[175] The visits of the Emperor Hadrian to Athens, and his delight in that city, have been confirmed by the latest antiquarian investigations in the region of coins and inscriptions. The student who wishes to make acquaintance with the evidence on this point, which has an important bearing upon the historic proof of our holy religion, should consult the learned treatise of Julius Dürr, styled, _Die Reisen der Kaisers Hadrian_, (Vienna, 1881). It minutely investigates the records of Hadrian's life, and shows us that Hadrian visited and lived at Athens in A.D. 125. This work was published ten years before the _Apology_ of the Athenian Christian Aristides was discovered, serving to illustrate its history from an independent point of view. I have endeavoured to set forth the bearing of this point at greater length than I can now bestow upon it in a series of papers on the _Apology_ of Aristides in the _Sunday at Home_ for 1891-2. Mrs. Rendal Harris, the wife of the discoverer of it, has published an interesting work on this _Apology_, to which I would refer the reader (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1892). The _Apology_ itself was published in 1891, in the series called _Cambridge Texts and Studies_. [176] The testimony of Eusebius, _H. E._, iv. 5, is express on this point: "Down to the siege of the Jews under Hadrian there were fifteen bishops in the Church of Jerusalem, all of whom, as they say, were Hebrews from the first, and received the genuine knowledge of Christ, so that in the estimation of those able to judge they were counted worthy of the episcopal office." [177] The whole subject of the origin and history of the primitive Church of Athens has been minutely investigated by a modern French scholar, C. Bayet, a member of the French school of antiquaries at Athens. The title of his book, to which I have already referred, is _De Titulis Atticæ Christianis Antiquissimis Commentatio_ (Thorin: Paris, 1878). He gives a large number of primitive Christian and Jewish inscriptions found at Athens. The above quotation from Aristides will be found in Rendal Harris's edition, p. 48, in the Cambridge _Texts and Studies_.