as well as Alexamenos. The moral pressure of the advancing Church was felt throughout all ranks of pagan society; ridicule was invoked to do the work of argument; and the moral persecution which crowned all true Christian devotion was often only the prelude to a sterner test of that loyalty to a crucified Lord, which was as insensible to the misrepresentations, as Christian faith was superior to the logic, of heathendom."[148]--_Liddon, Bampton Lectures of 1866_, lect. vii. p. 593. These chambers acquire a great additional interest from the belief which many entertain that they are those once occupied by the Prætorian Guard, in which St. Paul was confined. "The close of the Epistle to the Ephesians contains a remarkable example of the forcible imagery of St. Paul. Considered simply in itself, the description of the Christian's armour is one of the most striking passages in the sacred volume. But if we view it in connection with the circumstances with which the Apostle was surrounded, we find a new and living emphasis in his enumeration of all the parts of the heavenly panoply,--the belt of sincerity and truth, with which the loins are girded for the spiritual war,--the breast-plate of that righteousness, the inseparable links whereof are faith and love,--the strong sandals, with which the feet of Christ's soldiers are made ready, not for such errands of death and despair as those on which the Prætorian soldiers were daily sent, but for the universal message of the gospel of peace,--the large shield of confident trust, wherewith the whole man is protected, and whereon the fiery arrows of the Wicked One fall harmless and dead,--the close-fitting helmet, with which the hope of salvation invests the head of the believer,--and finally the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God, which, when wielded by the Great Captain of our Salvation, turned the tempter in the wilderness to flight, while in the hands of His chosen Apostle (with whose memory the sword seems inseparably associated), it became the means of establishing Christianity on the earth.