One of the men who helped in putting Stephen to death was a man named Saul. Saul was a Roman citizen and, like other Roman citizens, was proud of that fact. He thought the Christians were enemies of his country, and he did everything he could to have the Christians punished. Then, all of a sudden, Saul had a change of heart and came to believe in the religion of the very people whom he had been fighting. Whatever Saul did or whatever he believed he did or believed with his whole soul. Though he had never seen Christ, he became one of the chief Christians and then was made an apostle and was called by his Roman name, Paul. Paul preached the new religion far and wide just as earnestly as he had fought against it at first. Then he, too, was condemned to death. Paul, however, was, as I have said, a Roman citizen, and a Roman citizen could not be put to death by the ordinary judges who were not Roman citizens nor in the ordinary way by crucifying. So Paul appealed to the emperor. Nevertheless, he was put in prison in Rome and afterward beheaded. And so he is called St. Paul. Peter was another of the chief apostles. Christ had said to him, “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”[2] Peter, too, was thrown into prison, and was sentenced to be crucified. But he asked to be crucified with his head downward. He thought it too great an honor to die in just the same way as his Lord. On this spot in Rome where Peter was put to death was built long afterward the largest church in the world, the Cathedral of St. Peter. [2] Matthew, xvi, 19. As everything before Christ’s birth is called B.C. and everything since His birth is called A.D., you would naturally suppose that 0 would be the date of His birth. But it was not until some five hundred years later that people began to date from Christ’s birth. And then, when they did begin to date from this event, they made a mistake. It was found out that Christ was really born four years before He was supposed to have been born--that is, in 4 B.C.--but when the mistake was found out, it was then too late to change. [Illustration] 36 Blood and Thunder I once had a big Newfoundland dog, and he was one of the best friends a boy ever had. I don’t know who it was that named him; he was named before I got him; but whoever it was must either have been ignorant of history or a bad chooser of names. He was called Nero, and even a dog would have hated such a name, had he known whose it once was. Every good story usually has a villain to make it interesting. Nero is the prize villain of history. He was a Roman emperor who lived not long after Christ, and he is considered the most terribly cruel and wicked ruler that ever lived. He killed his mother. He killed his wife. He killed his teacher, who was named Seneca. He was not a bad teacher, either. We think that Nero ordered both St. Peter and St. Paul put to death, for they were executed at this same time.