have been
considered very bald and uninteresting. But they rejoiced exceedingly in
its spiritual character, as they felt that they could thus draw near to
God, and hold sweet and refreshing communion with their Father in
heaven.

It is probable that, during a considerable part of the second century,
the Christians had comparatively few buildings set apart for public
worship. At a time when they congregated to celebrate the rites of their
religion at night or before break of day, it is not to be supposed that
they were anxious to obtrude their conventicles on the notice of their
persecutors. But as they increased in numbers, and as the State became
somewhat more indulgent, they gradually acquired confidence; and, about
the beginning of the third century, the form of their ecclesiastical
structures seems to have been already familiar to the eyes of the
heathen. [463:2] Shortly after that period, their meeting-houses in Rome
were well known; and, in the reign of Alexander Severus, they ventured
to dispute with one of the city trades the possession of a piece of
ground on which they were desirous to erect a place of worship. [463:3]
When the case came for adjudication before the Imperial tribunal, the
sovereign decided in their favour, and thus virtually placed them under
the shield of his protection. When the Emperor Gallienus, about A.D.
260, issued an edict of toleration, church architecture advanced apace,
and many of the old buildings, which were now falling into decay, were
superseded by edifices at once more capacious and more tasteful. The
Christians at this time began to emulate the magnificence of the heathen
temples, and even to ape their arrangements. Thus it is that some of our
churches at the present day are nearly fac-similes of the ancient
religious edifices of paganism. [464:1]

In addition to the administration of baptism and the Lord's Supper, the
worship of the early Church consisted of singing, prayer, reading the
Scriptures, and preaching. In the earliest notice of the Christians of
the second century which occurs in any pagan writer, their psalmody,
with which they commenced their religious services, [464:2] is
particularly mentioned; for, in his celebrated letter to the Emperor
Trajan, Pliny states that they met together, before the rising of the
sun, to "sing hymns to Christ as to a God." It is highly probable that
the "hymns" here spoken of were the Psalms of the Old Testament. Many of
these ins