grave man; for him the essence of Christian love lay in the Resurrection,
and he saw with astonishment that a wonderful new vitality was rising out
of death. For Alexandria, too, the time was fulfilled. Men and women
crowded to the rite of baptism. Mothers brought their daughters, and
fathers their sons. These days of horror had multiplied the little
Christian congregation to a church of ten thousand members. Caracalla
turned hundreds from heathenism by his bloody sacrifices, his love of
fighting, his passion for revenge, and the blindness which made him cast
away all care for his eternal soul to secure the enjoyment of a brief
existence. That the sword which had slain thousands of their sons should
have been dedicated to Serapis, and accepted by the god, alienated many
of the citizens from the patron divinity of the town. Then the news that
Timotheus the high-priest had abdicated his office soon after Caesar's
departure, and, with his revered wife Euryale, had been baptized by their
friend the learned Clemens, confirmed many in their desire to be admitted
into the Christian community.

After these horrors of bloodshed, these orgies of hatred and vengeance,
every heart longed for love and peace and brotherly communion. Who of
all those that had looked death in the face in these days was not anxious
to know more of the creed which taught that the life beyond the grave was
of greater importance than that on earth?--while those who already held
it went forth to meet, as it were, a bridegroom. They had seen men
trodden down and all their rights trampled on, and now every ear was open
when a doctrine was preached which recognized the supreme value of
humanity, by ascribing, even to the humblest, the dignity of a child of
God. They were accustomed to pray to immortal beings who lived in
privileged supremacy and wild revelry at the golden tables of the
Olympian banquet; and now they were told that the church of the
Christians meant the communion of the faithful with their fatherly God,