“If it was a grievous offence to neglect the Paschal Festival, it is more dangerous to take our place in Church assemblies whilst we are not gathered into the fellowship of our Lord’s Passion. For who does really honour Christ as having suffered, died, and been raised again, save he who also suffers, dies, and rises again with Christ? These events are carried on in the children of the Church. The warfare is perpetual, the enemy malignant and strong as ever. Here then, at the Cross, let the Christian station himself, where Christ lifted him up with Himself; and to that point let him direct all his life, where he knows human nature was saved. For the Passion of our Lord is prolonged even to the end of the world; and as in His saints He is honoured and loved, and as in the poor He is fed and clothed, so in all who suffer for righteousness’ sake He suffers too. Unless, indeed, we are to think that since faith has been multiplied all over the world, all the persecutions and all the conflicts which raged against the blessed martyrs have come to an end; as though the necessity of taking up the Cross had been incumbent only on them. But very different is the experience of pious men who are serving God, and very different the witness of the Apostle. ‘All who resolve to live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ By which sentence he is proved to be sadly lukewarm and indolent who is attacked by no persecution. For none but those who love the world can be at peace with it; and there is ‘no fellowship at any time between iniquity and righteousness,’ no concord between falsehood and truth, no agreement of darkness with light. It is safer for man to have earned the devil’s enmity than his friendship; therefore the wise souls who have learned to fear and love our Lord do not stoop either to dread their foes or to do them homage. For they prefer God’s will, ever, to themselves, and love themselves all the better, inasmuch as for the love of God they love themselves not. “For in those who, after the Apostle’s example, chastise the body and bring it into servitude, the same enemies are being despised by the same courage, and even now the world is being overcome by Christ.” At length the light of Easter Day broke in on Christian Rome, the first Easter Ethne had ever spent in a city, had ever spent in Christendom. The joy of the festival swept her away in its great tide, the bells pealing from every basilica, the stately Ambrosian hymns filling the churches, the streets, and the homes with their grave and exulting music. The morning broke with the “_Aurora lucis rutilat_,” and the “_Hic est dies verus Dei_.” The voices of priests and people, in what was then the vulgar tongue of all, rose high in the “Ad cœnam Agni Providi.” “The Supper of the Lamb to share, We come in raiment white and fair.”