those first days there was little thought of relics to be carried
away,--little thought of material suggestions to the dull imagination,
and pricks to the failing memory. The eternal truths of their religion
were too real to them; their faith was too sincere; their belief in the
actual union of heaven and earth, and of the presence of God with them
in the world, too absolute to allow them to feel the need of that lower
order of incitements which are the resort of superstition, ignorance,
and conventionalism in religion. In the earlier burials, no differences,
save the ampulla and the palm, or some equally slight sign,
distinguished the graves of the martyrs from those of other Christians.

It is not to be supposed that the normal state of the Christian
community in Rome, during the first three centuries, was that of
suffering and alarm. A period of persecution was the exception to long
courses of calm years. Undoubtedly, during most of the time, the faith
was professed under restraint, and possibly with a sense of insecurity
which rendered it attractive to ardent souls, and preserved something
of its first sincerity. It must be remembered that the first Christian
converts were mostly from among the poorer classes, and that, however
we might have admired their virtues, we might yet have been offended by
much that was coarse and unrefined in the external exhibitions of their
religion. The same features which accompany the religious manifestations
of the uncultivated in our own days, undoubtedly, with somewhat
different aspect, presented themselves at Rome. The enthusiasms,
the visions, the loud preaching and praying, the dull iteration and
reiteration of inspired truth till all the inspiration is driven out,
were all probably to be heard and witnessed in the early Christian days
at Rome. Not all the converts were saints,--and none of them were
such saints as the Catholic painters of the last three centuries have
prostituted Art and debased Religion in producing. The real St. Cecilia