We know not that Titus was a Christian. The light is very dim which comes down to us through these long centuries. But it is certain, that, in very many things, he manifested the spirit of Christ. The reign of this good man was short. Titus had a brother Domitian, an utterly depraved young man. He was to Titus as Cain to Abel. Anxious to grasp the sceptre, it is said that he poisoned his brother Titus when he had attained the forty-first year of his age and the second of his reign. The wretched Domitian ascended the throne. It is certain that he had heard of Jesus, of Christianity. The guilty are always suspicious. Knowing that the Christians regarded Jesus as their King, that they were looking for his second coming to reign as their Lord and Master, he regarded Jesus as a formidable rival. Apprehensive that there might be some heirs of Jesus around whom the Christians might rally, he arrested a large number of the disciples, and had them brought before him for examination. Anxiously he inquired of them what money they had in their treasury, what territory they possessed, and when and where the reign of Jesus would commence. The disciples assured him that they had neither lands nor money. In proof, they showed him their hands, indurated by toil. They assured him that the kingdom of Jesus was to be, not an earthly kingdom, but a heavenly and angelic; and that his reign would not commence until the end of the world, when Jesus would appear in clouds of glory. Domitian was by no means satisfied with these replies. It was the general belief of the Christians, that Christ, in his second coming, might appear at any time. This was appalling tidings to Domitian. Such a dethronement was more terrible than any other which could be thought of. He hated the Christians, and wreaked undiscriminating and pitiless vengeance upon them. Many were driven from their homes into exile. They carried with them into the remotest provinces of the empire the glad tidings of the gospel. Many suffered death, accompanied by all conceivable tortures. It is one of the legends of the Catholic Church, that the aged apostle John, being then at Rome, was, by the order of Domitian, thrown into a caldron of boiling oil. Miraculously he escaped without injury. He was then banished to the Isle of Patmos. It was there that he was favored with that wonderful series of visions recorded in the book of Revelation. In these mystic pages, so much of which is still enigmatical, the apostle represents what was to happen in succeeding ages,――particularly that the Church should suffer persecution; the punishment of its persecutors; the ruin of Rome, where idolatry reigned; the destruction of idolatry itself, and the final glory of the triumphant Church.[171]