“Noble lady,” continued he, “you preserved my life, and gratitude will not suffer me to leave you without offering you sympathy and counsel. Through the grace of God you appear to have ‘cast away the works of darkness,’ for I hear you, who of late were a heathen priestess, calling upon Jehovah in prayer; but how is it that you omit to offer it through His name for whose sake alone it can find acceptance with your Heavenly Father—even through Jesus Christ, His beloved Son, ‘in whom He is well pleased’—the Redeemer of a lost and ruined world, ‘who was crucified for our sins, and rose again for our justification’?”
“Father,” replied Lucia, wiping her eyes, and looking up with an air of earnest attention, “I know not Him of whom you speak. Convinced of the vanity and blindness of that idolatry to which I had been dedicated, I have become a convert to Judaism, and have learned to worship the God of Israel as the Creator and Preserver of all men; and I look for another life, after this transitory existence shall have passed away: but of this Christ, from whom your sect is called, I am ignorant altogether.”
With the dignity and simplicity of truth Linus unfolded the divine mission of the Saviour to sinners; the necessity of such an atonement, and the impossibility of coming to God by any other way than through faith in His blood; declaring that the Messiah, whose coming Lucia had been already taught to expect, was indeed “this very Jesus whom the Lord had made both God and Christ.”
The mysterious doctrine of the cross, “to the wisdom of this world foolishness, and to Israel a rock of offence,” was a saviour of life to the meek females who now heard it for the first time. Upon their minds the bright effulgence of “the Sun of Righteousness arose, with healing on his wings.”
“And did Cæsar slay the Christians for such pure doctrines—for following such a Saviour as this?” demanded Lucia. “Unhappy Christians! what tortures did ye not undergo on this very spot!”
“Call them not unhappy, noble lady,” replied the venerable man. “Here was the scene of their martyrdom, it is true, but it was also the scene of their triumph. They ‘counted all loss, nay, even their lives were not dear to them for Christ’s sake.’ Here, invested with the tunic of the incendiary, they were lighted up as a spectacle to a barbarous and unbelieving people.” He paused; tears filled his aged eyes as he recalled the sufferings of his Christian brethren, and Lucia’s now flowed as fast from sympathy as they had lately done from ‘the sorrow of this world.’ “This is human weakness,” continued he; “but you did not see me weep when your compassion saved me from death. For the sake of the persecuted flock of Christ, I rejoice that my life was prolonged, but ‘to depart, and be for ever with the Lord,’ is the desire of his unworthy Servant.”
He then invited his attentive auditors to meet him in the oratory of St. Peter—a secret chamber on the Ostian Way, where that great Apostle had been accustomed to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, and where he nightly instructed the heathen, and ministered to the Christians. His flock was rapidly increasing, and included several members of Cæsar’s household. For though not many noble were called, yet the Christian Church was composed of persons of every degree, who were prepared to seal their faith with their blood, should a second persecution expose them to that trial. He made Lucia Claudia acquainted with the mysterious sign by which the brethren knew each other in the crowded streets of the Roman metropolis. He would charge the slaves of her household, who were members of the Church, to conduct her and her nurse to their oratory, who would make themselves known to her by crossing themselves in the fashion he had shown.[[9]]
Linus then bade his auditors farewell, by giving them, instead of the usual “Vale,” the apostolical benediction of “Peace be with you.”
A change had passed over both: Lucia Claudia was “almost a Christian,” while Cornelia was altogether one. Human passions, love and pride, were not dead in the heart of the young Roman lady; but the freedwoman embraced the hope set before her, with firmness and constancy. Lucia Claudia was enthusiastic and imaginative; she would have died rather than given up the faith whose mysteries Linus had just unfolded to her; but she was about to be exposed to a trial more difficult to withstand than death—the martyrdom of the affections. How would Adonijah receive the intelligence of her conversion to the doctrines he hated and despised?