same time proclaiming to them the "glad tidings" of reconciliation and eternal life. This was the constant burden of their testimony, the great end of their labors. It was as a power of life, of renovation, reunion, and eternal joy that they announced Christianity to the world; the key note of which had been struck by angel voices on the plains of Bethlehem. Not as a philosophy, but as a fact; not as a policy, but as a power, superhuman and divine, did they proclaim it to all. Calmly they pointed, first to the crucifixion, and then to the resurrection of Christ, universally known and acknowledged as the ground of their testimony, while affectionately and tenderly, as if angel hearts had been given them, they besought men to be reconciled to God. As a consequence of this, no less than three thousand persons were converted and added to their number in a single day. Subdued by a power which they ascribed to God, they repented, believed; and hence they were baptized in the name of the crucified Redeemer. Soon their number was swelled to five thousand; and at the expiration of a year and a half, even while the labors of the apostles were confined to Jerusalem and its vicinity, multitudes, both of men and women, had received the truth, and "a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith."

At this time the converts were scattered abroad by violent persecution, and they went every where preaching the word. Though "the Master" was gone, so far as his bodily presence was concerned, his divine spirit of love and power was with them. As Christ died blessing his executioners, so died the proto-martyr Stephen. Both conquered agony and death by the might of a supernatural charity; and this was the Heaven-kindled flame which the first disciples carried over Judea and the neighboring countries. They travelled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch; and in less than three years, churches were established in Judea, Samaria, and Galilee.

During this time, however, Christianity had been preached to none but Hebrews. Two years afterwards it was proclaimed to "the Gentiles," and before the thirtieth year from the death of Christ, the triumphs of the cross had extended to every part of Asia the Less, the isles of the Ægean Sea, to a large portion of Greece, and even to Rome. At these places the converts are described as "a great number," "great multitudes," "much people." They were especially numerous at Antioch and Ephesus. During the two years' residence of Paul at the latter city, "all Asia," it is said, "heard the word of the Lord," meaning by the term "Asia," according to the ancient, and especially the Roman use of

it, the beautiful and populous region, which lay eastward from the Mediterranean Sea, and occupied a considerable portion of what has been more recently designated Asia Minor. So numerous were the converts in Ephesus that a single class of them, who had dealt in magic, burned their books and implements to the value of fifty thousand pieces of silver, "so mightily grew the word of God and prevailed." *

In Jerusalem alone there were "many myriads," or many "tens of thousands" of believers. They multiplied there, and in the adjacent regions constantly, and no power of opposition or persecution could retard their progress. Their faith and joy struck the people. Their simplicity and devotion, their freedom and liberality, gave them power over the minds of serious and candid men. Miracles of life, especially in the spiritual sphere, every where indicated the presence of the Divinity, once incarnated in the body of Jesus, now enshrined as "Lord and King" in the bosom of the church. Baptized "in the spirit," they were one in their faith and life, one in their organization and action. When necessary, they had all things common; they loved one another, they pitied the poor, they sought the salvation of men, they conquered evil with good, and

one

These statements, as will be obvious to all, are made on the authority of the Acts of the Apostles.

went forth, at the hazard of life, to the moral conquest of the world.

Thirty years from the day of Pentecost, or the inauguration of the church by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, Christians, during the persecution under Nero, were quite numerous even in Rome; for Tacitus says, that "a great multitude" of them were seized.* In the days of Trajan, not more than seventy years after, Christianity had spread so extensively throughout the Roman empire, that in many places the heathen temples were deserted. Pliny the younger, governor of Pontus in Bithynia, says, in his well-known letter to the Emperor Trajan, "that many, of all

Tacitus obviously was ignorant of the character and claims of the first Christians. His testimony to their numbers, however, is clear and express. Narrating the facts of the burning of Rome by Nero, which the tyrant charged upon the Christians, Tacitus, after stating that they had derived their name from Christ, (or Chrestus, as he writes it,) who, in the reign of Tiberius, had suffered death, under the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate, adds, "For a while this dire superstition was checked; but it again burst forth, and not only spread itself over Judea, the first seat of the mischievous sect, but was even introduced into Rome, the common asylum, which receives and protects whatever is impure, whatever is atrocious. The confessions of those who were seized discovered a vast multitude (the expression is ingens multitudo) of their accomplices; and they were all convicted, not so much for the crime of setting fire to the city as for their hatred to mankind." It will thus be seen, not only from the expression "vast multitude," but also from the expressions "dire superstition," "checked," "burst forth," that the increase of Christians, even in Rome, must have been great and striking.

ages and of every rank, were accused to him of being Christians;" and adds, much in the style of Tacitus, whose precision in the use of language is the admiration of scholars, "that the contagion of this superstition" (as if it spread with the rapidity of a pestilence) "had seized not the cities only, but the smaller towns also, and the open country; so that "few victims were offered for sacrifice, and the temples of the gods were almost deserted."

There can be no question as to the fact that about the close of the first century, say sixty or seventy years from the ascension of Christ, Christianity had penetrated, with more or less success, into every part of the Roman empire, the population of which could not be less than a hundred and twenty millions. It was planted in the cities of Rome and Carthage, in Athens and Alexandria, in Ephesus and Antioch, in Damascus, and even in Babylon; nay, more, it had reached, if we may credit the traditions of the fathers, as far as Spain on the one hand and India on the other. Christians were to be numbered by thousands in Palestine and Arabia, in Italy and Egypt, in Greece and Asia the Less. Justin Martyr, who flourished in the first half of the second century, describes the extent of Christianity in the following terms: "There is not a nation either of Greek, or barbarian, or any