things, is not like unto gold, silver, or stones, out of which the hand of man hath shapen figures. He calls on all men to repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world, because He has appointed the Judge, raising them from the dead." "We will hear thee at a more convenient season," said' the mocking Athenians. Yet several joined the Church. From Athens Paul went to Corinth, where he stayed converting and preaching, and whence he wrote his first epistles. At Ephesus he was in danger of perishing, for a goldsmith, who gained much money by making idols and silver models of the temple of Diana, raised a sedition against the disciple among the workmen in his branch of industry.

On all hands were the

The city was filled with confusion. shouts heard: "Great is Diana of the Ephesians." Yet the local magistrate appeased the sedition by threatening the wrath of Rome. "We could not," he said, "allege a reason to justify this tumult; we are in danger of being accused of rebellion." When the disturbance had ceased Paul returned to Macedon to confirm in the faith the disciples whom he had left there, and thence he returned to Jerusalem. The Jews, irritated at the success of his apostleship, wished to kill him, but the Roman tribune in command of the town saved him. Still the governor of Cæsarea kept him two years in bonds. At length Paul appealed to Cæsar and was sent to Italy by a ship that was wrecked at Malta. Acquitted of the charge brought against him, he offended Nero by gaining to the faith a lady of the court, and June 29, A.D. 65 or 67, he was decapitated. According to the tradition of the Church, St. Peter was crucified at Rome, head downwards, the same day. Then began the persecutions.

But as Tertullian remarked, the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christians. Five years after the martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed, and the dispersion of the Jews commenced; but at the moment when the old law succumbed, the new law began the conquest of the Roman world, which was retarded, but could not be prevented, by persecution.

THE CHRISTIANS TILL CONSTANTINE.

We have seen that the martyrdom of Stephen, A.D. 33, was succeeded by that of St. Peter and St. Paul, and of the Christians under Nero, A.d. 61–68. The second persecution was under Domitian, in which a nephew of Vespasian and his wife perished. The apostle St. John was at this time exiled to Patmos, where he

wrote the Apocalypse (A.D. 95). The third persecution occurred under Trajan (A.D. 107). Yet the Church increased, though opposed by fanatical importations from the east, and by attempts to purify Paganism (Neoplatonism), while Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius gave almost a Christian tone to Stoicism.

In the third century the Church had such numerous adherents that heretics rose up against it; Ebionites, Marcionites, Gnostics, and others. The purity of doctrine was preserved by the canon of the New Testament. The Sophists led Marcus Aurelius to decree a fourth persecution, A.D. 166–177 (martyrdom of Justin, Polycarp, Pothinus, etc.). Till Septimius Severus the Church was fairly quiet; but, alarmed at their secret meetings, he ordered a fifth persecution (A.D. 199-204). The sixth took place under Maximinus (A.D. 233–238). Philip, to whom Origen addressed several works, showed a tolerant spirit. Under Decius the misfortunes of the state, attributed to the wrath of the gods, occasioned a seventh persecution, renewed by Gallus and Valerian (A.D. 251-260), and subsequently by Aurelian (A.D. 275), though an edict of Gallienus (261) permitted the public exercise of the Christian faith. The tenth and last persecution was under Diocletian, or rather Galerius, and was par excellence the one of martyrs (A.D. 303-312).

CHAPTER LI.

THE PRINCE OF PEACE.

WHEN Rome, after a warfare of four hundred years, saw all the people of the then known earth lying at its feet, and Augustus had set up the imperial throne in the metropolis of the world, the noise of battles was for the first time hushed after long ages, and the universe was at peace. It was a mysterious silence, as if something great and extraordinary were expected. Wonderful presentiments of a great future occupied the minds of nations. But it was especially in Judæa that great events were anticipated. One was to arise among the Jews who was to have the sceptre of the world. For had they not read in the Prophets, that when the sceptre departed from Israel, after the lapse of seventy weeks

the Desired of all Nations should appear? As the presJgn yoke lay heavier upon them, so the closer was the is at hand.

he One that should come, or shall we expect another?" question addressed by St. John the Baptist to our

Lord, and it was the question of the whole world. When will the Desired of all Nations appear? How will He appear? Who will it be? The writers of that age imagined, since Augustus had ascended the throne, that it must be one like him, in whom the promises would be fulfilled. In his hand lay the fate of the world, his will was law from the rising to the setting of the sun, his name was on all lips, and flattery suggested that altars should be raised to him. But already near the golden throne of the emperor stands a cradle, and while his arm directs the fate of millions, a poor Child is resting on the arm of Its mother. Can there be a greater contrast than that between Augustus at Rome and the Child at Bethlehem. In the former, the richest, the greatest, the mightiest that the earth had ever borne in the other, the poor, lowest, most dependent object in existence, a crying, helpless child. And while Tiberius, the master of the world, revelled in his pleasures at Capri, One is dying far from Rome, on the Cross at the Place of Skulls, the death of a malefactor.

But let a few years pass, and what do we see? The universal empire of Rome lies in ruins; the imperial crown has fallen from their head, the victorious sceptre is broken, and the earth has not preserved even the dust of those mighty rulers. Another empire, greater and mightier, has been set up, another name is on all lips, lives in all hearts, and His empire grows from age to age, and His name is blessed from generation to generation. And who is this? The Child of Bethlehem, Jesus Christ. And why has all happened thus? The greatness of one, of Augustus, was the work of man, therefore it had to perish with time, in which all perishes that comes from man; the greatness of the second is the work of God, therefore it bears the stamp of the Godlike; immortality is imprinted on it.

OUR EARLY MSS. (ROMAN).

One great mark of antiquity is found in the writing itself. The Sinaitic Bible, discovered at the St. Catherine's convent, on Mount Sinai, by Dr. Tischendorf, is in Uncial characters, which are remarkable for their very ancient form, having a close resemblance to the papyrus MS. found at Herculaneum, and of the first century. This Uncial character remained undiminished in its fully round and square form till the fifth century; after which it degenerates into narrower and more cramped forms. The most ancient characters are remarkable for the great simplicity and the absence of marked points to the letters. But in the fifth cen

tury it is not so, and it may be generally remarked that the old writing is distinguished from the later by an unartificial beauty. The Vatican and the Sinai MSS. cannot be distinguished from the Herculanian rolls in the size of the letters.

Another sign of antiquity which stops at the fourth century, is the lack of initial capitals. The Vatican and Sinai MSS. agree in this, and a few other MSS. of a connected class, such as the Dio Cassius at Rome.

Another sign of age is the want of punctuation, and the occurrence of vacant spaces. This is found in the Vatican and Sinaitic Bibles, which in this agree with all earlier parchments, previous to the fifth century. A crowning evidence of the early date of the Sinaitic MSS. is seen in the agreement of the four transcribers working on it, who show the prevailing style of the age by their agreement.

The German critic, Hug, gave it as an evidence of the great age of the Vatican Bible, that the MS. presents six columns at a view on two pages, showing it was written in the transition age from rolls to books, at the time when the old division into columns was retained. In the Sinaitic MS. the argument is stronger, as it gives eight columns at a view, which has never been found in any other ancient MS.

Dr. Tischendorf winds up his inquiry with the remark that it may be assumed as proved that the codex of the Sinai Bible was most probably transcribed in the middle of the fourth century.

Tischendorf is of opinion that there can be no doubt that the earliest Latin translation of the Gospels was made soon after the middle of the second century, because the Latin translator of Irenæus, before the end of the second century, and Tertullian living in the last ten years of that century, appear already distinctly dependent on that translation. We have this early Itala MS. in its most essential features, for our documents of the fourth century find a strong confirmation in the two ancient witnesses, Irenous and Tertullian. Another stronger confirmation is the agreement in essentials of the Sinaitic codex with the Itala. Moreover, the oldest Syriac version, found lately in the Nitric desert, agrees with it too, as well as Origen and the oldest fathers of the Church. A still further proof is adduced in the fact that the Peschito version, referred to the end of the second century, implies the earlier existence of this Syriac version, which must have therefore arisen in the middle of the second century. But Dr. Tischendorf goes farther than this.

and advances confidently the statement that all our Gospels must be traced at least to the beginning of the second and the end of the first century.

The Scriptures of the New Testament are not private documents, they are official, the Magna Charta of the Church, placed under the ward of the greatest of powers-publicity, which chastises every alteration; of the apostles in their official capacity, who either wrote them themselves or caused them to be written; and guarded and testified by the bishops appointed by the apostles, in their official character. It was at this time the books received their designations, which was necessary, as the Scriptures were publicly read in the assemblies of the Christians at the time of Justin Martyr (at the beginning of the second century), so that at the end of the first century, when the apostles were still living (St. John died a.d. 100), and when the disciples of the apostles, the apostolic fathers, who had been intimate with the apostles, and had frequented them, were still working in the Church, the composition of the New Testament appears as a completed thing, universally acknowledged as a fact.

One of the strongest arguments in favour of the New Testament has still to be advanced. Conceive a man full of intellectual gifts, with a clear understanding trained in logic, familiar with the treasures of Greek and Hebrew literature, endowed with iron energy, pursuing the adherents of the new doctrine with deadly hatred, as it was entirely opposed to his whole course of thinking. Conceive this man suddenly converted to a promulgator of this hated doctrine. How greatly the force of events must have moved him to bring about such a change! When he appeals, in opposing the fables and fallacies of false teachers, to nothing but facts, how sure he must have felt of these facts? And this man is Paul. Thus if we had no Gospel, the truth of the history of Jesus would be established in its main features by the statement of St. Paul in his letters, the authenticity of which has not been attempted to be denied by the most extravagant criticism.

The arguments of the mythical school are destroyed by the following considerations. The formation of myths always belongs to a prehistoric age, at a time when the distinction between the world of imagination and the external world has not been sharply established, as with Greeks and Germans. It is at such an epoch in its growth that a nation dreams the dreams of its myths. Thus Theodoric, the Ostro-Goth, has his Epopea, and not Charlemagne; the siege of Troy, and not the heroes of Ma