This steady yet gentle growth of Christianity during the hundred and eighty years which had passed between the date of St. Peter’s coming to Rome and that of the accession of Alexander Severus, is vividly illustrated in the fact that various wealthy pagan parents of the latter epoch did nothing to oppose the Christian education of their children when accident or the designs of Providence rendered such education possible. One cannot help thinking that even they realised that Christianity taught the boys and girls to be very virtuous and obedient children, from whom they would always receive the highest measure of filial love and duty. So it was that the only daughter of the noble Cecilius, one of the few representatives left of the true aristocracy of better times, was brought up from her infancy in the Christian faith. We are not told who her teacher was—perhaps some poor slave, who thus conferred on her master’s family an honour before which all those of noble ancestry and vast possessions were destined to pale, the honour of giving one of her most illustrious martyrs to the Church. The maiden Cecilia was so beautiful, so good, so accomplished, and withal such a loving, docile daughter, that it must have been with a great pang at heart that her father and mother saw the hour approach in which she must leave them for the house of the husband they had chosen for her, the young Valerianus, a fit mate in every way for their dear child, in her parents’ eyes. But to Cecilia their decision brought great fear and perplexity. Valerianus was all that they believed him to be—noble, upright, kind-hearted, a distinguished officer, with a heart as clean as his countenance was beautiful—but Cecilia had long ago vowed her life to God; the Pontiff, St. Urban, had approved of her high choice, and she had been assured by her Guardian Angel—constantly visible to her pure eyes in daily life—that God had accepted the sacrifice and would never permit her love for Him to be shared with an earthly spouse. Yet we, who know less of God’s ways than did the holy girl, read with something like astonishment that Cecilia ventured upon no open opposition to her parents’ plans for her. The authority of a Roman father was so supreme that it would have appeared to her an impiety to resist it. That she was consumed with anxiety and fear, we know, and that she spent nights and days in prayer to God, to His Angels, and to the Blessed Apostles, to protect her from the threatened danger. No “Acts of the Martyrs” are more full and authentic than those of St. Cecilia, written by those who had known her in life and who witnessed her death. As the dreaded day approached, she redoubled in fervour, and, fearing her own weakness in presence of the young man whom his high spirit, virtue, and beauty made her love as a brother, she fought down all carnal impulses by prayer and fasting (sometimes for three days together) and mortified her flesh by wearing a hair shirt under her rich dress.