CESAR'S HOUSEHOLD. "All the saints salute you, chiefly they that are of Cæsar's household." PHILIPPIANS iv. 22. THE saints in Paul's time, and in his terminology, were not special canonized persons, doctors or martyrs or spiritual enthusiasts, the Jeromes, the Anthonys, the Augustines, the St. Cecilias and St. Catharines, but the common, everyday disciples who composed the churches of Christ. They were all saints. Why the Christians at Rome who were in the imperial palace should send special salutations to the Christian people in Philippi, why they "chiefly" and "specially," we hardly know. Indeed, the remarkable fact is, not that friendly messages should have been going from the saints there to Christians elsewhere, - that the Christians in all places should feel a sympathy with their brethren everywhere, though strangers, but that there should have been any saints at all in the household of Cæsar. But this little sentence, this merely incidental allusion, this message in the postscript of a letter, tells that they were there, that the name of Christ has come up to the very top and splendid centre of the world, to be made known and confessed not only by an apostle in chains before its courts, but in the very house of the imperial master of the world. If there was, when Paul was writing this letter, one spot in all the world more conspicuous than all others for power, for splendor, for crime even, it was the Palatine Hill, crowned with the magnificent buildings of five successive Cæsars. And of all the Julian race who there had lived and ruled, none had been able to be so bad, so terrible in wickedness, so imperial in crime, as Nero. And it was in the household of this monster, it was among the servants of this bloody and profligate tyrant, who butchered his mother and his wives, who burned his own capital, who burned Christians after he had first smeared them with pitch, whose vices were so horrible as to shock even the men of that corrupted generation, the details of whose infamy as told by the ancient historians, it has been said, "no writer in the languages of Christendom may dare to repeat," it was among those who dwelt in a house whose master was so vile that Paul found saints. Out of this abode of splendid sin came men and women whose souls thirsted for the purity and bowed to the authority of Christ Jesus. They believed, they loved, they adored One, every memory of whom was a condemnation of the master whom they served every day. They were called to be saints in a house whose atmosphere was stifling with corruption, almost suffocating with crime. They confessed Christ where not only his name, if that were known, but every principle and the whole spirit of his religion, must have been hated; where to stand up as a Christian must have required a courage more than Roman, the heroism of a faith which endured as seeing Him who is invisible. Among lovers of pleasure they were lovers of God. In a Pagan palace, whose lord was reckoned by law and by custom divine, they worshipped an Eternal God, and acknowledged themselves servants of a crucified King. Against all that dark depravity they let their light shine. In a word, they were saints in Cæsar's household. They were what so many are called to be, here as well as there. They salute us across all the centuries, and find now a great many who have to stand like them,-perhaps not in so sharp a contrast, nor in such peril of blood and burning, and yet, like them, pure amidst vice, faithful among the faithless, Christians against all the Cæsars of the world," a man's foes those of his own household." With all change that has come, with a better civilization in this New World, with no imperial monsters nearer than Burmah, with liberty established and persecution stopped, it may be there is less real difference than we think. It may be there are households in this very town where it is as hard to serve Christ, where saintship would shine just as bright to God's eye,- that there are Cæsars of another name, and a Rome where Christ is to be confessed as bravely, if not at the same cost, at any rate at great sacrifices, here in this very day and place, as there is in the palace of Nero. This last verse in Paul's letter, which perhaps you have counted as lacking inspiration and of no consequence, which you thought was sent only a little way to Philippi to stop there, a mere compliment tacked to the end of an epistle, goes on and brings its word down to us; it contains enough for a sermon, and tells of religion in strange places, of being a Christian under difficulties, of saintship amidst the world's opposition and corruption. That this is possible, there are instances enough beside this one to prove. Faith has won its glory out of such hard places. In some place where it was pushed against hardship, in some post of duty beset by danger, where uprightness is singular and persecuted, where fidelity to God is loss and disgrace, there has faith illustrated its power, and gained its grandest triumphs. Joseph keeping the whiteness of his soul at the price of liberty, Moses choosing God and his people's cause against all royal gifts or wrath, Daniel neglecting no duty of his religion when courtly compliance would save his life, these have their heroism repeated in smaller spheres and humbler instances everywhere. Christ's religion does not summon men to a change of place, of occupation, of outward circumstance; it does not call them out of service in Cæsar's army, out of any service, though it be slavery in Cæsar's household,but it proposes to sanctify them, and where they are. It - does not attempt social revolution or any outward change; it goes not even into Cæsar's palace with insurrection. It takes man as man wherever it finds him, to make him spiritually right. It makes men Christian wherever they are. Whatever their calling in life, in that they are called to be saints. There are many places where it is very hard to serve God, where it is to be done at the price of ease, under the ban of fashion, against the world's opinion, perhaps against the world's law; but it can be done. And the harder it is, the grander the conquest, the richer the reward. It is easier generally to conform, to take the custom of your profession, the habit of society, the practice of other people for your rule. It may require effort and courage for the sailor in the forecastle, the soldier in the camp, the traveler in licentious cities, the boy or girl at school, like Tom Brown at Rugby, to say his prayers every night, and keep the tongue pure and walk upright with Christ. But religion does not belong only to churches and Sundays. It is just the thing for strange places, to go wherever a human soul goes to struggle with temptation, to every post of perplexing and difficult duty, to go with you alone where all others deny it, to be with you even in Cæsar's house, if there your lot be cast, amongst its impurities, its proud scorn of Christ, its false bad life, to help and keep you in that hard battle; nay, it may be, to find there through you a field before unknown for its triumphs. Indeed, it is not only possible, but so the Lord of our life selects and appoints our place, on purpose that in it, whatever it is, there we may do our duty; that there we may win strength to ourselves and glory to Christ. For He takes men where they are, that they may be righteous and faithful there; not to gather all the saints in Cæsar's household, all Christian disciples, out of the houses where they are perhaps alone amidst worldliness and sin, to gather all faithful souls into some monastery or church by themselves: rather He sets them separate, perhaps single; He calls them, as He did Abraham, " alone," because there the light is needed, that thus the mass may be leavened. Thus He tries their virtue and their faith. Thus He makes their religion a witness for Him in the face of the Cæsars whose race is not yet dead, who do their evil will in many a larger or smaller Rome in this Christian America of ours. Wherever the fortune of life takes us, into places where the fear of God does not come, where the law of passion, of selfishness, of pleasure, is supreme; into college or camp; servant under an unrighteous master; in an undevout family; child of a worldly house, of a fashionable society; wife of a profane husband; laborer among the impure and scoffing, there is your place: not only such as Providence appoints, which perhaps you cannot escape and must submit to, but more than that, your opportunity, where your faith is to be tested, to be disciplined, where it is to be shown at any rate. Why should you expect it to be easier? Why not readily accept this honor of holding a lamp for God in a dark place? Why ask to be set aside from the post of honor because it is dangerous? Why ask God to let you stay in some quiet office in his temple when you can be a saint in Cæsar's household? It was the thanksgiving of Paul for these Christians at Rome that their faith was spoken of throughout the whole world. And no doubt it was because it was faith in Rome, out of all that baseness, out of its persecutions, out of its hardships, out of that stifled air of Nero's house, out of all the oppression and corruption under which it grew, shining forth to cheer the farthest disciple in that young Christendom which Paul and his associates had been building. The Lord of the world appoints difficulty for other things, and why not for religion? He makes his best fruit grow out of hardship, great and shining souls ripened in poverty, sharpened in opposition or neglect; plucking honor, knowledge, success, out of the hand of |