torture was to be used in order to force the Christians to renounce their faith. It was not, then, prompt, quick death that was now the order of the day, but slow, cruel torture. We have a picture of the horrors of this persecution in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa. “The magistrates,” he says, “suspended all cases, private or public, to apply themselves to the great, the important affair--the arrest and punishment of the faithful. The heated iron chains, the steel claws, the pyre, the sword, the beasts, all the instruments invented by the cruelty of man, lacerated, by night and by day, the bodies of martyrs; and each tormentor seemed to fear that he might not be as barbarous as his fellows. Neighbors, relatives, friends, heartlessly betrayed each other, and denounced Christians before the magistrates. The provinces were in consternation; families were decimated; cities became deserts; and the deserts were peopled. Soon the prisons were insufficient for the multitudes arrested for their faith, and most of the public edifices were converted into prisons.”[47] We find, also, St. Denis of Alexandria speaking in moving language of the persecution which he witnessed in his own city. He tells us that the numbers of the martyrs were past counting. No regard was paid to sex, age, or rank; men, women, children, and old men were tormented with equal cruelty. Every species of torture was employed, and every imaginable cruelty used to increase the horrors of death.[48] Again, at Smyrna, Antioch, Lampsacus, Toulouse, Nîmes, and Marseilles, martyrs died in thousands. In fact, wherever we turn our gaze, we see throughout the length and breadth of the empire the blood of Christians flowing. During the reign of Valerian the monotonous work of death goes on, but, perhaps, as we advance, the destruction of Christians becomes more wholesale. At Utica the heads of one hundred and fifty followers of Christ fell at once, and at Cirta in Numidia we see an atrocious butchery taking place which lasts the greater part of a day. The martyrs are led into a valley with ranges of hills rising to a great height on both sides, as if to favor the spectacle. They are ranged in line, their eyes bandaged, along the river-side; and the executioner passes on from one to another, striking off their heads.[49] It was, perhaps, a glad sight for the savage idolaters who thronged the high hill-sides to witness the bloody slaughter, but it was a sublime spectacle, too, for the angels of heaven, as they looked down upon those brave soldiers of Christ, and saw them standing in calm, joyful silence by that African river-bank and receiving their bright martyrs’ crowns.