that they would be treated as criminals and dragged before the tribunals of Kings and magistrates. They fulfilled their mission and verified His prophecy. The world will never know the true extent of their zeal, heroism, and self-sacrifice. No book will ever tell the complete record of their wondrous labors, of the days and nights spent in prayer and preaching, of the hours of terror, of hunger, of fatigue, which succeeded one another from the day of Pentecost to that of Martyrdom.

Looking back over the space of nineteen hundred years, considering the condition of that time, the lack of every convenience for travel and communication, we stand utterly amazed and speechless at the results they accomplished. Within a few short years, so short as to appear almost incredible, they had carried the Faith into almost every region of the then known world, so that it could truthfully be said that their voice had reached to the very ends of the world. Thus was the faith of Christ established everywhere, and those twelve humble fishermen, transformed by the Holy Spirit into valiant champions and intrepid generals, performed such miracles of daring conquest as the world has never known in all its history. We can read now but faintly the story of their complete triumph over self, over the opposition of the whole world and the direst tyranny of the most powerful princes that have ever ruled. We must wait fully and clearly to comprehend the unspeakable virtue, zeal, magnanimity and sublimity of their lives till we behold them clothed in all the glory of Princes upon the Twelve Thrones promised them by the lips of the Eternal Son of God.

THE NATIONS THE BUILDING

In the last conference, we watched the birth of the Church on the day of Pentecost, in the little cenacle at Jerusalem; and tracing the earliest indications of its growth, we followed the Apostles in their career from Palestine, through all the different lands, where driven by persecution, and carried on by the zeal of their faith, they spread the new doctrines throughout the world. In different lands they planted this little seed, and then watered the soil that had received it with their life blood. We must push our research still further, and watch with interest, how warmed by the sun of God's providence and protection, the buried germ sprung forth into a thriving and sturdy tree, which, spreading its branches wider and wider, gave shelter to an innumerable throng and withstood the storms of centuries of persecution.

In connection with this subject, namely, the propagation of the Christian faith in the first three centuries, three questions present themselves as especially worthy of consideration, inasmuch as each has been the subject of attack by those who would consider the spread of Christianity to be of no weight in establishing the divinity of its doctrines. And first, is it true that from the very start, the number of converts to the new faith was very considerable, in fact, wonderfully great; or were the followers of the new religion a mere handful, an inconsiderable few? Secondly, what was the character, intellectually and socially, of the first believers? Were they people of no position, a credulous and infatuated

multitude, or were they rather of all classes, many of them among the richest, noblest, and most learned of their day? Thirdly, can the propagation of the faith among the nations be attributed to purely natural causes, or must we look for an explanation of its marvelously rapid growth in the divinity of its origin and its providential protection?

For a truthful answer to these questions, we must, like true historians, read the testimony of those who have left to us a faithful description of the Church in the first centuries of its existence. Renan, speaking of the propagation of the faith, as it is recounted in the Acts of the Apostles and in the Letters of St. Paul, writes that there is little to boast of in the success of the Apostles in evangelizing the nations, "for," says he, "they considered that they had spread the Gospel in a country when they had made a few addresses and preached a few sermons," that as a rule, they considered themselves quite fortunate when they had made a dozen or so of converts; that not unfrequently, the churches established in different places by the Apostles, of which we hear so much in the Acts and Epistles, consisted of fifteen or twenty people, and that all the converts brought to the faith by St. Paul in the East, and in the West, did not exceed a thousand. So that in Renan's eyes the descriptions given by St. Luke and St. Paul of the growth of the infant Church are simple exaggerations, or, indeed, open lies.

Gibbon and Montesquieu, admitting the wonderful growth of the Church, pretend to explain it all by the operation of purely natural causes. But, after all, unlike Renan, they do admit that the number of converts was very considerable, and indeed enormous.

The accusation that the early Christians were of the

lowest classes of society, people of little repute, and credulous women, is almost as old as Christianity itself. For Origen himself was obliged to refute this calumny which was common enough even in his time, and Minucius Felix also assures us that this was a common accusation against the followers of Christ. Hence if to-day we hear it said that, after all, the Catholic Church is made up of people of no education or position, and is simply a gathering of the credulous and illiterate of the world, we must remember that this assertion has been repeated in all ages, back to the time of Christ Himself. But assertions are not arguments, and words are not facts.

In studying the history of any event of any country, it is necessary to gather our knowledge from documents which can be proved to be the most trustworthy description of the events narrated. According to this criterion, the story of the propagation of the faith in the earliest times is best studied in the Acts of the Apostles, whose author is St. Luke. It matters not now, whether the student be a Christian, a Jew, or a Mohammedan. We are considering the credibility of the documents from a purely historical standpoint. Putting aside, therefore, the question of inspiration, and looking at it simply as a book of human authority, this testimony of the Evangelist Luke fulfills all the requisites of credibility. How can our opponents prove that St. Luke did not know the facts he describes? how can they prove that he was deceived or intended to deceive his readers?

He was a writer who described contemporaneous facts; he was, moreover, a learned man and a veracious witness. Some of the things of which he writes, he saw with his own eyes, and the rest he describes as they were narrated

to him by the Apostles themselves, that is, by immediate witnesses.

If, therefore, from a purely critical standpoint, we deny credence to a man who possesses all these prerogatives of credibility, of what facts of history can we be certain? Now let us open the Acts of the Apostles to the place where is recorded in simple and concise terms the story of the day of Pentecost. We find there that the number baptized and received into the Church on that occasion was three thousand people. Again, later on, the same author tells us that on the occasion of the miracle wrought by St. Peter at the gate of the Temple, five thousand people believed and were aggregated to the faith. Here, therefore, within a few days from the birth of the Christian Church, we find that the number of converts made at Jerusalem alone was over eight thousand. Now when we consider that in the natural order of events the influence of this great number would be very considerable among their relatives, friends, and circle of acquaintances, added to the fact that it became a duty of each one in turn to spread the knowledge of the true religion and become himself an Apostle, it is evident that in a very short time, this number would be at least doubled. In point of fact, St. Luke confirms the supposition, when he says "that the multitude of believers increased every day," so that it was necessary to choose seven deacons to relieve the Apostles of some of their minor duties.

In this light we can understand how terrified the high priests and Sadducees became at the sight of such great desertion among their followers. What else can be assigned as a reason of the bitter jealousy they entertained towards the leaders of the new faith? Nor were their