Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE THIRD AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.319the marvel which we are contemplating. Fiftyyears later, at the moment the empire was culminatingo under the serene rule of Antoninus, ' aconvert from heathenism, a philosopher who hadspent his life in examining all the sects and racesof the empire, and who afterwards became a martyr,said of Christians that being " quarried outof the side of Christ, they were the true Israeliticrace," "altogether being called the body, for bothpeople and church, being many in number, arecalled by one name as one thing ;" they are infact " as one man before the Maker of all things, O 7throughOthe name of His first-born Son'" the High-Opriest gathering up first in the prophetical visionand then in the real fact " the true high-priestlyrace"6 in His own Person. Thus Justin pointedout this conception of the Christian people to theJew of his time as both foretold in prophecy andexhibited " in fact. The longer that such a peopleas this endured, the greater would be the marvel.A hundred years after this, Origen uses thesame language and points to the same marvel.He had in the year 249, at the entreaty of a friendand pupil, set himself in the maturity of life, andof a renown which filled the Church as no man'sbefore had filled it, to answer the attack of a hea-ithen philosopher, Celsus, upon Christianity. He6 S. Justin Martyr, Tryphon, sec. 135, 42, 116; where he refers to andexplains the vision of the high-priest Jesus in the prophet Zachariasin. " ". 1. -