But after two generations the position had wholly changed, and to be a Christian was a penal offence which, if adhered to, was punishable with death. This necessarily involved a need for greater precaution, for more order and wise management in the assembling of the Church. [p.49] And in the early days when the churches lived in constant expectation of the immediate end of the age and the outward coming of Christ to set up His Kingdom, they would naturally lay little stress on church order; the struggle of the church militant was but to last a brief time more; there was no need for much organisation, or for any other connection between one church and another than the friendly ties of love. One church might have its prophets and teachers, another only presbyters or a bishop and deacons; others of larger size and needs might have ail these officers together with deaconesses and widows. But no one was anxious about such differences. Travelling apostles and evangelists formed living links of love betwixt church and church, and occasionally, individuals and churches sent letters to each other. No other bond was needed. But when it became slowly more evident that the Church might yet have to continue long years at work in the world before the consummation came, and when it seemed to the leaders that they had to fight a life and death struggle, on the one hand against the vast force of the world empire of Rome, whenever a persecuting edict might be enforced, and on the other against a growing crowd of strange errors, which seemed to them to be sent by the Devil to delude the hearts of the faithful, and draw them away from the Gospel of Christ; can we wonder that they did their best to draw the scattered communities of [p.50] Christians to a sense of unity under a like organization, adapted for a strenuous fight to preserve the good order of the Church from being shattered by persecutions from without or broken up and corrupted by false or mistaken brethren from within. And often, too, especially under the fire of persecution, something of the true prophetic spirit showed itself in the bishops themselves, as they admonished their fellow believers to be faithful even unto death, and beheld, amidst the shadow of death, visions of the deep things of God. Very true is this of Ignatius, whose letters breathe forth again and again the fiery faith and zeal of the true prophet, with flashes now and then of great and Christlike thoughts that still shine like gems amid the dust of pious exposition and mistaken exegesis that even first century Christian literature shares as a characteristic with our own. In the letter which he wrote to his friend Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, one sees how intensely he felt the importance of a bishop's work for the life of the Church, how great the need was for gifted and holy men to fill such posts and what true help such men were able to give to the struggling communities for whom they lived and whom they served.