How many spirits now in glory have died
on that arena! The Romans, we shall suppose, have been occupied all day
in witnessing mimic fights, which display the skill, but do not
necessarily imperil the life, of the combatants. But now the sun is
westering; the shadow of the Palatine begins to creep across the Forum,
and the villas on the Alban hills burn in the setting rays, and the
Romans, before retiring to their homes, demand their last grand
spectacle,--the death of some poor unhappy captive or gladiator. The
victim steps upon the arena amid the deep stillness of the overwhelming
multitude. It is no mimic combat his: he is "appointed to death." This
lets us into the peculiar force of Paul's words, "I think that God hath
set forth us the apostles last, as it were, appointed to death; for we
are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men."

But the most touching recollection connected with this city is
this,--even that part of the Word of God was written in it, and that a
greater than Caesar has trodden its soil. A few paces below where we
stand is the Mamertine prison, in whose dungeons, it is probable, Paul
was confined; for this was the state-prison, and offences against
religion were accounted state-offences. It is hewn in the rock of the
Capitoline hill, dungeon below dungeon; and when surveying it, I could
not but feel, that among all the exploits of Roman valour, there was not
one half so heroic as that of the man who, with a cruel death staring
him in the face, could sit down in this dungeon, where day never dawned,
and write these heroic words,--"I am now ready to be offered, and the
time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have
finished my course; I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up
for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge,
shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also
that love his appearing."

Here I may be allowed to allude to a branch of the external evidence of
Christianity which has not received all the notice to which it is
entitled. When surveying from the tower of the Capitol the ruins of
ancient Rome, I felt strongly the absurdity--the almost idiotcy--of
denying the historic truth of Christianity. On such a spot one might as
well deny that ancient Rome existed, as deny that Christianity was
preached here eighteen centuries ago, and rose upon the ruins of
paganism. At the distance of Rome, and am