Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.253rial weakness it would offer. By fixing the mindon Christianity as merely one object, as'an astraction, we lose in large part the sense of themoral force to which its propagation bears witness.It was in each city a community,17 which had itscentre and representative in its Bishop, which hadits worship, r discipline, and rule of life presidedover by him; its presbytery, diaconate, and deaconesses; its sisterhoods and works of charity,spiritual and temporal : a complete governmentand a complete society held together by purelyspiritual bonds, which the state sometimes ignored,not unfrequently persecuted, but neverSuch was the grain of mustard-seed, from north tosouth, from east to west, in presence of the poli-tical Roman, the sensitive and lettered Greek, thesensuous African, the volatile and disputatiousAlexandrian, the corrupt Antiochene. It had onesort of population to deal with at Rome, quite anotherin the capital of Egypt, a third at Ephesus,which belonged O to the great CO goddess Diana, 7and thestatue which had fallen down from heaven, a fourthat Carthage, where the hot Numidian blood camein contact with the civilisation of Rome, a fifth atCorinth, the mistress of all art and luxury. Andso on. JNow in each and all of these cities anda hundred others the divine plant met with various-*- *17 From a passage in the account of the Martyrs of Lyons, A.r>. 177(Euseb. Hist. v. i 1, p. 201,1. 3), it appears that the word "Church" wasonly given to a mother or cathedral church by writers of that time.