“The Prefect hearing this pronounced the following sentence: Let those who have refused to sacrifice to the gods, and to obey the emperor’s edict, be beaten with rods, and led away to capital punishment, as the laws enjoin. And so the holy martyrs praising God were led to the accustomed place, and after being beaten were struck with the axe, and consummated their martyrdom in the confession of the Saviour. After which certain of the faithful took away their bodies, and laid them in a suitable place, by the help of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.” As the pillars of Trajan and Antonine faithfully record the deeds of those whose names they bear, and stand before posterity as a visible history, so, I conceive, the judgment of Ignatius by Trajan, and that of Justin by Rusticus, under the eye as it were of Marcus Aurelius and in his name, embody to us perfectly the mind and conduct of those great emperors towards Christians. The marble of Phidias could present no more perfect sculpture, the pencil of Apelles no more breathing picture, than the simple transcription of the judicial record given above. In the mind of Marcus the jealousy of the old Roman for his country’s worship joined with the philosopher’s dislike of Christian principles to move him from that more equable temper which dictated the later moderation of his immediate predecessor. It scarcely needed the spirit which ruled at Rome to kindle passionate outbreaks against Christians in the various cities of the empire. We have just seen the impassive majesty of Roman law declaring at the chief seat of power that to be a Christian is a capital crime. If we go at the same time to Smyrna, there the voices of a furious populace are demanding that an aged man venerable through the whole region for his innocent life and his virtues, be cast to the lions, because he is “the teacher of impiety, the father of the Christians, the destroyer of our gods, who has instructed many not to sacrifice to them or adore them.” No grander scene among all the deeds of men is preserved to us, as described by his own church at the time, than the martyrdom of Polycarp, as after eighty-six years of Christian service he stood bound at the stake before the raging multitude in the theatre, and uttered his last prayer: “I thank thee, O God of angels and powers, and all the generation of the just who live before thee, that thou hast thought me worthy of this day and hour to receive a portion in the number of thy martyrs, in the chalice of thy Christ.” Ten years later, in the great city of Lyons a similar spectacle was offered on a far larger scale. The Bishop Pothinus, more than ninety years old, is carried before the tribunal, “the magistrates of the city following him, and all the multitude pursuing him with cries as if he were Christ.” But the triumph of the bishop is accompanied by that of many among his flock, of whom while all were admirable, yet the slave Blandina,