22 How the Church Has Changed the World fathoms deep under the sludge of all-in-all government, but the song was itself a parasite. A poet named Longfellow, many years before, had used that first line to honor a simple hard-working Christian man, a man of hope and integrity, who would sit among his boys on a Sunday in church, and hear his daughter singing. These were its first words: Under a spreading chestnut tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands, And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. But who can hold out against the father of lies, without the grace of God? George Orwell’s defeated “hero” in Nineteen Eighty-Four had no faith. Another dungeon The scene is almost two thousand years ago. A fiery preacher from the desert sits in chains in a dank and vermin-ridden cell, beneath the palace of a puppet king. Years later, a man named John who once followed him would write that he, also named John—God is gracious—had come as a witness, to bear witness to the Light. The word he used was martyria: witness, testimony, and, in the end, what we know as martyrdom.
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