taken from the book of the Acts of the Apostles; but as this book is almost confined to the labors of Paul and his immediate companions, saying very little of the other apostles, it is very certain that the view we have given of the propagation of the gospel, during the first thirty years, is very incomplete. In the thirtieth year after the beginning of the work, the terrible persecution under Nero kindled its fires; then Christians had become so numerous at Rome, that, by the testimony of Tacitus, ‘_a great multitude_’ were seized. In forty years more, as we are told in a celebrated letter from Pliny, the Roman governor of Pontus and Bythinia, Christianity had long subsisted in these provinces, though so remote from Judea. ‘Many of all ages, and of every rank, of both sexes likewise,’ were accused to Pliny of being Christians. What he calls ‘the contagion of this superstition’ (thus forcibly describing the irresistible and rapid spread of Christianity), had ‘seized not cities only, but the less towns also, and the open country,’ so that the heathen temples ‘were almost forsaken,’ few victims were purchased for sacrifice, and ‘a long intermission of the sacred solemnities had taken place.’ Justin Martyr, who wrote about thirty years after Pliny, and one hundred after the gospel was first preached to the Gentiles, thus describes the extent of Christianity in his time: ‘There is not a nation, either Greek or barbarian, or of any other name, even of those who wander in tribes and live in tents, among whom prayers and thanksgivings are not offered to the Father and Creator of the Universe by the name of the crucified Jesus.’ Clemens Alexandrinus, a few years after, thus writes: ‘The philosophers were confined to Greece, and to their particular retainers; but the doctrine of the Master of Christianity did not remain in Judea, but is spread throughout the whole world, in every nation, and village, and city, converting both whole houses and separate individuals, having already brought over to the truth not a few of the philosophers themselves. If the Greek philosophy be prohibited, it immediately vanishes; whereas, from the first preaching of our doctrine, kings and tyrants, governors and presidents, with their whole train and with the populace on their side, have endeavored, with their whole might, to exterminate it; yet doth it flourish more and more.’... In connection with the moral power and vast extent of this work, it should be considered, that among those who were brought to the obedience of Christ were men of all classes, from the most obscure and ignorant to the most elevated and learned. In the New Testament we read of an eminent counselor, and of a chief ruler, and of a great company of priests, and of two centurions of the Roman army, and of a proconsul of Cyprus, and of a member of the Areopagus at Athens, and even of certain of the household of the Emperor Nero, as having been converted to the faith. Many of