ore no example and had formed no conception. It was a holy
Vestal, ministering at the altar of humanity, witnessing ever of the
Divine, and keeping the sacred fire burning, not for Rome, but for the
world. Its winsome gladness and purity, in an era of unspeakable
pollution and sadness, revived the sinking heart of mankind, and made
possible a Golden Age in the future transcending far that which poets
pictured in the past. It blotted out cruel laws, like those of Draco,
written in blood, and led back Justice, long banished, to the judgment
seat. It ameliorated the rigours of the penal code, and, as experience
has shown, lessened the amount of crime. It created an art purer and
loftier than that of paganism; and a literature rivaling in elegance of
form, and surpassing in nobleness of spirit, the sublimest productions
of the classic muse. Instead of the sensual conceptions of heathenism,
polluting the soul, it supplied images of purity, tenderness, and
pathos, which fascinated the imagination and hallowed the heart. It
taught the sanctity of suffering and of weakness, and the supreme
majesty of gentleness and truth.

NOTE.--The entire subject of Christian evidences from the
Catacombs, which has been so cursorily glanced at in the
foregoing pages, is treated with great fullness of detail and
copious pictorial illustration in a work by the writer, "The
Catacombs of Rome, and their Testimony Relative to Primitive
Christianity." Cr. 8vo, 560 pp., 136 engravings. New York:
Phillips & Hunt. Price $2.50. It discusses at length the
structure, origin, and history of the Catacombs; their art and
symbolism; their epigraphy as illustrative of the theology,
ministry, rites, and institutions of the primitive Church, and
Christian Life and Character in the early ages. The gradual
corruption of doctrine and practice and introduction of Romanist
errors, as the _cultus_ of Mary, the primacy of Peter, prayers
of the dead, the invocation of saints, the notion of purgatory,
the celibacy of the clergy rite of monastic orders, and other
allied subjects are fully treated.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] See Lactantius, _De Mortibus Persecutorum, Passim_; Eusebius _Hist.
Ecclec._ viii, 17; ix. 9, 10; Tertullian _ad Scap._, c. 3.

[58] Valeria quoque per varias provincias quindecim mensibus plebeio
cultu pervagata.... Ita illis pudicitia et conditio exitio fuit.
Lactantius _De Mart. Persec._ C