the only woman he had ever loved, and that the Good Shepherd
had called her to be one of His flock. He could rejoice over this
without a pang, for he had learned that Diodoros, too, had entered on
the path which hitherto he had pointed out to him in vain.

A calm cheerfulness, which surprised all who knew him, brightened
the grave man; for him the essence of Christian love lay in the
Resurrection, and he saw with astonishment that a wonderful new vitality
was rising out of death. For Alexandria, too, the time was fulfilled.
Men and women crowded to the rite of baptism. Mothers brought their
daughters, and fathers their sons. These days of horror had multiplied
the little Christian congregation to a church of ten thousand members.
Caracalla turned hundreds from heathenism by his bloody sacrifices, his
love of fighting, his passion for revenge, and the blindness which made
him cast away all care for his eternal soul to secure the enjoyment of a
brief existence. That the sword which had slain thousands of their
sons should have been dedicated to Serapis, and accepted by the god,
alienated many of the citizens from the patron divinity of the town.
Then the news that Timotheus the high-priest had abdicated his office
soon after Caesar's departure, and, with his revered wife Euryale, had
been baptized by their friend the learned Clemens, confirmed many in
their desire to be admitted into the Christian community.

After these horrors of bloodshed, these orgies of hatred and vengeance,
every heart longed for love and peace and brotherly communion. Who
of all those that had looked death in the face in these days was not
anxious to know more of the creed which taught that the life beyond the
grave was of greater importance than that on earth?--while those who
already held it went forth to meet, as it were, a bridegroom. They had
seen men trodden down and all their rights trampled on, and now every
ear was open when a doctrine was preached which recognized the supreme
value of humanity, by ascribing, even to the humblest, the dignity of a
child of God. They were accustomed to pray to immortal beings who lived
in privileged supremacy and wild revelry at the golden tables of
the Olympian banquet; and now they were told that the church of the
Christians meant the communion of the faithful with their fatherly God,
and with His Son who had mingled with other mortals in the form of man
and who had done more for them than a brother, inas