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 as the messenger of God, and therefore we must acknowledge its Heavenly mission. We are therefore going to examine the early history of Christianity. We will go back to the time when its followers were still universally persecuted, when no earthly power could be suspected of having promoted its success.

About the year 112, the Younger Pliny wrote to the Emperor Trajan that the Christians existed in great numbers in the province of Bithynia, that they assembled on a particular day for religious worship, when they sang a hymn to Christ as God, and bound themselves by a sacred sanction not to be guilty of theft or other sins. This "contagion" prevailed in the cities, villages, and open country; the temples were deserted, the regular sacrifices discontinued. Some had been Christians for twenty years; all declared there was no evil in their practices, and large numbers persevered in defiance of torture and death. He asked what course he must follow in trying them. (Epist. 96, 97.)

Tacitus speaks of their origin. He relates that the Emperor Nero came under suspicion of having purposely caused the great fire at Rome in the year 64, that he threw the blame on persons "whom the populace hated for their crimes and called by the name of Christians. This name is derived from Christus, who was punished by the procurator Pontius Pilatus, during the reign of Tiberius. The execrable superstition was suppressed for a time, but broke out again, and overran, not Judea alone, the country of its birth, but Rome itself.' ' Thus, in thirty or forty years after Christ's death, the religion had spread so as to count an immense number of followers in Rome (Lib. XV, C. 44).

24. To account for this rapid spread in spite of