While the Romans were busily seeking to conquer Britain, an event of unparalleled importance took place. It was the birth of Jesus, the Christ. Very nearly every one of the early preachers who by any possibility could have gone to Britain with the Gospel message, has been declared to be the founder of Christianity there. The Apostle Peter is declared, so says an old chronicle, “to have stayed some time in Britain; where having preached the word, established churches, ordained bishops, priests and deacons, in the twelfth year of Nero he returned to Rome.” But this, for many reasons, is not to be believed. Joseph of Arimathea is also said to have first taken the Gospel to Britain. But the whole narrative of his mission is fabulous. A King Lucius is said to have sent about 164 A.D. to Rome for missionaries, but this too is questionable. One more question remains to be considered. Did the Apostle Paul plant Christianity in Britain? Tertullian, about the year 200 A.D., wrote that the Gospel had spread “also to the boundaries of the Spaniards, to all the different nations of Gaul, and to those parts of Britain inaccessible even to the Romans.” But more ancient than this is the testimony of Clement, Bishop of Rome, 102 A.D. “St. Paul preached righteousness through the whole world; and, in doing this, went to the utmost bounds of the West.” A learned writer thus sums up all the evidence of Paul’s being the first to give the Gospel to Britain: “That St. Paul did go to Britain we may collect from the testimony of Clemens Romanus, Theodoret and Jerome, who relate that, after his imprisonment, he preached the Gospel in the western parts; that he brought salvation to the islands that lie in the ocean, and that, in preaching the Gospel, he went to the utmost bounds of the West. What was meant by _the West_ and the islands that lie in the ocean, we may judge from Plutarch, Eusebius and Nicephorus, who call the British Ocean the western; and again from Nicephorus, who says that one of the apostles ‘went to the extreme countries of the ocean and the British Isles;’ but especially from the words of Catullus, who calls Britain the utmost island of the West; and from Theodoret, who describes the Britons as inhabiting the utmost parts of the West. When Clement, therefore, says that Paul went to the utmost bounds of the _West_, we do not conjecture, but are sure, that he meant Britain, not only because Britain was so designated, but because Paul could not have gone to the utmost bounds of the West without going to Britain. It is almost unnecessary, therefore, to appeal to the express testimony of Venantius, Fortunatus and Sophronius, for the apostle’s journey to Britain.” PAGANISM OF THE SAXONS.