The Devotion of Constantine to Christianity.—?Constantius and the Barbarians.—?Conspiracy of Magnentius.—?The Decisive Battle.—?Decay of Rome.—?Fearful Retribution.—?Noble Sentiments of the Bishop of Alexandria.—?Death of Constantius.—?Gallus and Julian.—?Julian enthroned.—?His Apostasy.—?His Warfare against Christianity.—?Unavailing Attempt to rebuild Jerusalem.—?Persecution.—?His Expedition to the East, and Painful Death.

HE Christian Emperor Constantine, during his reign, issued many earnest appeals to his subjects, entreating them to abandon paganism, and embrace Christianity. Heliopolis, in Phoenicia, was a heathen city, which had surrendered itself to the most degrading and abominable rites of idolatry. There was not a single known Christian in the city.

The emperor sent workmen to the place, and, at his own expense, erected a very beautiful church edifice. He then selected several clergymen of marked ability, and commissioned them to preach the gospel there. At the same time he placed in the hands of the pastors a large sum of money for the relief of the poor, saying,—

“I hope that the conversion of the souls of the pagans may be promoted by doing good to their bodies.”

The most convincing evidence which the community in general can have of the reality of the Christian religion is to be found in the lives of its professors. When we compare the Christian Constantine with most of the pagan emperors who had gone before him, all must be impressed with the greatness of the change.

The palace is a dangerous place for the education and the training of children. Constantine had three sons, who bore severally the names of Constantine, Constantius, and Constans: they were all dissipated. Upon the death of their father, the empire was divided between them. The eldest son, Constantine, who was twenty-one years of age, had assigned to him Spain, Gaul (now France), and all the territory west of the Alps. Constantius, who was but twenty years old, took Asia and Egypt. Constans, who had attained but seventeen years, received, as his share, Italy and Africa.183

Constantine the father, with his vigorous arm, had held the barbarians in check. God had apparently heard his prayers, and had given him the victory over his enemies. His death was the signal for a general war. Constantius, in the East, was soon struggling against an inundation of Tartar tribes. The usual scenes of blood and misery ensued, as the hostile armies, now in surging waves of victory, now in the refluent billows of defeat, swept the doomed land.

While Constantius was thus engaged struggling against the barbarians on the plains of Asia, Constantine was plotting an expedition against his brother Constans, who was a mere boy, proud, conceited, and incompetent. But the race is not always to the swift. Constantine, with a large army, crossed the Julian Alps, and invaded Italy to wrest that kingdom from his brother. But Constans, whom Constantine had despised, had able generals. They lured Constantine into an ambush, routed his army, killed him, and annexed all his realms to the Western empire.

Soon after this, a sturdy general, Magnentius, formed a conspiracy in the army, killed young Constans, and was proclaimed emperor by the soldiers. All the Western and Central realms acknowledged him.

Constantius, from the East, put his veteran army in motion, and advanced from the plains of Mesopotamia to make war upon Magnentius and to avenge his brother’s death. The whole then known world was thrown into commotion by this strife, which was to decide who should be master of this world. War and woe held high carnival. There were famine, pestilence, and death, smouldering towns, blood-stained fields covered with the slain, and despairing shrieks of widows and orphans.

The hostile armies met in vast numbers on the River Drave, not far from its entrance into the Danube. It was one of those battles which was to decide the fate of the world. Constantius, aware of the military ability of his antagonist, wisely, but not heroically, retired to the tower of a church where he could overlook the field. He left the conduct of the day to one of his veteran generals.

A fiercer battle than that which ensued was perhaps never fought. Roman and barbarian legions were intermingled, blending in the fight. The air was darkened with stones, arrows, and javelins. Clouds of horsemen, glittering in their polished armor, swept the field like moving statues of steel, trampling the dead and wounded beneath iron hoofs. Night terminated the conflict.

The army of Magnentius, overpowered by numbers, was almost annihilated. Fifty-four thousand were left dead upon the field. They sold their lives dearly. Astill greater number of the troops of Constantius lay drenched in blood by their side. Over a hundred and twenty thousand perished in this one battle. Thus did Rome, in civil strife, devour her own children. Thus was the way opened for the irruption and triumph of the barbarians.

In the darkness of night, Magnentius, throwing aside his imperial mantle, mounted a fleet horse, and, accompanied by a few friends, attempted to escape through the Julian Alps. He reached the city of Aquileia, at the head of the Adriatic Sea, not far from the present city of Trieste. Here, amidst the pathless defiles of the mountains, he rallied his surviving troops around him, and made another stand.

But city after city abandoned his cause, and raised the banner of the victorious Constantius. He then fled to Gaul. Constantius vigorously pursued him. At length, hedged in on every side, the wretched Magnentius, in despair, terminated his life by falling upon his own sword. He thus obtained an easier death than he could have hoped for from his foe.

Thus was the whole Roman world again brought under the sway of a single sovereign. Constantius, the son of Constantine the Great, reigned without a rival, from the western shores of Britain to the River Tigris, and from the unexplored realms of Central Germany to the interior of Africa. But over these wide realms there was nowhere happiness or peace. The benevolence of God seemed to be thwarted by the wickedness of mankind.

The Goths, in merciless bands, were sweeping over Gaul, leaving the path behind them crimsoned with blood, and blackened with smouldering ruins. Germanic tribes, pitiless as wolves, were flocking across the Danube, darkening the air with the smoke of burning villages, and rending the skies with the shrieks of their victims. From the vast plains of Tartary, bands of shaggy monsters, fierce as the beasts which roamed their wilds, came rushing across the eastern frontier into the war-scathed empire. There was peace nowhere. Every day brought its battles and its woes.

The ancient city of Rome, no longer the capital of the empire, was now crumbling to decay. Constantius, from curiosity, visited it. He found the population still immense, and was received by the inhabitants with great enthusiasm. The imperial palace which he occupied had entertained no royal guest for thirty-two years. After spending a month in the city, admiring the monuments of genius and art which were spread over the seven hills, he was suddenly recalled to meet an appalling irruption of the barbarians from the Danube. They were ravaging that wide and beautiful valley with every conceivable atrocity, and had already captured many thousand Romans,—men, women, and children,—whom they were carrying as slaves into their inaccessible wilds. Among these prisoners were men of the highest rank, and ladies of refinement and beauty.

Constantius placed himself at the head of a veteran army, and pursued the barbarians with such vigor as to compel them to drop many of their captives and much of their plunder, and to retreat in confusion to their forest-glades. He then turned his legions towards the east, and hurried along by forced marches towards the River Euphrates. Here a barbarian chieftain, called Sapor, was ravaging Mesopotamia with an army of a hundred thousand savage men from the wilds of Tartary.

The Roman emperor was prosecuting with great vigor this arduous campaign, when he heard the tidings of a revolt in Gaul, and that the army there had proclaimed its general as emperor. Burning with rage, he commenced a rapid march with his legions towards the west, when he was seized with violent sickness which arrested his steps. While languishing on a bed of pain, with the sceptre of imperial power crumbling in his hands, and death staring him in the face, the sins of his life rose appallingly before him. It soon became manifest that his earthly career was drawing to a close.

Constantius had been politically in favor of Christianity as the religion of the State. He regarded the pagan party as his political enemy. Destitute himself of the spirit of Christianity, he commenced the unrelenting persecution of his pagan adversaries, confiscating their property, and sending them to the rack, the dungeon, and the stake.

It is remarkable all through history, how, under the government of God, there seems to be developed a system of retribution. We ever meet that principle in the biography of individuals, and in the vicissitudes of nations. The pagans had persecuted the Christians with cruelty which demons could not have surpassed; and now God allowed a bad man, a Christian in name only, to torture the pagans with the same weapons which they had so pitilessly wielded. It is a fact, which every Christian will read with pleasure, that the true disciples of Jesus remonstrated against this retaliation. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, earnestly expostulating, wrote,—

“When men resort to persecution, it is evident that they want confidence in their own faith. Satan, because there is no truth in him, pays away with hatchet and sword. The Saviour is so gentle, that he only says, ‘Whosoever will, let him be my disciple.’ He forces none. He knocks at the door of the soul, and says, ‘Open to me, my sister.’ If the door is opened, he goes in. It is the character of true piety not to force, but to convince.”

The emperor was influenced by political considerations only. He regarded the pagan party simply as his antagonists, who sought his overthrow that they might grasp the reins of power. In co-operation with his court, he ordered the demolition of their temples, and directed all the energies of fire and sword to the demolition of the idolaters. Thus the flames of persecution, which once consumed the Christians, now blazed almost as fiercely in wrapping the pagans in their fiery folds.

Such was the condition of the world towards the close of the fourth century. Christianity had undermined all the temples of idolatry, and was enthroned as the established religion of the Roman empire. Ambitious men rallied about it as a great political power. Wicked men nominally embraced it as an essential step to worldly advancement. Christianity had thus, perhaps, more to fear from favoritism than from persecution. Unprincipled men, grasping at wealth and power, embraced Christianity merely as an instrument for the promotion of their own temporal aggrandizement. They hated its spiritual teachings, and endeavored to make it a religion of dead doctrines and of pompous ceremonies, rather than a rule to govern heart and life. They crucified Christianity while crowning it.

Lured by hopes of court favor and preferment, many who were still in heart pagans had hypocritically professed Christianity. Corruption thus crept into the Church. To conciliate the ignorant idolatrous populace, and to lure them into the Christian churches, the pomp and pageantry of pagan rites were introduced to supplant the unostentatious and simple ordinances of the gospel. Hence the origin of those theatric shows which are still the prominent features in the worship of the Church at Rome.

The death-bed of Constantius was that of an awakened and despairing sinner. He had been a wicked man. He had known his duty; for he had enjoyed the teachings of a Christian father. He had also heard the faithful preaching of the gospel.

Death brings all to the same level: the emperor and his humblest slave are upon an equality in that dread hour. As one reads the record of the remorse of the dying Constantius, he may say,—

As the moment drew near when his spirit, leaving the body, was to be transported to God’s bar, he trembled, and cried aloud for mercy. He gathered the most devout of the clergy around his bedside, and entreated them to pray for him.

Professing heart-felt repentance, the dying monarch implored that the rite of baptism and that of the Lord’s Supper might be administered to him. He received both of these ordinances, and still found but little peace. There are doubtless death-bed repentances; but they are very rare. It is only by living the life of the righteous that one can expect to know by blessed experience what it is “sweetly to fall asleep in Jesus.” Trembling, hoping, despairing, the imperial sinner passed away into the vast unknown.

How deep is the shade of melancholy which lingers around these sad recitals! Where now are those monarchs who once ruled the world? Where now are the soldiers of those thronging armies, which, fourteen centuries ago, swept the nations with billows of flame and blood?

And where shall we all be when a few more of these fleeting years shall have passed away? Is it wise to live for this world alone, when life is such a vapor, and when we are so soon to be ushered into the dread scenes of eternity? There is a voice, solemn as the grave, coming up to us from all these past ages, saying, “Prepare to meet thy God.”

The three sons of Constantine the Great were now dead. Neither of them left a male heir. Constantius had two cousins, of whom, during his whole life, he had always stood in great dread, lest they should aspire to the crown. He had caused them both to be arrested and imprisoned. Though thus held as captives, they were bound, as it were, with golden chains. Amagnificent palace was assigned them, where they were provided with every luxury. They were, however, closely guarded, not being allowed to leave the spacious grounds of the palace. They were permitted to see such company only as the emperor would admit to their presence.

At length, Constantius had appointed Gallus, the elder of these brothers, viceroy of the Eastern empire. Gallus took up his residence at Antioch, and immediately released his brother Julian, and received him at his court. Constantius, in a fit of jealousy and rage, caused Gallus to be assassinated. He also re-arrested Julian, and confined him for seven months in a castle at Milan, where the imprisoned prince daily expected to meet the doom of his brother. Through the intercession of Eusebia, the wife of Constantius, the life of Julian was spared. He was sent into honorable exile to the city of Athens.

Julian had from childhood developed unusual scholarly and philosophic tastes. In the groves of the Academy at Athens he had devoted himself assiduously to the cultivation of Greek literature. When Constantius set out on his military expedition to the Euphrates, he named Julian as his heir to the throne, and also directed him to take charge of an army to beat back the barbarians who were ravaging the Valley of the Danube and the Rhine. As Julian, the man of books, the bashful, retiring scholar, received this appointment, he exclaimed, “OPlato, Plato! what a task for a philosopher!”

Julian, enamoured of the classic literature of Greece and Rome, had become an actual worshipper at the idolatrous shrines of the pagans. He loved poetic dreamings, and revelled in the wild mythology of his ancestors. He was just one of those men whom we now politely call conservative men, or, more irreverently, old fogies. He clung to ancient superstitions and rotten abuses, and was quite opposed to the innovations and reforms which Christianity would introduce.

But suddenly he developed traits of character which surprised every one. He entered the camp, shared the coarse food and the hardships of the meanest soldiers, and developed military ability of the highest order. At Strasburg on the Rhine, in command of but thirteen thousand men, he assailed, and after a terrific battle put to flight, thirty-five thousand of the fiercest barbarians of the North. In the heat of this hard-fought battle, six hundred Roman cuirassiers, overpowered by the enemy, in a panic fled. Julian punished them by dressing them in women’s robes, and marching them along his lines amidst the derision of the whole army.

He crossed the Danube with his heroic troops, and advanced boldly into the almost unknown regions of the north, cutting down the German tribes mercilessly before him. He liberated, and restored to their homes, twenty thousand Roman captives who had been carried off as slaves into these wilds.

Julian, on his return from this successful expedition, repaired to Paris for his winter quarters. Three centuries before this time, Julius CÆsar had found this now-renowned city a mere collection of fishermen’s huts on a small island in the Seine. It was called Lutetia, which signified The Place of Mire. Since then the wretched little village had gradually increased. The small, marshy island had become entirely covered with houses. Two wooden bridges connected it with the shore. Julian was much pleased with the place, and built him a palace there.

Constantius was at this time in the Valley of the Euphrates, contending, as we have mentioned, against Sapor. He became jealous of the renown which Julian was acquiring. To weaken him, and thus to prevent his gaining any more victories, he ordered a large portion of his army to be withdrawn from Gaul, and sent to the Euphrates. Julian easily induced his soldiers to refuse to go. Clashing their weapons, they rallied around their commander, and, with loud huzzas, declared him to be their emperor.

Constantius, foaming with rage, put his army in motion to march to Gaul for the destruction of his rival. He had but reached Tarsus in Cilicia, the birthplace of the apostle Paul, when he died.

Such was the history of Julian before his assumption of the imperial diadem. He was at the head of his army, just entering the defiles of the Alps, hurrying to meet Constantius in battle, when he heard the welcome tidings of his death. Julian was then thirty-two years of age. With great eagerness he pressed on to Constantinople, where he was crowned emperor on the 11th of December,361.

This extraordinary man now resolved to restore paganism, and to abolish and utterly annihilate Christianity. Publicly, and with imposing ceremonies, he made a renunciation of the Christian religion, and committed himself to the care of the pagan gods. As the conversion of the Emperor Constantine was one of the most signal events in the history of the Church, so was the apostasy of the Emperor Julian one of the memorable events in the history of mankind. Abolder act of infidelity and atheism has perhaps never been recorded in the annals of our race.

Even the infidel Gibbon, in allusion to it, and to the inveterate zeal with which Julian persecuted the Christians, quotes the soul-stirring words of Milton in reference to the apostate angel Satan, as from hell’s dark domains he winged his flight for the seduction and ruin of our race:—

Thus Julian pressed on inexorably till death, endeavoring to crush the religion of Jesus, and to reinstate the gorgeous but senseless mummeries of paganism. Intellectually, Julian was a remarkable man both in native vigor of mind and in rich mental culture. Those portions of his works which have descended to us prove that he possessed talent, wit, and rhetorical ease and fluency. It seems as though God allowed such men to assail Christianity, that it might be seen that the religion of Jesus could triumph over the highest intelligence combined with unlimited despotic power.

It is recorded that Julian possessed among other mental marvels such flexibility of thought and abstract power of attention, that he could employ his hand to write, his ear to listen, and his voice to dictate, at one and the same time. During the long winter evenings, he devoted himself with tireless malignity to writing a book against Christianity. This treatise left but little which modern unbelief could add.

To prove that paganism could make as good men as Christianity could make, Julian adopted the most austere morals, rigidly abstaining from those vices which characterized the times. He despised the pomp of royalty, discarded all luxuries, slept on the ground, and partook only of the most frugal fare. Indeed, he went so far in the spirit of eccentricity, fanaticism, and superstition, as to renounce the decencies of dress and the laws of cleanliness. He deemed it an act of piety to be filthy in person, and to allow vermin to devour him. In one of his letters, boasting of his superior piety, he descants with pride upon the length of his finger-nails, the dirtiness of his unwashed hands, and the shagginess and populousness of his beard.

Julian repaired and garnished the idol temples, and reinstated pagan worship in the palace with all conceivable splendor. Every effort was made to render idolatry fashionable and popular by gorgeous parades and court patronage. The emperor himself often officiated as a priest at these polluted shrines. The churches were robbed of their property. Christians were ejected from all lucrative and honorable offices, and their places supplied by pagans. The Christian schools were broken up, and the children of Christians denied all education save in the schools of the idolaters.

Jesus had predicted that the temple at Jerusalem should be destroyed, and should never again be rebuilt. Julian resolved to rebuild the temple, and thus prove Christ to be a false prophet. He endeavored to arouse the enthusiasm of the Jews in the undertaking, and called upon the pagan and Christian world to witness the accomplishment of the enterprise. Under these circumstances, he put forth all the energies which imperial power placed in his hands, and utterly, utterly failed.

The fact stands forth as one of the most remarkable in history, avowed by Christians, and admitted by pagans, that the Roman emperor Julian could not rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. It is stated by authority which no one has been able to controvert, that the workmen were terrified and driven away by phenomena which they certainly regarded as supernatural. Even infidelity cannot subvert the testimony which sustains this narrative. The fact is recorded by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, by the eloquent Chrysostom of Antioch, by the renowned Gregory Nazianzen, and by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus, who declares that no one disputed the fact. He writes,—

“While Alphius, assisted by the governor of the province, urged with vigor and diligence the execution of the work, horrible balls of fire breaking out near the foundations, with frequent and reiterated attacks, rendered the place from time to time inaccessible to the scorched and blasted workmen; and the victorious element continuing in this manner, absolutely and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, the work was abandoned.”

The statement is confirmed by many witnesses without contradiction. The fiercest storms beat upon the workmen. Bolts of lightning descended, destroying the works. Earthquakes shook the foundations, and volcanic flames burst up through the yawning crevices. The enterprise thus commenced in an impious spirit Julian was compelled to abandon. Awell-read scholar, he knew that open persecution, imprisonment, torture, and death had utterly failed in arresting the progress of Christianity. He resolved to try the influence of insult and contempt. He hoped, by dooming the disciples of Jesus to ignorance and poverty, to paralyze their energies.

The rich and powerful pagans, as well as the low and vulgar, thus encouraged by the example of the king and the court, began to assail the Christians with new malignity. The disciples were everywhere insulted, persecuted, mobbed. To call one a Christian became the severest term of reproach.

Then, as now, there were vast multitudes who had no independent faith of their own. These unthinking ones drifted along with the popular current. Julian condescended himself to write lampoons against Christianity. In one of these, ridiculing the Christian doctrine, that any man who repents of sin and trusts in the Saviour may be forgiven, he represents, in a satire entitled “The CÆsars,” his Christian uncle, the Emperor Constantine, going on a mission to the shades of the infernals. There the emperor gathers around him all the foul fiends of the pit, and, addressing them, says,—

“Whoever is a profligate, a murderer, a guilty man of any kind, let him come boldly to me: Iwill wash him in the water of baptism, and make him instantly pure. And should you fall into the same crime again, and only beat your breast, and say, ‘Iam sorry,’ you shall again be perfectly holy.”

It would be difficult anywhere to find a more interesting illustration of the fact, that there is often but a hair’s breadth between the most debasing error and the most ennobling truth. The Christian doctrine of forgiveness through repentance, and trust in the atonement, which our Saviour has made, very nearly resembles this burlesque of the doctrine as uttered by Julian; and yet one is true, and the other false. Salvation through faith in the sufferings and death of Jesus is described by the pen of inspiration as “the mighty power of God” for the redemption of a lost world. What is the Christian doctrine of forgiveness through faith in Jesus? It is this:—

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has made atonement for all sin upon the cross of Calvary. Whoever now will abandon sin, trust in this Saviour, and earnestly and prayerfully commence the Christlike life, persevering to the end, shall be forgiven.

Now, how small is the verbal difference between this Christian doctrine of salvation through faith in an atoning Saviour and Julian’s gross perversion of that only truth by which a sinner may be saved!

Some may wonder how it was possible for such a man as Julian, highly educated, and endowed by nature with great intellectual abilities, to advocate idol worship. The following extracts from a treatise of instructions which he drew up for the use of the pagan priests will show with how much plausibility such a man could argue in support of a bad cause:—

“Let no one accuse us,” he says, “of holding the gods to be wood, stone, brass. When we look at the images of the gods, we ought not to see in them stone and wood, neither ought we to see the gods themselves.

“Whoever loves the emperor is pleased with beholding his image; whoever loves his child delights in the picture of his child. So whoever loves the gods looks with pleasure on their images, penetrated with awe towards those invisible beings who look down upon him.”

This was the subtle philosophy of paganism. It was a philosophy which the unlettered populace did not attempt to comprehend. The masses of the people saw in their gods but wood, stone, and brass. In the worship of these idols, they had a religion which exerted no beneficial influence upon the morals or the heart. And here reflect for a moment upon a fact which no intelligent man will call in question.

In the whole history of the world, not an individual can be found who ever renounced infidelity, and sincerely embraced Christianity, who has not been made a better man by the change; and, on the other hand, not a single instance can be found of one who has renounced Christianity, and embraced infidelity, who has not been made a worse man by the change.

The Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, was one of the most illustrious men of his age. He was profoundly learned, a zealous Christian, an eloquent preacher, and one whose unblemished virtues commanded the respect of all. His success as a preacher exasperated Julian to the highest degree. Moreover, he was so beloved in Alexandria by his flock, and by the whole community, that it was not easy to strike him with the weapons of persecution. Even the governor of Alexandria hesitated to obey the decree of the infuriated emperor, and to drive Athanasius from a people by whom he was so highly respected and ardently beloved. At length, the emperor, receiving the tidings of some new conversions to Christianity through the eloquence of Athanasius, in his wrath wrote to the governor as follows:—

“I swear by the great Serapis, that, unless Athanasius is driven from Alexandria before December, you shall be severely punished. You know my temper. The contempt which is shown for the gods in Alexandria fills me with indignation. There is nothing Idesire more than the banishment of Athanasius. The abominable wretch! Through his preaching several Grecian ladies of high rank have become Christians, and have been baptized.”

Athanasius was banished. After the death of Julian, he returned. This good old man, having attained the age of eighty years, died in the year 393. His life was one of the most eventful in the history of the Church. Nobly he fought the battle, and passed from the stern conflict to the victor’s crown.

“Athanasius is one of the greatest men of whom the Church can boast. His deep mind, his noble heart, his invincible courage, his living faith, his unbounded benevolence, sincere humility, lofty eloquence, and strictly virtuous life, gained the honor and love of all.”184

Julian had been thoroughly instructed in Christianity. He had been nominally a Christian. He had deliberately apostatized from the faith, with the determination to reinstate paganism. He consecrated all the resources of his brilliant mind to invest paganism with some of the intellectual grace and dignity of Christianity. To rescue paganism from the contempt into which it had fallen, he endeavored to introduce into the idol worship some of the moral elements which he had purloined from the teachings of Jesus. In one of the attacks of this envenomed foe upon Christianity, he unwittingly uttered the noblest eulogy upon the early Christians.

“As children,” he wrote, “are coaxed with cake, so have these Christians enticed the poor to join them by kindness. Strangers they have secured by hospitality. By affecting brotherly love, great moral purity, and honoring their dead, they have won the multitude.”

This is a beautiful tribute to the character of the early disciples of our Saviour from the pen of a foe. Julian gave the idolatrous priests the excellent advice, to endeavor to win the people back to the pagan shrines by the same measures. He distributed large sums of money among the priests to aid them in their work. In his earnest appeal to them, he says that the pagan poor obtained no assistance from their own people; while the Christians support all of their own poor, and assist also many of those who worship the gods.

The idols were reinstated, with great ceremonial pomp, in temples from which they had disappeared. The unstable populace, ever swinging to and fro, and naturally inclined to a religion which demanded no holiness either of heart or life, drifted over in large numbers to the pagan party. In one of Julian’s appeals in behalf of the gods, he wrote,—

“I am a worshipper of the God of Abraham, who is a great and mighty God. You Christians do not follow Abraham: you erect no altars to his God, neither do you worship him as Abraham did with sacrifices.”

Julian was perfectly willing to place the statue of Jehovah, as one of the gods, by the side of Jupiter and Bacchus and Diana and Venus. In his zeal against Christianity, he endeavored to revive ancient Judaism. He had invited the Jews to co-operate with him in his unavailing attempt to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem. He even stooped to ignoble trickery, that he might put a moral compulsion upon the Christians to do homage to the idols.

The emperor’s statue stood in all public places. It was customary for every one, in passing, to bow to it as to the emperor. Julian placed by the side of his statue, in closest proximity, several statues of the gods. Thus no one could respectfully bow the head to the image of the emperor without apparently doing homage to the idols. Not to bow to the statue of the emperor was a penal offence. Thus, and in many other ways too numerous to mention, Julian the apostate endeavored to reinstate paganism.

But all the artifice and imperial power of Julian could not restore a religion which had no elevated doctrines of theology, no ennobling principles of morality, which presented no lofty motives of action, and which unfolded no realms of a glorious immortality beyond the grave.

It is a necessity of man’s nature that Christianity should finally triumph; for the religion of Jesus alone meets and satisfies the deepest yearnings of the human soul: it inspires to purity of life and to noble deeds as nothing else conceivable can inspire; it irradiates the realms beyond the grave with light and love and eternal joy; it is indeed good news,—glad tidings to all people.

Many attempts have been made to build up Christian virtues without Christian principles. All such efforts have failed. Human passion is so strong in its bias to sin, that it can be restrained by no power less potent than the gospel of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the cross, though to the Jew a stumbling-block and to the Greek foolishness, is, to them that are saved, the wisdom of God and the power of God.

Every year, Julian grew more inveterate and malignant in his hostility to Christianity. The city of Antioch, in Syria, was the capital of Asia Minor. Paul had long and successfully preached the gospel in that city; and, under the Emperor Constantine, every vestige of paganism had disappeared from its temples and its streets. Julian made strenuous efforts to re-establish pagan rites in Antioch. He reared an idol temple in the vicinity of a Christian burying-ground, and then ordered the bodies of the Christians to be removed from their graves, as polluting the soil which the idol temple rendered sacred to the pagan gods.

The Christians met to transfer, in solemn procession, the remains of their honored dead to another burial-place. With united voice they chanted the ninety-seventh Psalm, which calls upon the heathen deities to prostrate themselves before the majesty of Jehovah:—

Julian, in his exasperation, caused the arrest of several of the most prominent of these Christians, and sentenced them to the severest punishments. One young man, Theodosius, was subjected to the utmost extremity of torture. He bore the agony with such fortitude as to excite the admiration of the pagans.

While Julian was thus breathing threatenings and slaughter against the Church, he was summoned to the frontiers of Persia, where a terrible invasion was menacing the empire. Persia had gradually risen into a military power which threatened to assume independence.

The country between the Euphrates and the Tigris, called Mesopotamia, or between the rivers, consisted of a region about five hundred miles long and fifty wide. It was an exceedingly fertile plain. The inhabitants called themselves Assyrians. Being wealthy and numerous, and far distant from the central power of Rome, they had not only raised the banner of revolt against the empire, but had sent large armies across the Euphrates, which ravaged the adjacent provinces, and returned enriched with plunder and slaves.

To bring these Assyrians again into subjection to the Roman power, Julian commenced a campaign against them. He took with him sixty-five thousand veteran Roman soldiers and a vast body of Scythian auxiliaries and roving Arabs. Eleven hundred barges crowded the Euphrates, to float down the stream the emperor’s ponderous engines of war and his military supplies.

These boats, flat-bottomed, were easily converted into pontoon-bridges. As this immense army crossed the Euphrates, and entered Assyria, Julian gathered the whole body around him, and, with the most imposing rites of pagan religion, offered sacrifices to the pagan gods, appealing to them for aid in his enterprise. The appeal, for a time, seemed not to be in vain. Signal success accompanied his arms. City after city fell before the terrible power of the Roman legions. The trail of the victorious army was marked by smouldering ruins and blood.

Maogamalcha was one of the most important cities of this Assyrian realm. The wolfish Roman legions burst through the gates. Every conceivable outrage was inflicted upon the wretched inhabitants, and then they were consigned to indiscriminate massacre. The governor of the city was burned alive. There were in the suburbs three palaces, enriched with every thing which could minister to the pride of an Eastern monarch. Palaces, gardens, parks, statuary, paintings,—all were reduced to utter ruin.

The devastation of a palace creates much emotion; but it is the burning of the cottage, of which history takes such little notice, which fills the world with weeping and woe. Julian became such a terror to this whole region, that the painters of the nation represented him as a lion vomiting fire. And yet this same man seemed to have his appetites and passions under perfect control: he was quite free from many of those vices which degrade humanity; he shared all the hardships of the soldiers, often traversing with them, on foot, the burning plains.

But ere long the heathen gods, whose aid he had implored, and upon whom he had relied, seemed to abandon him. He was led to adopt the most insane measures, which could only result in his ruin. Troubles gathered thickly around him. He became so harassed with anxiety, that he could not sleep. One night, in troubled dreams, or in a revery, an angel appeared before him weeping, and covered with a funereal veil.

The superstitious monarch, affrighted, rushed from his tent. It was midnight. The camp was silent. The stars of Mesopotamia shone down sadly upon the apostate. Suddenly a brilliant meteor shot athwart the sky. To the superstitious pagan it was a menace from the god of war, indicating defeat.

At break of day the trumpets suddenly sounded, summoning the soldiers to repel an attack from the foe springing by surprise upon them. It was a sultry summer’s morning: not a breath of air mitigated the overpowering heat. Julian, as he rushed to the field, laid aside his cuirass. Acloud of arrows and javelins fell upon him. Abarbed javelin, lined with sharp inlaid blades of steel, grazed his arm, pierced his ribs, and, with its keen point, penetrated deeply the liver of the monarch. Frantic with pain, Julian seized the weapon, and endeavored to wrench it out. In the attempt, his hands were severely lacerated by the blades. Bleeding, fainting, he fell senseless to the ground.

His guards bore his inanimate body from the tumult of the battle to a neighboring tent. It was some time before he awoke to consciousness. The blood was gushing from the wound. It was evident to Julian, and to all others, that he must soon die. Grasping a handful of the crimson gore, he flung it madly toward the heavens, as if conscious that Jesus was reigning there, and exclaimed, “OGalilean! thou hast conquered.”

The current of life was now fast ebbing, and death was manifestly near at hand. The wretched Julian made a faint attempt to rally to his support his pagan philosophy.

“I have lived,” he said, “without any sin. Iam not afraid to die. My soul is now to be absorbed into the ethereal substance of the universe.”

Thus he died. At midnight, the spirit of Julian the apostate ascended to the judgment-seat of Christ. This sad record suggests a few obvious thoughts, to which we cannot refrain from directing the attention of our readers:—

1. The experience of eighteen centuries seems to prove that the final triumph of Christianity is certain. Every weapon raised against Christianity has failed. Argument has exhausted its most profound efforts. Persecution has in vain expended all its energies of torture, dungeons, flames, and death. Though there are men now who hate the religion of Jesus, who oppose it in every possible way,—some by direct hostility, and some by neglect,—still Christianity was never before so potent as now. Never before has it exerted so controlling an influence over the hearts and lives of men. Its power has steadily increased with the lapsing centuries.

2. It is obvious that the triumph of Christianity will not be a triumph in which all the enemies of Christianity will become its friends: its persistent enemies will perish. Satan may never be converted; but he will be held in chains. Julian died hurling defiance at Jesus Christ: he may forever remain thus obdurate; but he will never again have it in his power to persecute the Christians. Julian is immortal: he is as free now to love or hate as he was fourteen centuries ago. God never robs his intelligent creatures of the freedom of the will. But those who remain unrelenting can never be permitted to mar, by their malice, the joys of heaven.

3. There are in this world, probably in the wide universe of God, but two parties,—those who are the friends of Christ, and those who are not his friends. To this solemn truth we must ever come. “He that is not with me is against me,”185 says Christ. One’s love for Christ may not be fully developed; one’s rejection of Christ may exist in a latent state: but the germs of love or rejection are in every soul; every one is in heart either with Constantine or Julian.

4. Death is to all alike the same sublime event. There is something awful in the death of Julian. The tumult and the uproar of the battle rage around him; the blood gushes from his lacerated veins. But death itself is an event so sublime, that all its surroundings are of but little moment. It is the one thing, the one only thing, of which every person is sure. No matter when, where, or how, death comes: to leave this world forever; to go to the judgment-seat of Christ; to hear the sentence, “Welcome, ye blessed!” or “Depart, ye cursed!” and then to enter upon eternity, a happy spirit in heaven, or a lost spirit in hell,—this is an event so transcendently sublime, that its accidental accompaniments are scarcely worthy of a thought.