so general. The faith of the early Christians needed not such excitement; they felt the presence of their Lord in heaven, and did not seek to trace his footsteps upon earth.

Lucia Claudia had not quitted Rome without regret; she was a member of that glorious Church to which the noblest of St. Paul's Epistles had been addressed while he was yet personally unknown to his Roman brethren. She was the pastoral daughter of Linus, the friend of Pomponia Græcina and of the fair British convert Claudia, celebrated by Martial for her beautiful complexion, but whom the Church numbered among its precious jewels; Clement, too, and many other persons whose names were written in the Book of Life, regarded Lucia Claudia as a sister. No human society was ever so closely united in friendship as the primitive Christians, who obeyed from the heart the new commandment enjoined by their Lord, "Love one another."

Lucia Claudia, however, found the same tender affection, the same perfect union, existing among the Christians of Palestine as at Rome. Some were then living who had seen the Lord, and had listened to those divine precepts which

had made the Gentile officers sent to apprehend him return to their dissatisfied employers with the remarkable reply, "Never man spake like this man," and she no longer regretted Rome. To Adonijah, the Hebrew Christian Church planted by the High Priest of the order of Melchisedec, so long promised to Israel and rejected when He came, was a lively representation of heaven upon earth. He recognised the Lord's Prayer as a Jewish one,* to which one petition alone had been added by the great Head of the Christian Church, who then gave it the perfection "which came down from the Fountain of Goodness and Father of Light." The Psalms of David, too, sung in his own dear loved land, were full of that light which was spreading then over the whole earth to enlighten the dark and idolatrous Gentiles Jerusalem and the cities of Judea might lie in the dust of desolation for ages, but Christ had been the glory of the land; and the heart of the Jew clave to his ruined country, as if no

*The Lord's Prayer is from the Mishna of the Jews; to this beautiful compilation our Saviour added a characteristic petition, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us," for he approved the beautiful formula then in use, and gave it all it wanted.

curse lay upon its hills and valleys, for the Sun of Righteousness had risen there with healing on his wings, and Adonijah acknowledged the Son of David as his Lord and his God, and he loved best to worship where the steps of his Saviour had been.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"Yet dread me from my living tomb,

Ye bigot slaves of haughty Rome."-SCOTT.

ADONIJAH and Lucia Claudia remained in the environs of Jerusalem with the Church and its apostolic bishop, Simeon, for many years. They were the parents of a lovely family, who were growing up in the nurture and fear of the Lord, when the Roman brethren, being desirous of sending gifts to the Hebrew Christians, wished Adonijah to come to Rome to receive their bounty for those impoverished children of Abraham who had received the faith of Jesus. The fulfilment of the prophecies respecting the dispersion of the Jews had probably occasioned that conversion among the Israelites spoken of by Hegesippus, the earliest historian of the Church. There is reason to believe that these persons retained their ancient customs as far as a people could retain them who were under the Gentile yoke of bondage, though they received Christ as their

High Priest, Redeemer, and Divine Ruler. Attachment to the customs of their forefathers, and the example of Christ, "a minister of the circumcision," made the Hebrew Christians still cling to their ancestral ritual. This adherence would in time have created a bar between them and their Gentile brethren, if it had been suffered to continue; but the revolts of the unbelieving Jews in the reigns of Trajan and Adrian caused this separation to cease. No Israelite after those wars was suffered to remain in Palestine, so that when Jerusalem was rebuilt under the heathen name of Ælia, the Christian Church established there was no longer composed of converted Jews. After a time the dispersed and scattered tribes of Israel might purchase from the Roman soldiers once a year the mournful privilege of weeping over the solitary foundation-stone of the temple, but poverty and slavery left few to avail themselves of the opportunity in that age. The custom has never ceased; it has been transmitted from generation to generation, and the nineteenth century still witnesses the affecting commemorative visit of the Jew to the desecrated shrine where his forefathers once worshipped Jehovah. He still looks forward