1. _In the family_, in domestic life. Consider the position of a Christian slave--of a son or daughter--of a wife--in a pagan family. What scenes of strain and estrangement if one member was a Christian and the household generally clung to the old Roman religion! The son or daughter might wish to be Christ’s disciple, and yet shrink from “hating father and mother, brothers and sisters.” What constant contests would the Christian have to endure--what bitter reproaches--what perpetual danger of giving way and so endangering the immortal soul! What share could the Christian member of a pagan family take in the ordinary business and pleasures of the everyday existence, to say nothing of the extreme peril to which a member of the sect would be constantly subject of being denounced as a Christian to the authorities, who were often too ready to listen to the informer? 2. _In Trade._--Many commercial occupations were more or less closely connected with idol-worship; to say nothing of the makers and decorators of idol-images, a trade that manifestly was impossible for a Christian to be occupied in, there were hosts of artisans employed in the great arenas where the public games were held; then, too, there were the actors--the gladiators--those engaged in the schools and training-homes of these. What were such persons to do? 3. In the ordinary _pleasures of the people_ in which such multitudes took the keenest delight, was the Christian to stand aloof from all these? Was the Christian to attract a painful and dangerous notoriety by refusing to share in such dearly loved amusements, which with rare exceptions were positively hateful to every Christian’s conscience? 4. Was the civil servant or the lawyer to abandon his calling in which the worship of and reverence for the gods of Rome played so prominent a part? Was the soldier, or still more the officer of the Legions, to abandon his post and desert his colours, rather than acquiesce in the daily service and adoration of the gods of Rome. Was he to refuse to pay the customary homage to the awful Cæsar, when the slightest disrespect or failure in homage to this sovereign master, who claimed the rank of Deity, would be construed into treason and disloyalty? 5. _Education._--Could a Christian still continue to be a teacher of the young, seeing that in all the manuals of education a knowledge of the old gods still worshipped in Rome--their myths, their prowess, their various attributes--was carefully taught? The very festivals and sacred days had to be carefully observed by them, since it was by means of these the teachers’ fees were reckoned. All such and many other like questions had to be considered and weighed by the Christian converts living in the world of Rome. Very thorny and rough was the path which had to be travelled by every earnest Christian in his way through life. * * * * *