One of the teachers of the past generation who had an unusually clear conception of the Christian's place in the world was Dr. A. J. Gordon.  He once said:

The men who conquered the Roman Empire for Christ bore the aspect of invaders from another world, who absolutely refused to be naturalized to this world.  Their conduct filled their heathen neighbors with the strangest perplexity; they were so care-less of life, so careful of conscience, so prodigal of their own blood, so confident of the overcoming power of the blood of the Lamb, so unsubdued to the custom of the country in which they sojourned, so mindful of the manners of that country from whence they came not.  The help of the world, the patronage of its rulers, the loan of its resources, the use of its methods they utterly refused, lest by employing these they might compromise their King.  An invading army maintained from an invisible base, and placing more confidence in the leadership of an unseen Commander than in all imperial help that might be proffered--that was what so bewildered and angered the heathen, who often desire to make friends with the Christians without abandoning their own gods.  But there can be no reasonable doubt that that age in which the church was so completely separated from the world was the age in which Christianity was most victorious in the world.

Professor H. B. Workman has summarized the Christian's lot under imperial Rome: 

For two hundred years to become a Christian meant the great renunciation, the joining a despised and persecuted sect, the swimming against the tide of popular prejudice, the coming under the ban of the Empire, the possibility at any moment of imprisonment and death under its most fearful forms.  For two hundred years he that would follow Christ must count the cost, and be prepared to pay the same with his liberty and life.  For two hundred years the mere profession of Christianity was itself a crime.  Christianus sum was almost the one plea for which there was no forgiveness, in itself all that was necessary as a "title" on the back of the condemned.  He who made it was allowed neither to present apology nor to call in the aid of a pleader.  "Public hatred," writes Tertullian, "asks but one thing, and that not investigation into the crime charges, but simply the confession of the Christian name.
 

The Romans, Greeks, or Gentiles were indifferently called "the first race." The Jews, admittedly different, were known as "the second race." But the Christians, so peculiarly "disfranchised of the world," so intolerant of the world's spirit and atmosphere, and standing out in such bold contrast and daring unworldliness, were stigmatized "the third race." The Christians willingly embraced the stigma.  Anything was better than sin.  Let the heathen rave.  Christians belonged to another world.  They were "dead to all the globe"--out of joint with all the world.  Thus the cry in the circus of Carthage: "How long must we endure this third race?"

The results of such an uncompromising victorious testimony were inevitable.  The church of today cannot endure the blaze kindled by those martyr fires.  Such "burning and shining lights" discover to us how distant is our departure from the Crucified.  Mark well, O popular Christian and worldly-wise preacher, venturing how far you must go with the world in order to win the world: never had the Church so much influence over the