BOOK III.

THE CHRISTIANS.

'Waft, waft, ye winds, His story, And you, ye oceans, roll, Till like a sea of glory

It spreads from pole to pole; Till o'er our conquered nature The Lamb for sinners slain, Redeemer, King, Creator, In bliss returns to reign.'

CHAPTER I.

THE LAST DAYS OF PAGAN ROME.

HE tenth and last persecution of the
Church, by the might of Pagan Rome,

was rapidly drawing to its close, and a brief summary of its leading events may not be unwelcome to our readers, while they will enable them to comprehend more easily the situation of the principal actors in our

tale.

Diocletian was about forty years of age when he became Emperor, owing his exaltation to his merit as a victorious soldier, a man of great sagacity and courage, and to the fact of his having been the avenger of his predecessor, Numerian, whose assassin he had slain with his own hand. Yet he was born a slave, the son of servile parents, in the house of a Roman senator, and he took his name simply from Doclia, a

small town in Dalmatia, from which his mother derived her origin.

The principle of hereditary right had long been abandoned, and the slave of Doclia became the ruler of imperial Rome.

But feeling the weight of empire too great for him to discharge its duties with fidelity, he chose Maximian, a peasant by birth, to be his colleague, a man insensible to pity, and the ready instrument of every politic act of cruelty, so that when a bloody sacrifice seemed necessary, Maximian appeared as the acting authority, and when enough blood had been shed, Diocletian appeared to temper severity with mercy, and gain popularity at the expense of his colleague, who ever submitted to the influence of his benefactor as to that of a superior genius.

But not only was the empire thus divided, a subdivision also took place. Constantius, with the title of Cæsar, was entrusted with the government of Spain, Gaul, and Britain; the Illyrian provinces to Galerius; while Italy and Africa were considered the especial care of Maximian; Thrace, Egypt, and the rich provinces of Asia, of Diocletian.

Diocletian and Constantius were alike averse

to the policy of persecution, but Maximian and Galerius hated the faith of the Crucified with a most bitter and unsparing hatred, and they used all their influence to overcome the reluctance of the others. Representing the Christians as men who, forming a secret society, were attempting to subvert the laws of the empire and to set up a republic in their midst, they overcame the reluctance of Diocletian, who was still the supreme head of affairs, and after the winter which Galerius spent with him in his palace at Nicomedia, on the banks of the Propontis (Sea of Marmora), the twenty-third of February, A.D. 303, was appointed to set bounds to the progress of Christianity, on which day the principal church of that city was openly destroyed, and on the following day edicts were issued inaugurating the persecution.

Our space would fail to tell of the fearful scenes which followed. Fires which broke out in the imperial palace, and were attributed to the Christians, increased the rage of Diocletian, and caused him to give his whole energy to the work of persecution. Galerius enforced the decrees with the most sanguinary determination; Maximian directed operations in Italy and Africa with similar cruelty; Syria, Palestine,