they may not expose them. With them the table is common to all, but never the bed. They are in the flesh, but do not live according to it. They dwell on the earth, but their citizenship is in heaven. They obey the laws which are in force, but surpass the laws in their own lives. They love all, and are persecuted by all. Men are ignorant of them and condemn them. They are put to death, and made alive. They are poor, and enrich many. They want all things, and abound in all things. They are dishonoured, and glory in dishonour. Men speak ill of them, and bear witness to their goodness. They are slandered, and bless; insulted, and show respect. They do good, and are punished as evil; and in this punishment they rejoice, as filled by it with life. The Jews wage war with them as foreigners, and the Greeks persecute them; and they who hate them cannot give the cause of their hatred. In a word, what the soul is in the body, that Christians are in the world. The soul is diffused over all the limbs of the body; so are Christians through the cities of the world. The soul dwells in the body, but is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The soul invisible mounts guard in the visible body; and Christians are known as dwellers in the world, while their divine worship remains invisible. The flesh hates the soul; and though in nothing wronged by it, fights with it, because it is hindered in pursuing its pleasures;

and the world too, in nothing wronged by them, hates Christians, because they set themselves against its pleasures. The soul loves the flesh and its limbs, while the flesh hates it; and Christians love those who hate them. The soul is imprisoned in the body, while it holds the body together; and Christians are imprisoned in the world, while they hold the world together. The soul immortal lodges in a mortal tent, and Christians dwell amid corruptible things, looking for incorruption in heaven. The soul is improved by reducing the body's food, and Christians are daily punished, and abound the more. Such a post has God assigned them, which they may not decline. For, as I said before, this is not an earthly invention which has been handed down among them; nor is it a mortal device which they are minded to guard so carefully; nor are they human mysteries, with the dispensation of which they are charged. But the almighty, allcreating, invisible God Himself has implanted among them the Truth from heaven, and the holy Word incomprehensible, establishing it to abide in their hearts. Not, as any one might conjecture, that He sent to men some servant, an angel, or a prince, or one of those who administer the things of earth, or one of those intrusted with the dispensation of the heavens; but the Contriver and Artificer of all these; by whom He made the heavens; by whom He shut up the sea in its own boundaries; whose secret laws all the elements faithfully observe;

from whom the sun has taken the measure of his daily course; whom the moon obeys when He bids her shine in the night, and the stars which accompany her course; by whom all things have been arranged, determined, and subordinated.-This was He whom God sent to them: but did He send Him, as any man might reason, to exercise tyranny, to inflict fear, and to amaze? Not so, but in gentleness and meekness. He sent Him as a king who sends his son a King; He sent him as God; He sent Him as unto men; He sent Him to save them, to persuade and not to compel, for compulsion is abhorrent from God. He sent Him as loving, not as judging; for one day He will send Him to judge, and who shall abide His coming?-See you not that they are tost before the wild beasts, in order that they may deny the Lord, and are not conquered? See you not, the more their punishers, the more they abound? Deeds like these seem not to be the deeds of man, but the power of God, and the signs of His presence.

"For out of all men what single one was there who knew what God is before He came Himself? -For God, the Lord and Framer of all thingsbeing not only the lover of man, but full of longsuffering-conceived a mighty and ineffable design, which He communicated to His Son alone.-Then after having convicted in the previous period the inability of our nature to obtain life, He disclosed the Saviour, able to save even what was past sal

vation, and from both these things He intended that we should trust His goodness, and esteem Him Foster-father, Parent, Teacher, Counsellor, and Physician; our Intelligence, our Light, our Honour, our Glory, our Strength, and our Life.-And if you yearn after this faith, and receive it, first you will come to the knowledge of the Father.And then with what joy will you be filled! How will you love Him who first so loved you! And loving Him, you will imitate His goodness. Nor be surprised that man can imitate God. He can, by God's will. For happiness consists not in ruling over others, nor in the wish to have more than the weak, nor in being wealthy and forcing inferiors to your will. Nor can any one imitate God in such things as these. They are external to His Majesty. But when one bears the burden of another, when one wishes to help an inferior out of the superiority which the bounty of God has given, such an one becomes a God to those who receive from him. He is an imitator of God. And so dwelling upon earth, you will see that God in heaven administers the human commonwealth; you will begin to speak the hidden things of God; you will love and you will admire those who are punished because they will not deny God; you will condemn the deceit and the error of the world when you come to the knowledge of true life in heaven, when you despise that which is but seeming death here, when you dread the true death which is kept in

store for those who shall be condemned to the eternal fire, that is to punish unto the end them who are delivered over unto it. Then you will admire those who endure for justice-sake a temporary fire, and in the knowledge of that other fire will hold them blessed."*

The writer of this admirable letter states that he was a disciple of the Apostles. And he was also an eye-witness of what he so vividly describes. His time is most probably placed in the first ten years of the second century: he may have seen St. Ignatius cast before the wild beasts in the Coliseum. But in these few words he has given us a perfect picture of Christianity as it presented itself during ten successive generations to the people of the Roman empire. Two such generations had preceded the writer; eight more were to follow him. In all these Christians were like a seed sprinkled more or less sparingly, more or less abundantly, through all the cities of the civilised world from the Euphrates to Britain, growing up at first in silence and retirement, and escaping notice from their humility, but gradually emerging into air and light by the natural process of growth, and moreover multiplied with a fecundity which could not be concealed. Thus the grain sprung into the plant, and the plant became a tree; and the tree was everywhere, inexhaustible in life and fruitfulness. Or, to use another image employed

* Ep. to Diognetus, 5-12.