If there be, therefore, any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be like minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

WE might naturally suppose that the first promulgators of a faith, which proscribed at once all other religions as vain and superstitious, would meet with an opposition amounting to persecution, from those whose darling tenets were decried as the dreams of poets, or errors of philosophers. Men listen with peculiar attention to the voice of antiquity, and look with profound reverence upon those institutions in which is embalmed the memory of their departed heroes, and which they suppose are still subject to the tutelary care of those gods to whose kind protection they have been consecrated. A passionate devotedness to those shrines that were supposed to be graced with the presence of the presiding deity, seems to have grown up together

with the spirit of patriotism, which inspired the bosom of the Roman youth, and led them to think that the destruction of their temples would be attended with the ruin of their country. This feeling extended itself through all ranks of the community, and would naturally prompt them to a defence of that religion they ever held dear and sacred, and to which, being endangered, they clung with all the fondness of affection, and madness of despair.

The religion of the ancients was blended with all the common occurrences of life, was wrapt up in all their ceremonies, and nursed at the hearth together with all the affections which are recognised in domestic and social life. No house could be built, no business entered upon, but religion, with all its awful sanctions and indissoluble ties, was called in to lend its aid, and give stability to the contract, and success to the undertaking. ranks, therefore, and descriptions of men, regarded any doctrine that weakened the authority of their religion, as a dangerous as well as an impertinent interference; and concluded that a disruption of all social ties would inevitably result from weakening those reins by which the licentiousness of an otherwise unbridled populace, was alone restrained.

All

We should expect that the people, under the sudden impulse of passion, without the authority of the magistrates, would assume to themselves the

privilege of chastising those who introduced a religion, which was so far from claiming a niche in the Pantheon, by adding a new divinity to the list of gods, that its very existence depended upon the destruction of other superstitions, and which aimed at making the ruins of heathen temples the basis of its immortal fabric. Nor should we expect that either the magistracy or the philosophers would be behind-hand in promoting the wishes of the people. The former would at once consider the new doctrine as a dangerous innovation, which required the prompt exertion of legal authority to suppress. The latter, likewise, however they might have been disunited, and have had each their separate cabal of interests, would now, we might suppose, join in common league, as in a common cause, against a religion which declared as vain and futile all their pretensions to wisdom, and branded with folly all their philosophical speculations.

That the first teachers and disciples of the new faith, according to these suppositions, did meet with persecutions, we learn from the testimony of heathen and ecclesiastical writers, as well as from the writings of the apostles. Tacitus and Suetonius relate the persecutions of Christians under the reign of Nero, which is also confirmed by Juvenal. The sufferings of the Christians were likewise satyrized by Martial. Pliny's well known letter to Trajan records the infamy of his own conduct in

having persecuted to death many professors of the Christian faith. The pious Marcus Antoninus persecuted, and the moral Epictetus despised, the Christians, in his allusions to their sufferings.

The writings of the holy Apostles allude frequently to these trials. They deemed it essential to a proper discharge of their pastoral office to exhort them to patience under "their fiery trials," and to comfort them amidst their sufferings. The Epistle to the Hebrews seems written for the express purpose of settling the wavering converts, by reminding them of their past patience, and even rejoicings, under the severest deprivations, and by urging the most awful warnings, and encouraging promises, as motives and means to animate them to a faithful discharge of their duties, and a confession of the faith of Christ.

Other epistles of this holy Apostle, besides that of St Peter, have similar allusions to the afflictions which seem inseparable from the nature of the religion. It is in reference to their sufferings that the Apostle speaks of the consolations in my text, which are offered as palliatives to the acuteness of their trials. In the close of the preceding chapter, the apostle says, "And in nothing terrified by your adversaries, which is an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God. For to you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake;

having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me."

The sufferings of the first professors of the Christian faith were in the highest degree powerful and excruciating, and even characteristic of the nature of the service in which they had embarked. In their very initiation into the Christian faith they were taught to expect the severest persecutions; and from experience they soon learnt, that, with much tribulation, they entered into the kingdom of God. Their divine Master had already assured them that, in the world, they should have tribulation; though at the same time he encouraged them to be of good cheer, for he had overcome the world.

The sufferings of Christ did but portray their own afflictions; and his crucifixion and ignominious death, did but typically shadow forth the same indignities, which with equal malice and even aggravated cruelty were laid upon the followers of Jesus. Ingenuity itself was tortured in inventing torments for Christians. No satanic machinations, no devise by which life might be lengthened out under the most excruciating torments, was left untried to induce the agonizing wretch to a renunciation of his principles. Our common feelings of humanity, my brethren, are harrowed up by a recital of such cruelties; that (were it not for unquestionable authority) would lead us to think, that we were read