Lucia Claudia, however, found the same tender affection, the same perfect union, existing among the Christians of Palestine as at Rome. Some were then living who had seen the Lord, and had listened to those divine precepts which had made the Gentile officers sent to apprehend him return to their dissatisfied employers with the remarkable reply, “Never man spake like this man,” and she no longer regretted Rome. To Adonijah, the Hebrew Christian Church planted by the High Priest of the order of Melchisedec, so long-promised to Israel and rejected when He came, was a lively representation of heaven upon earth. He recognised the Lord’s Prayer as a Jewish one,[24] to which one petition alone had been added by the great Head of the Christian Church, who then gave it the perfection “which came down from the Fountain of Goodness and Father of Light.” The Psalms of David, too, sung in his own dear loved land, were full of that light which was spreading then over the whole earth to enlighten the dark and idolatrous Gentiles Jerusalem and the cities of Judea might lie in the dust of desolation for ages, but Christ had been the glory of the land; and the heart of the Jew clave to his ruined country, as if no curse lay upon its hills and valleys, for the Sun of Righteousness had risen there with healing on his wings, and Adonijah acknowledged the Son of David as his Lord and his God, and he loved best to worship where the steps of his Saviour had been. ----- [20] Infant baptism was general in the second Century—a fact proved by the works of Cyprian, and there is reason to believe that the infant children of Christian parents were usually baptized, though the practice fell into disuse in the third and fourth centuries. [21] Whether the early Christians used the present ritual we are not able to determine. The ring placed upon the finger of the bride was an ancient heathen custom, nor can we find a different origin for the bride-cake, which in the middle ages was decorated with ribbons and placed upon the altar. It is probable that the Church retained such rites as were not inconsistent with a Christian profession. [22] Simeon, the brother of Jude, the son or grandson of Cleopas, is supposed by some to have been the nephew of Joseph, by others the offspring of the Virgin’s sister, who was also named Mary. It is possible that both these statements may be correct. He succeeded St. James the Less in the Bishopric of Jerusalem, and was crucified in the reign of Trajan, in his 120th year. [23] See Appendix, Note XII. [24] The Lord’s Prayer is from the Mishna of the Jews; to this beautiful compilation our Saviour added a characteristic petition, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” for he approved the beautiful formula then in use, and gave it all it wanted. CHAPTER XXIV.