painting not only the vileness of lust, but the punishment reserved for the vicious and dissolute."

Lactantius, who had once been a heathen philosopher, and was tutor to Constantine the Great, speaks to the same effect: "They are not Christians, but pagans, who rob by land and commit piracy by sea; who poison their wives for their dowries, or their husbands that they may marry their adulterers; who strangle or expose their infants. . and commit other crimes odious to relate."

With such a picture of heathen morals, we might indeed marvel how, in a dissolute age, and under the most corrupt of governments, these Christians, once as depraved as the rest of the world, were enabled to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armour of light I say, we might marvel, did we not know that this mighty conquest was achieved, not by weapons of earthly temper, not by the wisdom or eloquence of this world, but by the preaching of that great and fundamental truth of our holy religion-" Jesus Christ, and Him crucified;" a doctrine enforced by the most

E

powerful of all persuasives—the exceeding love of God, and applied to the heart and conscience by the illuminating and sanctifying efficacy of the Holy Ghost. It was this Revelation, and this alone, which, quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, was mighty to the pulling down of the strongholds of Satan, and setting up the kingdom of God in the soul.

As the precepts of the Gospel aimed directly at the heart, and not at the mere outward conduct, the change which it wrought was not that of opinion, but of character of principles, of motives of action. The Bible represents the bodies of men as not their own, but as the temples of the living God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; a Being who must be worshipped in the beauty of holiness, and who takes cognizance not merely of the open crime, but of the inward emotion and disposition of the heart, the causeless anger, the forbidden glance, the unholy thought, the idle word, the proud, the covetous, the unthankful, the disobedient spirit.

So, on the other hand, the Lord notes in the

records of heaven the first faint breathings of spiritual life, the desires and aspirations after holiness, the very sigh and tear of penitence. He will regard as done unto himself the humblest office of christian love, and reward even the cup of cold water given in the name of Christ. He hears, in heaven his dwelling place, the sweet communings of believing friends, and a book of remembrance is written before Him, for them that fear the Lord and think upon his name. "And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them as a man spareth his own son that serveth him." Mal. iii. 17.

52

CHAPTER V.

THE COMMUNICATION OF THE GOSPEL TO GENTILE

THE

WOMEN.

O Woman! though thy fragile form
Bows, like the willow, to the storm,
Yet, if the power of grace divine
Find in thy lowly heart a shrine,
Then, in thy very weakness strong,
Thou winn'st thy noiseless path along,
Weaving thy influence with the ties
Of sweet domestic charities,

And softening haughtier spirits down
By happy contact with thine own.

HANKINSON.

various circumstances under which Greek and Roman women were first introduced to a knowledge of Christianity were modified. by the manners of the different countries; yet, notwithstanding their many restrictions, their private apartments were infinitely more accessible than those of the women in the East, where prescriptive custom had placed a more rigid guard over the female sex. In most

cases, however, heathen females were indebted to their own sex for their first acquaintance with the Gospel.

The general dispersion of the Jews, after the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities, had been wisely ordained by Jehovah as a means of making his name known among the Gentiles. Besides those who settled in foreign lands for the purposes of commerce, thousands who had been carried away as captives were dispersed among the families of their conquerors, and many of them prevailed upon their Gentile mistresses to worship the true God and to attend the synagogue, where they heard Moses and the Prophets read in the Greek translation. That many were thus actually converted, and even prevailed upon their husbands to adopt the same faith, is abundantly proved by the vast numbers of devout or worshipping proselytes whom St. Paul every where found attached to the Jewish congregations-at Rome, Corinth, Philippi, Ephesus, Lystra, Thessalonica, Berea, and elsewhere.

Those, therefore, who were already converts to Judaism enjoyed an opportunity of hearing