of the saints, and the Holy City which had become a den of murderers which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt where the Lord was crucified. When he wrote his vision, three or four years later, the souls of those who had been slain in the great Neronian tribulation for the Word of God and the testimony which they held were still under the altar, and cried, 'How long, O Lord, how long dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?' But white robes were given them, and they were bidden to rest yet a little while till the number of their brethren was fulfilled. And afterwards one of the four-and-twenty elders who sat around the throne asked him, 'Who are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?' And he said unto him, 'Sir, thou knowest.' And the Elder answered, 'These are they which came out of THE GREAT TRIBULATION, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'

CHAPTER LVI

LIVING TORCHES

Ο νειδισμοῖς τε καὶ θλίψεσι θεατριζόμενοι. - Hebr x 33.

THE news of the Neronian persecution did not reach St. Paul at once. When he left the hospitable home of Philemon he first rejoined Timothy at Ephesus. He left him to arrange the affairs of the Church of Ephesus, and Onesimus took the place which had been filled by the son of Eunice in former years. He became the Apostle's travelling companion, to lend him the affectionate attendance now necessary to his age and infirmities. It was not till they reached Corinth that they heard the heart-shaking intelligence that the Christian Church at Rome had been smitten by Antichrist as with redhot thunderbolts. Though no accurate details reached them, Paul's first impulse was to fly to the succour of his Roman brethren; but Titus of Corinth, who was with him, urged him to remember that two of his brother Apostles were at Rome; that the persecution was now certain to break out in nearly every Church of the Empire, and that his presence was more needed in Crete and in the Churches of Asia and Europe of which he had been the immediate founder. Anxious to confront the growth of subtle heresies, more perilous in his eyes than persecution, he reluctantly abandoned his wish to return to Italy, and sailed to Crete. It was some time before he

learnt that St. Peter had sealed his testimony by martyrdom and that St. John was a prisoner at Patmos.

But Onesimus was distressed at heart by the perils which would befall the beloved daughter of Nereus, and he entreated the Apostle to let him be the bearer to Rome of his messages of consolation and encouragement. Receiving ready permission, he hurried to the capital by the earliest ship, and arrived on the very day of the stormn which had witnessed the crucifixion of St. Peter and the miraculous deliverance of the Beloved Disciple.

With amazement he saw Rome lying in ruins and the Christian cause apparently destroyed forever. 'Christian' was now the synonym of incendiary and desperate malefactor. His heart sank within him as he went from house to house only to find that the Christian inhabitants had disappeared. So great a multitude had been arrested that for the time being the prisons were the only churches. He went to the palace of Aulus Plautius, thinking that there he was certain to receive information; but there, too, he found that scarcely one of the Christian slaves was left, and that Pomponia herself had caught the virulent typhoid which had broken out among the crowded sufferers, and lay unconscious and dangerously ill.

Risking everything, he visited the prisons, and in one of them he found Nereus, wasted and haggard, but still animated by a cheerful courage. From him he learnt, with a deep sense of relief, that at the first outbreak of danger he had sent Junia to the safe refuge of Aricia. Pudens, when he sailed for Britain, felt a prescient intuition of the days which were to come, and told the Christian members of his household that they might always find a place of shelter with Dromo in the little country farm. Thither Junia had gone with a few others, obedient to the wish and command of her father, though reluctant to leave him. There Onesimus found her, and carried to her the blessing and the messages of Nereus. Nereus sent her word that he was doomed to die, as they were all doomed to die, though by what form of death was as yet unknown to them. He bade her to stay at Aricia. She could do nothing for him, and to come to Rome would only be to throw away her life. In the few lines he was able to write to her he commended Onesimus. He confessed that in former

days the youth had been altogether displeasing to him, but now he was a changed character. Paulus had won him back to the paths of holiness. He had been illuminated. He had tasted of the heavenly calling, and had devoted himself to the personal tendance of the aged Apostle. In Rome he had given proof of his courage and consistency by showing pity for the prisoners and not being ashamed of their chains. It was no time now to talk of marrying or giving in marriage, for surely the day of the Lord was very nigh at hand; yet, if Junia loved the youth, Nereus would not forbid their plighting troth to each other, and awaiting the day when the marriage might be possible. And this he granted the more readily, for he feared that very soon Junia would be left alone, a helpless and friendless Christian maiden in the midst of an evil world.

So the lovers met, but the interchange of their common vows were solemn and sacred, under the darkening skies of persecution, and as it were in the valley of the shadow of death. For Junia entreated Onesimus to return to Rome and do his utmost to watch over her father and to save him if by any means it were possible or lawful. He bade her farewell, and found time to pay one brief visit to the temple at Aricia that he might express his gratitude to the priests of Virbius for having spared his life. Alas, he was too late! A new Rex Nemorensis the ex-gladiator Rutilus reigned in Croto's room. He had surprised and murdered him the evening before, and Onesimus saw the gaunt corpse of Croto outstretched upon its wooden bier awaiting burial in the plot assigned to the succession of murdered priests.

Sick at heart, Onesimus hurried from the dark precincts, and by the morning dawn he was in Rome.

On that day the terrible massacres began which were to baptise the infant Church in a river of blood, and to consecrate Rome in the memory of Christendom as the city of slaughtered saints. For there Paganism was to display herself, naked and not ashamed, a harlot holding in her hand the brimming goblet of her wickedness, drunken with the blood of the beloved of God. Mankind was to see exhibited a series of startling contrasts: human nature at its best and sweetest; human nature at its vilest and worst:- unchecked power smitten with fatal impotence; unarmed weakness

clothed with irresistible strength:- pleasure and self-indulgence drowned in wretchedness; misery and martyrdom exulting with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. On the one side was the splendour and civilisation of the City of the Dragon revelling in brutal ferocity and lascivious pride; on the other side the down-trodden and the despised of the City of God rose to a height of nobleness which no philosophy had attained, and enriched with sovereign virtues the ideal of mankind. While the deified lord of the empire of darkness with his nobles and his myrmidons sank themselves below the level of the beasts, paupers and nameless slaves, young boys and feeble girls towered into tragic dignity, faced death with unflinching heroism, and showed that even amid satyrs and demons humanity may still be measured with the measure of a man that is, of the angel.

Herein lay the secret of the victory of Christianity. In the Rome of Nero heathendom showed the worst that she could be, and the worst that she could do; and Christianity showed, coinstantaneously, that manhood can preserve its inherent grandeur when it seems to be trampled into the very mire under the hoofs of swine. The sweetness and the dignity with which the Christians suffered kindled not only amazement but admiration in many a pagan breast. It was seen that with the Church in its poverty and shame, not with the world in its gorgeous criminality, lay the secret of all man's happiness and hope. Many a senator, as he looked. on the saturnalia of lubricity and blood, felt that the Christian slave-girl, tied naked to a stake in the amphitheatre for the wild beasts to devour, was more blessed than the jewelled lady by his side, whom he knew to be steeped in baseness; and there were youths to whose taste the apples of the Dead Sea had already crumbled into dust, who in their secret hearts felt themselves nothing less than abject compared with those Christian boys who, with the light of heaven on their foreheads and the name of Jesus on their lips, faced without flinching the grotesque horror of their doom.

But Nero and Tigellinus, and those who advised with them, never wavered in their hideous policy of purchasing popularity by making the murder of thousands of the innocent subserve the brutal passions of the multitude. They thought to abase the Christians, and they kindled round their