s
taken advantage of to minister to the lust for spectacles of blood and
agony which degraded the ancient world. There were the lions waiting;
there were Christians who deserved death: why waste so good an
opportunity to make a characteristic "Roman holiday."

We are appalled at the remembrance of civilized savagery which could
delight in the sight of helpless women and tender maidens torn by beasts
or writhing in the fire; and yet, almost equal cruelty, though not
perpetrated in the same spirit, has been witnessed at so recent a date,
and at the hands of "Christians," that we can hardly with a good grace
reproach paganism for its atrocities of this kind. The potential
"devilishness" which is in human nature is surely one of its prime
mysteries.

In the literature of Christian martyrdom it is frequently assumed that
there were ten general persecutions; but, as Mosheim says, this number
is not verified by the ancient history of the Church. For if, by these
persecutions, such only are meant as were singularly severe and
universal throughout the Empire, then it is certain that these amount
not to the number above mentioned. And if we take the provincial and
less remarkable persecutions into the account, they far exceed it. The
idea that the Church was to suffer ten great calamities arose from an
interpretation of certain passages of Scripture, particularly one in
Revelations.

In these days of gentler manners and easier faith, we are hardly more
amazed at the cruelties which were enacted to abolish Christianity than
we are astonished at the fortitude with which its adherents endured
them. Never did punishment so signally fail as a deterrent. The Church
grew most rapidly when to be a Christian almost certainly ensured
martyrdom. It is a marvellous history, that of the three hundred years
of struggle between Christianity and paganism, in which all earthly
considerations were abandoned for a conception of morality and for a
faith in the existence of a life beyond the grave. The same spirit has
always characterized Christianity, but never with such enduring
persistence or with such success as in the early days.

In the records of this struggle it is abundantly shown that women were
not spared, nor did they bear their part with less honor or courage than
the men. It was in the Church as it has been in all history: while the
government and the superior fame are awarded to one sex, equality in the
opportunity and in the endu