cinate afresh
the student who turns to them to find in the notes and discussions light
cast upon many a critical and ecclesiastical problem. The genuine
Epistles have furnished the Bishop with the materials of a sketch of
terror which every one will read with the deepest interest.

For some unknown reason the Church of Antioch was by God's will deprived
of its venerable head; and with other 'convicts,' collected from the
provinces to be

'Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday.'

Ignatius was led Romeward. His journey lay along a route which in part
had been traversed by Xerxes. The procession of the Persian, foremost
among his myriads of men for beauty and stature, halting near Sardis to
decorate a beautiful plane-tree with golden ornaments, and commit it to
the custody of an 'immortal'[67] is in vivid contrast to the procession
of 'criminals,' the Christian leader 'bound amidst ten leopards (or
soldiers) who wax worse when kindly treated,' halting also at Sardis,
his own decoration the 'bonds' which are to him 'spiritual pearls,' and
at Smyrna, writing letters which shall make him immortal.[68] At Troas,
like another St. Paul, he looked upon the shores of the Europe which was
in later ages to rise up and call them blessed; and from thence he
wrote how prepared, how eager he was to meet the 'fire, the sword, the
wild beasts,' how to be 'near to the sword was to be near to God; to be
encircled by wild beasts was to be encircled by God.' And then Rome at
last!--among those who thirsted for his blood, among those whose very
love he dreaded lest it should do him the injury of keeping him from
martyrdom. Touching is the appeal he had sent before him to the Church
'filled with the grace of God without wavering and filtered clear from
every foreign stain':--

'Let me be given to the wild beasts, for through them I can
attain unto God. I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the
teeth of wild beasts that I may be found pure bread of
Christ. Entice the wild beasts that they may become my
sepulchre and may leave no part of my body behind, so that I
may not, when I am fallen asleep, be burdensome to any one.'

Into the colossal pile, erected for the display of the bloodiest of
inhuman crimes, he was led; and his own impassioned appeal was answered:

'Come fire and cross, and grapplings with wild beasts! Come
cuttings and manglings, wrenching of bones, hacking of
limbs, crushings of