Lucia raised her streaming eyes, and recognised the Christian bishop whom she had preserved from martyrdom by claiming her privilege as a vestal priestess, when her womanly heart had led her to pity the Christians as victims of Nero’s cruelty, though without feeling any interest in Him for whose sake “they suffered such things,” or even inquiring into the nature of the doctrines they professed. To her they had only appeared “setters forth of strange gods;” mystics who led inoffensive lives, and held secret worship in honour of some deceased person whom they deified. There was something so compassionate in Linus’ manner, so venerable in his appearance, that, disconsolate and distressed as she was, commanded Lucia’s attention, and compelled her to listen to him. “Noble lady,” continued he, “you preserved my life, and gratitude will not suffer me to leave you without offering you sympathy and counsel. Through the grace of God you appear to have ‘cast away the works of darkness,’ for I hear you, who of late were a heathen priestess, calling upon Jehovah in prayer; but how is it that you omit to offer it through His name for whose sake alone it can find acceptance with your Heavenly Father—even through Jesus Christ, His beloved Son, ‘in whom He is well pleased’—the Redeemer of a lost and ruined world, ‘who was crucified for our sins, and rose again for our justification’?” “Father,” replied Lucia, wiping her eyes, and looking up with an air of earnest attention, “I know not Him of whom you speak. Convinced of the vanity and blindness of that idolatry to which I had been dedicated, I have become a convert to Judaism, and have learned to worship the God of Israel as the Creator and Preserver of all men; and I look for another life, after this transitory existence shall have passed away: but of this Christ, from whom your sect is called, I am ignorant altogether.” With the dignity and simplicity of truth Linus unfolded the divine mission of the Saviour to sinners; the necessity of such an atonement, and the impossibility of coming to God by any other way than through faith in His blood; declaring that the Messiah, whose coming Lucia had been already taught to expect, was indeed “this very Jesus whom the Lord had made both God and Christ.” The mysterious doctrine of the cross, “to the wisdom of this world foolishness, and to Israel a rock of offence,” was a saviour of life to the meek females who now heard it for the first time. Upon their minds the bright effulgence of “the Sun of Righteousness arose, with healing on his wings.” “And did Cæsar slay the Christians for such pure doctrines—for following such a Saviour as this?” demanded Lucia. “Unhappy Christians! what tortures did ye not undergo on this very spot!”