communities here and there, which became the centres of Christian
propagandism. Lyons in Gaul was such a centre.

The fires of persecution had been lighted here and there throughout the
empire, and the Emperor Nero, under whom the Apostles Peter and Paul
are said to have suffered martyrdom, had amused himself by making
torches of the Christians at Rome. But until A.D. 177 Gaul was exempt
from such horrors.

Marcus Aurelius--that peerless pagan--large in intelligence, exalted in
character, and guided by a conscientious rectitude which has made his
name shine like a star in the lurid light of Roman history, still
failed utterly to comprehend the significance of this spiritual kingdom
established by Christ on earth. He it was who ordered the first
persecution in Gaul. In pursuance of his command, horrible tortures
were inflicted at Lyons upon those who would not abjure the new faith.

A letter, written by an eye-witness, pictures with terrible vividness
the scenes which followed. Many cases are described with harrowing
detail, and of one Blandina it is said: "From morn till eve they put
her to all manner of torture, marvelling that she still lived with her
body pierced through and through and torn piecemeal by so many
tortures, of which a single one should have sufficed to kill her; to
which she only replied, 'I am a Christian.'"

The recital goes on to tell how she was then cast into a dungeon--her
feet compressed and dragged out to the utmost tension of the
muscles--then left alone in darkness until new methods of torture could
be devised.

Finally she was brought, with other Christians, into the amphitheatre,
hanging from a Cross to which she was tied, and there thrown to the
beasts. As the beasts refused to touch her she was taken back to the
dungeon to be reserved for another occasion, being brought out daily to
witness the fate and suffering of her friends and fellow-martyrs; still
answering the oft-repeated question, "I am a Christian."

The writer goes on to say, "After she had undergone fire, the talons of
beasts, and every agony which could be thought of, she was wrapped in a
network and thrown to a bull, who tossed her in the air"--and her
sufferings were ended.

Truly it cost something to say "I am a Christian" in those days.

Marcus Aurelius probably gave orders for the persecution at Lyons, with
little knowledge of what would be the nature of those persecutions, or
of the religion he was try