to resign life, the benignant heroism must, in part, have been due. Previous to the persecution the spirit of consecration had departed from the church. Christianity had become a social and class affair. Luxury had crept in, and eaten up the heart of conviction. The alliance of church and state had been especially disastrous to the church, the mingling of secular ambition with spiritual aspiration operating fatally on the finer qualities of faith. Few could have suspected then that the spirit of Jesus had ever been with the church. The persecution purged the christian communities with fire. The surface was burned over, and only the roots and seeds were left in the ground. The persecution ended, tranquillity being restored, the roots burgeoned, the seeds sprung up, all the heroism of the two dreadful years, all the patience and fortitude turned to gentleness; and a copious rain of mercy, blessing every body, even the persecutors, was the result of the battle's thunder and flame. The suffering that had been endured softened the heart towards all suffering. The persecutors no longer active or hateful, their passive forbearance seemed, in contrast with their recent fury, a species of mercy calling for positive gratitude. Not to be hated was felt to be identical with being loved; not to kill was by sudden revulsion of emotion, accepted as a kindly saving of life. To be kind to those who had desisted from hurting was natural. Besides, the persecution was incited and pressed by the government in Rome. The populace even there were not responsible for it, and in the distant provinces simply followed the metropolitan precedent. Their infatuation had therefore its pitiable as well as its outrageous aspect. They too were victims of the imperial policy, were perishing of the contagion which that policy caused, and thus were paying a terrible penalty for their own unwitting crime. It is unnecessary to suppose that any personal contagion from the character of Jesus, stealing through the murky ages of eastern and western life, communicated its saving grace to the Carthaginian brotherhood. Uninspired human nature is sufficient to explain the beneficent display. The conclusion is that no clearly defined traces of the personal Jesus remain on the surface or beneath the surface of Christendom. The silence of Josephus and other secular historians may be accounted for without falling back on a theory of hostility or contempt. The Christ-idea cannot be spared from Christian development, but the personal Jesus, in some measure, can be.