The Trials of the Church

CHARACTER OF THE CONTEST ENGAGED IN BY THE CHURCH-COURAGE DISPLAYED BY THE FAITHFUL-ENEMIES RELIGION HAD TO CONTEND WITH THEIR FAILURE-HOW PERSECUTION SERVED RELIGION-ROME FINDS AN INDOMITABLE ADVERSARY IN THE CHRISTIANS-CESSATION OF PERSECUTION IN ROME, NOT CESSATION OF PERSECUTION IN THE WORLD AT LARGE--THE EVIL ONE ENLISTS HERESY ON HIS SIDE

JULIAN THE APOSTATE'S ATTEMPT TO DESTROY CHRISTIANITY--THE HUNS, GOTHS, AND VISIGOTHS-GREAT DEFECTION IN THE 16TH CENTURY-PERSECUTION OF THE IRISH-CHARACTER OF THIS PERSECUTION -CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH RENDERED IT ONE OF THE GREATEST ON

RECORD.

The contest between the Church and the world, of which I propose to give a brief account in the following pages, has been the most remarkable ever witnessed on earth. In its consequences and bearings upon society, apart from man's spiritual interests, it has surpassed everything that preceded or accompanied it. The area over which it has extended, the time through which it has endured, as well as the interests wherewith it has been connected, all signalize it as a contest of unequalled greatness, of unparalleled magnitude. The courage and heroism displayed on the one side by the members of the Church of God in upholding the doctrines of truth and maintaining the principles of virtue have never been equalled on any occasion by any body of combatants. The most sovereign contempt for suffering and the most reckless disregard for death have marked every phase and stage of this contest. And what is especially peculiar to it is that though unequal in numbers and wholly unarmed, except with such arms as the world

entirely ignores, the faithful have uniformly conquered. The failure in the first instance of the Jewish authorities to crush the infant Church, the still more signal failure of the pagan Roman rulers later on, together with the equally abortive efforts of numerous tyrannical monarchs in after ages, are ample evidence of this. Herein is to be found

a subject for serious reflection, a problem the solution of which calls for special attention on the part of the infidel. For, humanly speaking, the Church was wholly unequal to the contest, and if she has succeeded against such powerful odds, it must be by a power superior to that of man. The success that she attained could not even be attributed to her origin or aims however exalted these may be, for, if deprived of the divine promise of perpetuity made her by God, she would, like so many merely human institutions of which there is record in the past, have long since given way before the power of the world; she would have fallen and disappeared from the earth. If the Church exists after so many trials, so many dangers and vicissitudes, it is because she is constantly supported and defended by the arm of the Most High, it is because the Almighty is ever her guardian and defender.

Commencing in Palestine, the cradle-land of this system of divine teaching, the contest was first local; it was restricted to the land of Judea. But though only local the storm was severe, and scattered the faithful in every direction. This, however, proved an advantage, for by it religion was propagated instead of being uprooted. As the seeds of plants, carried by the winds and borne to other lands, take root and fructify, so the first storms of persecution, instead of accomplishing the work for which they were intended, served only to carry and deposit in other regions the divine seed of the Gospel, thence again to be carried by other

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Books

The Trials of the Church: Or, The Persecutors of Religion, Volume 1