guilty of an unkind act. So he died, while around hundreds gazed upon his agony and rejoiced.

During the latter part of the Third century and the beginning of the Fourth the persecution reached its height. Then, at one time, all the prisons were filled with Christians. So rigorous was the execution of the Imperial will that even in the populous cities very few stood any chance of escaping arrest and examination. To discover offenders the following effective measure was adopted: proclamation was made through all the streets that men, women and children should all repair to the temples. Previous to this, lists of the citizens had been made out with great care. Every individual was called by name, and when he stepped forward was critically examined as to his faith. Those who confessed themselves pagans were at once released, but those who did not were ordered to prison.

It would have been a strange and melancholy sight to have seen the people going to the temples in obedience to the royal order. Old men, young men, fathers, mothers and children. What a variety of expressions appear on their faces. Some are calm and dauntless, moving along the street as if going to a festival. Some tremble with fear; others weep outright. There are women with children by the hand, with flushed, agitated faces hurrying on; the children shrink to their sides and turn awestruck faces upon every passer by. Husbands are consoling their wives, and wives speaking encouragement and strength to their husbands. The children have been told what they are to say, but are again and again warned and instructed. A deathlike stillness reigns through the temple when all have assembled. There are many pale and agitated faces. There are many hearts throbbing loud enough to be heard. The officer speaks. He calls the name of one well known to all. Then follows the examination. A word is sufficient, for none strive to hide their profession. The Christians rejoice when they hear the bold firm words of their brother; the heathen rejoice when they see him led off to prison. Then another is called; it is a gentle timid woman; her children are with her. She trembles as she rises; yet she confesses with

firmness that Jesus is her Saviour. Her own words speak her fate. She entreats that her children may go with her. The request is refused. She claps her babes to her bosom; they fling their arms about her as if to hold her fast forever; the rude hands of the soldiers disengage the mother from her children, and with a prayer to God that He would protect her helpless little ones the poor woman is borne weeping away.

One naturally wonders why in such an emergency as this the people did not flee from the city. This was difficult to do, for the towns were all enclosed with high walls which were as effective in keeping the people in as they were in keeping the enemy out. Moreover the gates were guarded, and every one passing through them was liable to be stopped until he could win a passage by confessing himself a heathen. Yet notwithstanding this many did escape and fled to whatever place of refuge they could find. This was the period during which the Christians of Rome hid themselves in the catacombs. These catacombs were underground excavations which were used as burial places. They were of immense extent and of very intricate character. They consisted of narrow passages running this way and that without any perceptible order. There are about 1,200 miles of these winding ways; and here it is estimated 6,000,000 of Christians were buried. So intricate and devious are these passages that it is as much as a man's life is worth to attempt to explore them without a guide. Many thrilling accounts are left us of persons who carelessly wandered into this place. Some escaped as by a miracle, and some perished in the most horrible manner. We remember reading of an event which is almost incredible, and yet which we are forced to believe. A party of students, about twenty in number, organized an exploring expedition. They provided themselves with a supply of provisions, candles and other necessary things sufficient to last three weeks. They entered the catacombs, and that was the last that was ever seen of them. How they died, no one knows. Whether they were suffocated by foul air, or suddenly overwhelmed by some awful catastrophe, or whether they became involved in the

intricate and perplexing paths and could not find their way out no one can tell. This we know, that having once descended into the catacombs they never

came out.

To this dreary place then thousands fled, and here it is said they lived for many years. Here they worshiped God. Here they celebrated the Holy Communion of Christ's Body. Here many grew from childhood to manhood, and here many died. Their tombs can be seen to this day. There are the inscriptions upon the walls giving their names, and delineating their characters, and speak ing of the blessed rest of peace to which they had gone. In some places one can see the outline upon the hard rock of the human skeleton, the outline made by the bones as they mouldered slowly to ashes while the years went by.

But the day of liberty was not far off. In a few years Constantine the Great conquered his way to the Imperial throne. He became a Christian, and soon the faith of Christ was recognized from one end of his broad land to the other. And, although after this great man died, pagan rulers followed him, yet during his reign Christianity became so firmly established that no one afterward dared sacrifice the life of one of those who professed it.

But great as was the suffering inflicted upon the followers of Christ by the heathen, it does not at all equal that which Christians in after years inflicted upon one another. The bitterness with which one body of believers made war upon another casts reproach upon the sacred name we bear. During the Reformation countless numbers maintained their faith at the cost of their lives. All have heard of St. Bartholomew's day. On the 24th of August, 1572, the Roman Catholics arose in arms against the Protestants of France. The massacre began in Paris at three o'clock in the morning. From that city it rapidly spread throughout the surrounding country. It lasted for eight days, and by the end of that time over fifty thousand Protestants had fallen before their enemies. This was a greater number than was destroyed by the heathen in all their persecutions put together. And these numbers would swell to fearful proportions if we were to add to them

the martyrs of England and the Netherlands. In the latter country eighteen thousand perished by the hand of the executioner. For what crime? For the crime of being Protestants. No edict ever published by a pagan Emperor was half so bloody as that uttered by a Christian king and sanctioned by a Christian Pope.

But what a contrast between these times and our own! The sound of the sweet-toned bell which calls us to the House of God speaks of nothing but peace. It excites no fearful alarms in the breast. It does not tell us that the hour has come when at the risk of our lives we must pay our devotions to God. We gather to our places of worship, not as Christians once did, trembling lest some treacherous eye should discover our secret meeting and the holy hour be violated by the measured tramp of a company of armed men sent to arrest those who dared to adore Christ contrary to the edict of an emperor or the bull of a pope, but with open-hearted confidence: for each worships according to the dictates of his own conscience. The sun of our day arose in blood, but it now stands serene in its cloudless meridian.

Some of the Trees of Palestine.

BY REV. T. W. CHAMBERS, D. D.

By far the most prominent, abundant and profitable of the trees of the Holy Land is the Olive. It is found in every part of the country from Hebron to Banias, usually in large orchards, and seems to flourish in any kind of soil or situation, in the plain, on the hillside or on the mountain-top. Often where the stones would seem to be too numerous to allow any tree to strike its roots deep enough, the olive grows luxuriantly. It is easily propagated not from the stone, but from a branch or cutting which stuck in the ground with small protection, lives and thrives.

In the neighborhood of Bethel two or three of these cuttings are planted together, and, when somewhat grown, twined closely with each other, giving the mature tree such an appearance as I never saw in any other region. On

asking the reason for this, I was answered by the old proverb, In union there is strength. There seemed to me little need of such pains in this case. The tree is wonderfully tenacious of life. I must have seen at least a hundred thousand of them within a month's travel, and yet among them all not one that was dead. Some were far older than the trees shown in what was called the Garden of Gethsemane. Many of these had the trunk entirely hollow, and only a shell remaining, in others a half or three-fourths of the trunk had gone; yet all were in full and vigorous leaf and blossom. They reminded me of the comparison in the ninety-second Psalm of the righteous to trees which retain their sap to the last and are fruitful even in old age. Almost all the olives produced here have the oil expressed, which is used to some extent for illuminating purposes, but chiefly on the table. In central Palestine it is also largely employed in the manufacture of soap, to which it is said to impart a peculiar but very pleasant detergent property.

Next to the Olive comes the Fig tree, whose delicious and wholesome fruit makes it a general favorite. A common explanation in the books of the difficult passage in Mark's gospel (xi. 13) where our Saviour cursed the fig tree because "He found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet," is to affirm that the fruit precedes the leaf, and thus to justify our Lord's procedure. But the assumed fact is groundless. Having seen the the tree nearly every day for a month, I can testify that the leaves come first, and so all the people here declare. But I am assured that the tree bears two crops, an early ripe fig which is crude and without flavor and valueless, and a later fig which is full of sweetness and flavor, and highly esteemed. All trees bear the first, only good ones have the second. Now the tree our Lord saw had not the second, for the time of that had not yet come, but it had not even the first, for it had nothing but leaves, and the lack of the first was sure evidence that the second would also be wanting. In lack of a better explanation this may be allowed to stand.

The Palm tree once abounded in

Palestine, and Jericho was known as "the city of palm trees." It is often said now to be wholly extinct. But this is a mistake. The Dôm palm is, I believe, unknown, but the Date palm is found to some extent in Engedi, Marsaba, Jerusalem, Tiberias and some other places, while there is a number in Jenin, and a very large number in Haifa (foot of Mount Carmel)-the latter said to have been reared by the soldiers of the late Ibrahim Pasha when he had a garrison at that post. It is simply the lack of care and culture that prevents this graceful and useful tree from being as abundant as ever it was in former times.

The Pomegranate and the Apricot and the Almond are found in many places, but I saw none which looked as flourishing as those in the garden of the Convent of St. Catharine at Mt. Sinai. Apple trees are frequent, and the fruit is said to be large and luscious, but I doubt if it is equal to that of the western world. Certainly in the ordinary talk of the people it is not referred to as one would expect from the allusions to it in Canticles and Proverbs. I met with some of the fruit in Damascus, but it was quite insipid.

Of forest trees the Oak, or as some prefer to call it, the Terebinth, is found of great size, a fair instance of which is seen in the large tree at Hebron shown as Abraham's oak, or in the two noble trees nurtured by the fountain at Tell el-Kady, not far from Banias. But there is a species which has a very tenacious root and shoots up in many saplings. These the people cut off close to the ground and use for fuel, and although an English gentleman at Jerusalem complained to me that this practice was destroying the wood of the country, an old resident assured me to the contrary, saying that the tree constantly renewed itself after this seemingly ruthless cutting. It is in this way that the glass factory at Hebron is supplied with fuel. The factory, however, does not make new glass. It simply collects old bottles and other vitreous fragments, and runs them over into rings and beads of various sizes, probably the crudest manufacture of the kind in the world.

The Carob occurs very frequently.