not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive, but God had revealed by His Spirit. For no greater change can be conceived for man to accept, than to pass from the life which a Pomponia Græcina or a Callista would lead in her Roman or her Grecian home, into the life of a Lucina burying martyred apostles, or the death of a Callista, in a dungeon of the third century; between the prosperous Cæcilius in the midst of the wealth and luxury of Carthage, and the Cyprian who, after ten years of apostolic labour, uttered his _Deo gratias_ upon the Proprætor's sentence of death. Nor must we take only as samples those who were conspicuous for their work as Christians, even though it were accompanied by sufferings. We must take rather the staple of the common Christian life in its opposition to the discarded heathendom—the life of charity, of poverty, of chastity pursued by those of humblest position, over against the hatred, the avarice, the impurity out of which they came. The acceptance of such a law as the Christian law, founded upon such a belief as the Christian belief, is in any one case the result of a power quite beyond man, whatever his learning, eloquence, or persuasiveness from any natural gift may be, to bring about in his fellow-men. What, then, was that power shown in instances innumerable—shown when the acceptance of Christ crucified as the exemplar of life involved the risk of losing life, and all which made life naturally sweet or even tolerable, involved a living crucifixion? The state of virginity, confession of any kind, and finally martyrdom, made the highest point of this life; but we must look upon the great mass of the Christian people as that which produced such fruits. The Martyrs, whatever their number, were no doubt relatively few in comparison with those who were not martyred. They were "the first-fruits of the threshing-floor which the world would offer to the Redeemer;" how numerous must have been the grains of wheat out of which they were chosen? They were "the new leaven and the salt of humanity, which by the offering of their bodies and the pouring out their blood would sanctify the whole mass;"[195] but how great was the spiritual power which had descended into that mass? Surely Chrysostom had good reason when he selected the creation of the Christian people as that one miracle of Christ which no heathen gainsayer could deny. What we find, then, as an ultimate fact in the historical conversion of the heathen world, is this internal action of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of the Apostles and their successors, by which the Christian people was formed in spite of the world around them; in spite of seductions from the pride of life, the desire of the eyes, the terrible empire of sensuous beauty; in spite of terrors which involved every suffering as well us every privation of lawful enjoyments.