sessed, even life itself. It is vainly urged by mockers of religion that they were fanatics, but the whole story of the facts in the case, and the only one which history has handed down to us, gives the lie to this calumny. Their conduct was the very contrary of fanatical. They were quiet, peaceful, retiring men and women, who desired only to escape publicity. What human motive could have urged them to give up their lives? Was it vanity? Thousands of them were children, slaves, and men and women of the lowest rank, who died without leaving the record of their names; and so common was martyrdom in those days, that death for the faith seemed an everyday matter and received little notice.

There is only one motive that the impartial study of the case can reveal. They were certain of what they professed, and for that certainty they died. That certainty is Christ Crucified and Risen from the dead.

The story, therefore, of the first three ages of the Church, written in the blood of thousands of witnesses to the truth of Christianity, is the strongest possible testimony to the divine origin of the Faith, which our ancestors have handed down to us. And, surely, the fact that notwithstanding the opposition of every human power and dignity, the Church continued to grow and increase in fervor, strength, and numbers, is sufficient evidence of its divine origin. What human institution during three hundred years could defy the greatest civil power the world has ever known, the Imperial Cæsars, and not only survive, but succeed to a greater and more universal power than the Cæsars themselves had ever known, in the very city of the Cæsars, Rome itself? What greater argument can be adduced to prove the divine mission of the Church and the constant protec

tion of Christ, her Founder, than the story of the sufferings of the followers of Christ in the first three centuries? If the Church could ever fail, here was the time for her complete extinction. If kings, or emperors, or consuls, or prefects, or magistrates had ever power to crush the Christian faith, here surely was the time it would have been blotted out. If edicts, laws and proclamations were ever to impede the progress of the Church's triumph, here was the time to place an immovable barrier against her march. If sufferings, tortures, inhuman cruelties or death itself were of any avail against the Spirit of God, revealed in the doctrines of the Church, surely after three hundred years of all that fiendish ingenuity could devise, were Christianity not divine, it would then have perished in oblivion. But, on the contrary, we know that it came forth from the fiery ordeal glorious and triumphant, purified by the trial, strengthened by its combat with enemies. The story of the infant Church may well serve as a solace to Catholics in times of trouble, and a warning to our enemies. God's word is Truth, and His promises endure forever.

"Behold," said Christ, "I am with you always, until the consummation of the world."

And so I draw to a conclusion this conference. We have accompanied the early Christians through their period of grief to that of rejoicing, from the time of Nero, through the reign of persecution to the beginning of the days of peace.

THE CATACOMBS, THE SHELTER

IN bringing to a close this series of conferences on the history of the Christian Church during the first three centuries, it appears to me not inappropriate to glance, in parting, at a subject, which of recent years has attracted world-wide attention, and is constantly growing in interest among the students of our times Christian archæology.

For a long time the Church has battled against errors which combated this or that doctrine of faith, this or that interpretation of dogma. The general fountains of knowledge were still to be recognized in common. It seemed rather a matter of agreeing upon deductions. It was the false logic, the poor reasoning of the Church's opponents, that led them to their false conclusions, and so the Church turned all her forces into the field of philosophy and dogmatic theology, so as to send forth to combat her enemies, champions of sound logic, right argument, acute reasoning. But to-day the enemy has shifted its camp; the attack comes from another side. It is no longer a question of reasoning from common premises; it is a question of the premises themselves. The question is now not what is meant by such a text, but does the text itself really exist? The very fountains of knowledge are denied, and so the warfare takes on a new aspect.

History, the proving of facts as they existed, of documents as they were written, this is now the field of battle between us and infidelity. The science of to-day is

strictly materialistic, the reasoning accounted the only true method is from facts, not principles. Scientists believe only what they can see, touch, and handle; all else may be considered beautiful poetry, interesting legend, or folk-lore, but is not considered science.

To-day, therefore, the importance of true history which brings us face to face with the origin, foundation, and beginnings of our religion, is more and more recognized by the Church. Does it not seem providential that till this period of rationalistic science, the very strongest and aptest argument has been preserved through many centuries in the very bowels of the earth; and that when now doubt is cast upon the meaning of texts, when the origin of documents has been denied or cast into obscurity, the dead have been brought to life, and from the catacombs have walked forth living witnesses of the belief, the practices, the ritual of the Church as she existed in the very first days of her history. Archæology is, therefore, to-day, the eye and the right hand of ecclesiastical history, for by the discovery of inscriptions, paintings, sculptures, documents, which by proof incontestable are demonstrated to be contemporaneous with the earliest Christian times, indeed some of them of indubitable apostolic era, it brings under the eye and finger of the scientist the very material proofs which he alone will admit as convincing.

To combat the ravages of modern criticism, to arrest the march of that Attila of history, archæology has arisen, and bringing to the front the very proofs concerning which doubt had arisen, puts an end to its destructive progress. Learned Christians have appeared all over the world, who, versed in this modern defense of Christianity, have set their faces against the attacks of

scepticism. In Italy, in France, in England, and in Germany, these indefatigable champions, with an activity really admirable, have searched to the very depths the ancient archives and libraries, deciphered worn and withered manuscripts, gone down into the earth among the tombs to rouse from the repose of centuries the ashes of the very dead, to make them stand in defense of Christian faith.

Christian archæology is the surest guide to the history of the beginnings of Christianity. It furnishes a source of irrefragable proofs, witnesses in marble, bronze, wood, ivory, and crystal, whose veracity is superior to all the subtleness of the human intellect. All the monuments which have come down to us from the hands of the first Christians, even those most insignificant in appearance, from the grand system of crypts of the Roman cemeteries and the basilicas of Constantine, down to the simplest bit of stone or terra cotta, give testimony of some fact, and their composite evidence forms the story of primitive Christian society.

An important text of a writer may be altered or poorly reproduced or effaced; but an epigraph in marble, a picture still almost intact, revealed to us by the pick of the excavator cannot lie; and therefore the testimony of such witnesses as these is of the highest value.

Again, during these later years, we are constantly being told that in the primitive ages of the Church the faith was pure and the ceremonies and rites after the mind of Christ; but that after the third century all this was changed, innovations crept in, and so the Church's identity was lost. If, therefore, by archæology, it becomes evident to the eyes that the Church's doctrine upon the very points at issue were then what they are now, it is