it threatened to produce a schism in the Church by setting up a rival to the authority of the priesthood. But in our own day people are inclined to treat a martyr with a shrug of the shoulders, and to ask if the whole idea of martyrdom was not as much a mistake on the part of the Christians as that of persecution was on the side of their enemies. It is therefore important to see clearly what was the real meaning of the perplexing obstinacy' of the Christians, and wherein lay the necessity for their manifesting it. The Christians did not suffer for an idea. Theirs was not one of the cases for the casuists, in which the question is asked whether we are justified in telling an untruth to a madman or a tyrant. We have to wait for the age of ignorant mockery before we meet with foolish attempts, first to tear honest beliefs out of men on the rack, and then to drive false notions into them with the boot. The Romans were too sensible to imagine that force could change a conviction even when they did not share Pilate's cynical indifference to so abstract an idea as 'truth,' and certainly they did not dream of persecuting mere opinions. The persecution was aimed solely at conduct. The Christians were free to believe whatever absurdities they might choose to adopt, but directly their actions were affected by their beliefs they came under the ban of the law. The test generally applied to persons accused of the hated religion was the demand that they should forswear Christ and offer sacrifice on the pagan altars. The one act was regarded by the Christians as blasphemy, the other as demon-worship. There was something more than fanaticism in the refusal to yield to such terms. The secret of martyrdom was not merely a George Washington courage in refusing to tell a lie, noble as that courage might be; it was the soldier's fidelity to his general; i.e., it was just loyalty to the great Head of the Church. Apostasy meant treason with the added meanness of an act of basest ingratitude. Accordingly we find that when the idea of the personal Christ became thin and shadowy, the motive for facing martyrdom was sapped of all vitality. Thus it is among the Gnostics that we first meet with instances of the decided decay of the martyr-spirit, resulting in an open advocacy of submission to the imperial demands.

To understand the spirit of martyrdom we have only to go to the martyrs themselves. In Ignatius we are struck with the passion of martyrdom; in Polycarp we see its 'sweet reasonableness.' And we may continually observe an oscillation between these two qualities in subsequent narratives of

persecution. But whatever might be the temper of mind whether in ecstatic or in calm moods, the essential principle of martyrdom was always one and the same. Ignatius was not impatient to face the lions in the Flavian amphitheatre simply because he could not bring himself to deny certain intellectual notions, or he would never have exclaimed, 'Come fire and cross and grapplings with the wild beasts, cuttings and manglings, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushings of my whole body; come cruel tortures of the devil to assail me. Only be it mine to attain unto Jesus Christ. . . . It is good for me to die for Jesus Christ rather than to reign over the furthest bounds of the earth' (Rom. 5, 6). Nor was Polycarp merely refusing to utter an untruth when he made. his famous reply to the proconsul's demand that he should 'revile the Christ': Fourscore and six years have I been His servant, and He has done me no wroug. How, then, can I blaspheme my King who saved me?' (Mart. Polyc. 9.) These men did not die for an idea. Certainly the thirst for martyrdom that characterizes Ignatius is very different from anything that we meet with in the New Testament. But to be astonished that such a man as Ignatius should have felt as he has expressed himself in the Epistle to the Romans is simply absurd, for what ground have we for assuming that in those early ages there were no enthusiastic people who might have been tempted to exceed the bounds of calculating reason under circumstances of extraordinary excitement-as though the manners of the primitive Church had been moulded on Blair's sermons? Nor should we be over hasty in condemning the extravagance of Ignatius. As all his 'Acts of Martyrdom' are manifest forgeries, there is not warrant for the story that he voluntarily presented himself before Trajan, and no reason for supposing that he did not take precautions to avoid being arrested, equally with Polycarp. He does not cross the stage of history until after he has been condemned to death. The case is then quite altered. Bishop Lightfoot well remarks: his condemnation was not his own choice. But once condemned, he would not accept his life back as a concession. The acceptance of a pardon would have been the acknowledgment of an offence' (vol. ii. p 393). That he was extravagant in expression, we may well admit. No one will ever take Ignatius for Mr. Matthew Arnold. But Dr. Lightfoot's observations are peculiarly appropriate in an age when the decorum of culture is over ready to condemn the excesses of enthusiasm. It is a cheap wisdom,' he says, 'which at the study table or over the pulpit desk declaims

against the extravagance of the feelings and language of Ignatius, as the vision of martyrdom rose up before him. After all, it is only by an enthusiasm which men call extravagance that the greatest moral and spiritual triumphs have been won. This was the victory which overcame the world— the faith of Ignatius and of men like-minded with him' (vol. i. p. 38).

Ignatius and Polycarp are the two most picturesque figures among the apostolic fathers. The former we know only from his own writings, but those writings bear on the face of them the impress of an intense individuality. Shadowy as Ignatius appears on the field of history, directly we open his seven Epistles we are able to form a better mental picture of this man than of any of his contemporaries in the Christian Church. There is no parallel to this style in the writings of other early Fathers. The pages seem to tingle as we touch them. The burning words throb with the pulsation of the martyr's life-blood. Ignatius there represents to us the very chivalry of primitive Christianity. He seems to have sprung from heathen parentage, to have misspent his fiery nature in youth, and to have been converted in later days. We do not know how he came to be made Bishop of Antioch-tradition on this point is quite valueless-nor what was the course of his pastorate, nor how he came to be arrested, though it is not surprising that so uncompromising a character should have become obnoxious to the Roman government. But the pitchy darkness which envelops the life and work of Ignatius is illumined at length by a vivid but transient flash of light.' Dr. Lightfoot follows his journey from Antioch with a rich commentary of topographical and historical details. Condemned to the wild beasts at Rome, he sets out in the custody of a maniple,' or company of ten soldiers-his 'ten leopards.' He would probably take ship at Seleucia, the port town of Antioch, and sail thence to some harbour on the Cilician or Pamphylian coast. Thence he travels westward by land. Where the road divides near the junction of the Lycus and the Mæander he seems to have sent a messenger by the southern road along the valley of the Mæander, passing through Tralles, Magnesia, and over the mountain range of Messogis to Ephesus, to acquaint the Churches in those cities of his approching visit to Smyrna, whither, accordingly, they were able to send delegates to meet him. Ignatius is taken by his guards along the northern route through Philadelphia. At Smyrna he meets with Polycarp, and while there writes his four first letters-three to the Churches whose delegates

he had seen at Smyrna--the Ephesians, the Magnesians, and the Trallians; the fourth is written to the Church at Rome. The next stage of the journey is Troas-that Troas from which St. Paul saw the vision of the Macedonian on Mount Athos; and there Ignatius writes to the two Churches he had visited at Philadelphia and Smyrna, and to Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna. We have a glimpse of Ignatius at Philippi, in Polycarp's letter to the Church in that city, and then the curtain drops, although there can be no doubt that his journey ended in martyrdom at Rome. The case of Polycarp is different. In his Epistle we see but faint indications of the man. But we meet with more than one reference to passages of his long life in Church history. Renan describes him as 'ultraconservative.' He nowhere displays the fire and vigour of Ignatius. Irenæus paints him to us as a model pastor and teacher of the young, surrounded by a group of disciples, and describing his intercourse with John and with the rest of those who had seen the Lord.' Later we see him at Rome pleading the Eastern view of the paschal controversey in a spirit of peaceableness, and again at Smyrna, grieved by the rank and rapid growth of excrescences on the pure teaching of the gospel.' It is needless to recapitulate the story of his martyrdom. That scene will live as long as Mount Pagus looks down on the fair gulf of Smyrna.

6

II. But fascinating as are the portraits of the two martyrs on their own account, a much deeper interest attaches itself to the light which they throw on the early pages of Christianity. In this respect the writings of Ignatius and Polycarp are perfectly unique. The Epistle of Clement' is older in date and of unquestionable authenticity; but it comes from Western Europe. The Shepherd of Hermas'-the Pilgrim's Progress' of the second century-is also a Roman work. The 'Epistle of Barnabas' is of unknown authorship, probably coming from Alexandria, a city that was out of the range of the more direct and continuous apostolical influence; and its one-sided antagonism to the Old Testament faith robs it of half its weight. We know absolutely nothing of the origin of the beautiful little Epistle to Diognetus.' Of the writings of Papias, only scattered fragments have come down to us. But Ignatius and Polycarp occupy a very different place among the apostolic fathers. Living in the great metropolis of the East, in the very heart of the earliest and most vigorous primitive Christianity, at the focus towards which representatives from Palestine and Asia Minor would converge, and in the centre from which the most direct influences

could be spread in all directions, Ignatius was the bishop of the oldest Gentile Church, the president of the community which but a few years before had been the spring of all missionary enterprise, and to the energy of which Europe owed Christianity, the pastor of the Church which had sent forth Paul and Barnabas on their great journeys, and whither those apostles had returned to report progress. We cannot attach any value to the two mutually destructive rumours that Ignatius was ordained by St. Peter and by St. Paul; but it is something to remember that he may well have been the contemporary of those two apostles for some twenty-five years, and the contemporary of St. John for half a century. At all events his testimony is peculiarly important, on account of his residence in the midst of the scenes of the most assiduous apostolic labours. Then, in regard to Polycarp, there is no reason to doubt or mistake the statements of his disciple Irenæus that he had had personal intercourse with St. John, together with the rest of those who had seen the Lord.' He, too, lived in a region to which more than one apostle seems to have retired after the destruction of Jerusalem, and which became the centre of Christianity when the Syrian influence had declined, and before the Roman had risen. While great importance has been attached to the questions of date, sufficient attention has not always been given to these equally significant questions of place. But when early dates combine with advantageous positions we may look for evidence of the weightiest character. It is only the doubt as to the genuineness of the writings attributed to Ignatius and Polycarp that has prevented the singular pre-eminence of their position as witnesses to early Christianity from being more extensively recognized. Hence the immense import of the Ignatian controversy never more significant than in our own day, when a powerful re-agent, capable of arresting the corrosive action of negative criticism, is the one great desideratum. Surely Daillé and his friends were but short-sighted controversialists when, dreading an adverse verdict on the comparatively minor question of Church government, they proved themselves to be over hasty in thrusting out of court the witness who was best able to help on the settlement of a vastly more momentous question the question of the essential truth of Christianity.

Polycarp's is evidently an unoriginative and receptive mind. He quotes Scripture freely, and his testimony derives its chief value from that fact. But in dealing with Ignatius we must first of all remember to make full allowance for the personal