"We are but of yesterday, and we have filled your cities, your islands, your stations, your country towns and settlements, your council chambers, your very camp, your palace, your Senate, your bar. We have left you only your temples. We can count your armies: the Christians of a single province exceed them in number."-Tertullian, Apology 37.

The day was coming, inside a very few generations, when Christianity would be either sufficiently in the majority, or at least a strong enough minority, not only to free itself from persecution but to become the established religion of the empire. Surely this was a marvelous growth for two hundred years!

CHRISTIANITY FROM HADRIAN TO DIOCLETIAN

Brief and fragmentary as are the sources for this period, their variety and interest is very great. We have more and more frequent notices of Christianity from now on in the works of pagan writers. Lucian the satirist, Celsus the teacher of philosophy, Galen the medical writer combat it in their various ways, by satire, by serious argument, by polite tolerance and explanation of its strange beliefs. Christian writers appeared, who undertook both to refute the charges brought against their religion and to expound its tenets in a way suited to convince or at least win the toleration of the responsible and educated classes in the empire. Letters were written, like the one from the churches in Vienne and Lyons (in Gaul) recounting the persecution there in the year 177. All these supply us with information, scanty as it is, for our period.

The catacombs.-And all along, through these dark decades, as a background which makes vivid even to

day our reading of the short and simple annals of the persecuted, there are the inscriptions in the Roman catacombs-the chilly, stone corridors under the city where the Christians held their forbidden services, baptized their children, partook of the Eucharist, and buried their dead. The faith which shines in the darkness of those rock-hewn chambers is brighter than anything in the world outside. No pagans ever wrote on their tombs such epitaphs as these:

ARETUSA IN DEO

"Arethusa rests in God"; or

ALEXANDER SUPER ASTRAS

-"Alexander has ascended beyond the stars"; or the tenderly beautiful one,

EIRENE IN PACE

-"Irene is in peace"; Irene, whose very name means "peace," has found it at last, freed from the terrors of the tyrant and persecutor.

Hadrian's rescript.-Trajan's successor was likewise a soldier, Hadrian, one of the best emperors Rome ever enjoyed. He was a great statesman and succeeded in improving the methods of taxation—there were arrears of over $40,000,000 when he ascended the throne. He was determined, moreover, to improve the administration of justice and do away with some of the barbarities still permitted by the law. In religion he was one who dabbled in various cults, and therefore might be expected to tolerate new and suspected faiths, including Christianity. We are not surprised to read, then, in a work by Eusebius, the early church historian, that "this was

especially a time in which the doctrine of salvation attained its full power and spread among all men" (The Preparation for the Gospel 4:17).

Under Trajan individual Christians had been accused by informers; and the charge, apparently, referred simply to membership in a secret and therefore illegal society. But now we hear of popular outbreaks, like the one in which Polycarp was to suffer, when the mere name of Christian was enough to excite a mob and rouse the utmost fury of popular hatred and violence. The chief trouble took place in Asia, the old missionary field of Paul and Apollos, and now thickly populated with Christians. The proconsul Granianus wrote to Hadrian, as Pliny had written to Trajan, asking for directions in dealing with the victims of the outbreak. Hadrian replied, after a time, addressing Fundanus, who was now proconsul, with his famous rescript in which he directed that

...

"If the people of the province are able to maintain their charge against the Christians so far as to answer in open court, they must adopt this simple method, and not use demands and mere clamor. If then, anyone accuses them and proves that they act in any way contrary to the law, you must give decision by the legal method, in accordance with the gravity of the offense. On the other hand, if anyone accuses them simply as an informer (for purposes of extortion), see that you punish him with due regard to the seriousness of the case.”. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4:9.

Copies of the rescript were sent to other governors, and it supplied a rule of procedure for many years, even under later emperors. Though there were a few martyrdoms in the reign of Hadrian, the persecution was not

so violent as it had hitherto been and was to become later on.

The Antonines.-Hadrian died in 138 and was succeeded by Antoninus Pius, and he in turn, in 161, by his adopted son, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. "The Antonines," as they are known to history, were good emperors in many ways, faced with an impossible task, however, on account of the economic and political conditions within their empire and the growing barbarian power threatening its frontiers. Marcus found a refuge from despair in the study of Stoic philosophy and left the world his famous meditations entitled "To Himself." It seems strange that the Christians were persecuted under these wise and gentle rulers. The reason is doubtless that in their view the empire and its interests came first, and any movement which suggested a divided loyalty, or set men's minds upon another world than this, or required allegiance to some unknown spiritual potentate, naturally appeared to be dangerous and to deserve stamping out at all costs.

The Thundering Legion.-There is a story of one of the legions in Marcus' time, the Twelfth, known as the "Thundering Legion," which legend has made into a wonderful miracle. In a battle with the savage Germans and Sarmatians the soldiers were nearly overcome with thirst. The Christians in the army prayed to Christ in their extremity and a heavy storm broke. The soldiers caught the water in their upturned shields, drank, and sprang forward to pursue their foes, already in flight from the violent lightning and thunder. A relief on the Antonine column still shows the scene, though the rainfall is credited to Jupiter Pluvius, the Rain-giver. Pagan historians, on the other hand, assert that an Egyptian soothsayer produced the storm by magic. But the