginal chastity was more dear to Him than the stars of heaven, and He invariably smote with the lightning of vengeance the wretch that would dare to cast an unchaste look on those angels in human form. Although He permitted them to fall under the axe of the lictor, it was that their death might be the triumph of their chastity and their faith, and the commencement of their ineffable reward in the paradise of God. Neither persecutions, nor yet the more powerful blandishments of the attractive but false joys of life, could ever induce the Christian female of the first centuries to yield up her right to the sublimest titles that heaven has given to earth - Christian and Virgin. The triumph of the youthful martyrs was the most perfect and absolute that history knows; but could it be otherwise? It was the triumph of Him who reigns in the highest heavens, who laughs at the malice of His enemies, and against whom nations rage in vain.

But whilst we look back in admiration at the thrilling and sublime lessons of heroism and virtue given to us by the Christian heroes of the early ages, a secret feeling of regret steals over us that these days of triumphs are gone. The seductions, the blandishments, the immoralities of our days of peace and repose have been more destructive than the fire, or sword, or wild beasts of the pagans. It is rare to find now-a-days a true virgin - one who would suffer death rather than permit the slightest breath of corruption to sully the brilliancy of the gem of chastity. Alas! what the rack, the scourge, or brutal violence could not touch in the days of the past, may now be blasted by a look, a squeeze of the hand, or a playful liberty, the corrupt influence of the worldly, and very often even irreligious education permitted by the careless and indifferent parents of these times, has swept away the safeguards of modesty, and our children have lost their treasure ere they have known to prize it. But woe to the wretch who allows himself to become the instrument of Satan for the destruction of innocence! He will sink into the awful torments of hell, deeper than the impious Ulpian, who plotted the ruin and shed the blood of the virgin Martina.

From The Martyrs of the Coliseum, or the Historical Records of the Great Amphitheater of Ancient Rome, by Fr. A. J. O’Reilly, D.D - previously reviewed here.