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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http : //books . google . com/ h UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD }| H ENGLISH FACUITY LIBRARY Yt This book was bought with ^ the belli of the P ALL SOULS (G. M, YOUNG) § BENEFACTION | Y' Oxford University ENGLISH FACULTY LIBRARY Manor Road, Oxford. (Oxford 4963!) TkU h^^k should be r^^jn or before Oe latent dot* y>&2/Jce cLcuAf^f -^^^V^f Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PUPILS OF ST JOHN THE DIVINE. Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC I t Digitized by VjOOQIC J ' ! : I • ; - * i ! ( ^ ? - T j:Y .:. M \5. , .'. •' r : .] .*"• \ .\^ ' ? V "> '• <; UMtV < -< Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PUPILS ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. BY C. M. YONGE, Antkor of " The Heir rf Rticfyffe." NEW EDITION. %va3tm.: MACMILLAN AND CO. Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC PREFACE. The Pupils of St. John, — is the title a very narrow, or a very comprehensive one ? Narrow in one sense, for the direct pupils of St. John who can be ascer- tained and proved to have been such, and to have transmitted his instructions at any length, confine themselves to two, with about three more whose names and the titles of their works are alone pre- served. But taken in another light, and regarding as the disciples of St John not only those whose biography states that they actually sat at his feet and listened to his discourses, but those whose tenor of thought can be traced to his doctrine; and regarding his pupils as churches rather than as single persons, the term becomes a very wide one. None of the Apos- tles, excepting St. Paul, has so largely contributed to Holy Scriptures, or left such visible traces of his teaching upon the Church ; and v/hile St Paul's a 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC PREFACE. special office was to plant, St. John's seems to have been to organize and systematize. Looking back on the history of the Evangelist, we see how peculiar was his own preparation for his office in the Church. Youngest of all the Twelve, yet one of the first to become a follower of our Lord, he was especially distinguished by His personal love, and admitted, together with his own elder brother James, and with Simon Peter, to the sight of those deeper and greater manifestations of Divinity from which the others were excluded. Yet all this time it was the youthful qualities of love and zeal that chiefly marked his conduct throughout the Gospel history; he did not stand forth and ask or answer questions, or enter into arguments on the new sub- jects then revealed, as did Peter, Thomas, Philip, and Jude; but he followed, he listened, and, like the Virgin Mother, laid up these things in his heart — above all, those deepest and most spiritual lessons that at the moment of their utterance passed over the heads of their hearers. Still the nearest, and pre-eminent in love during the Passion Sorrow and the Resurrection Joy, he was yet by his sacred trust, the care of the Blessed Vii^in, set aside from the active labours of his brethren during the first missions of the Church. In the Book of the Acts we find him at first as the com- Digitized by VjOOQIC PREFACE, panion of St. Peter at Jerusalem, and then as giving his weight to the decision of the Council of Jeru- salem upon the mode of treatment of Gentile con- verts. After this, he passes almost entirely out of sight, while St Luke is occupied with the three great missions of St. Paul ; and it is only after the great Apostle of the Gentiles, together with all the original Twelve save John himself, had finished their course, that what is peculiar to him begins. And this seems to have been, in an especial manner, explanation and organization. Apparently after his long residence at Jerusalem, he had been among the numerous Jews settled in Parthia; and afterwards, when St. Paul's imprisonment had left the Churches of Asia without their guide, he fixed himself in the midst of them. Then when he alone remained of all the Apostolic Band, it was the fit time to give the authority of his personal inspiration to the regarding of the bishops, on whom they had laid hands, as heirs of the same power, and as absolutely their successors and representatives in the overseership of the Church. This, as the lamented Canon Shirley has pointed out in his fragment, probably took place at the meeting of the Church which, according to Eusebius, took place after St, James's martyrdom, to appoint his successor ; and thus St. John stood in the situation of the last surviving superior officer of their King's Digitized by VjOOQIC PREFACE, own personal choice, handing on to the younger band, who had received their commission from these first, the certainty that it was meant to be equivalent to that original appointment. Moreover, Jerusalem, the centre of love to all of Jewish birth, and the nominal subject of every glo- rious prophecy, had fallen in blood and fire, sind with the Temple had gone all the possibility of continuing the ritual established for fifteen hundred years, and by which Israelites had learnt to see their way to approach God. Diligently had St. Paul in three Epistles laboured to show that these things were only types and shadows of the reality ; but still, while the Temple remained, it was scarcely possible to wean men's minds from the belief that the triumph of Christianity must be in a material but glorified Jerusalem ; and the utter ruin of the city, the cessa- tion of sacrifice, the loss of the Priesthood, left a sense of desolation, only to be relieved by one who had grown up under the old system, beheld its culmi- nation, and understood the full meaning of the new. The other three Gospels had set forth the mission of the Messiah fulfilled in our Lord ; tLey had given in full His moral teaching, and described the insti- tution of the Sacraments. But, when John added his fourth Gospel, it was a setting forth that in these ordinances was the continuation to the Church of all Digitized by VjOOQIC PREFACE. « the old covenant had given. The discourses, hitherto kept in reserve, were now made known, showing how men were spiritually bom as the true children of faithful Abraham, while the participation in the Great Sacrifice was vouchsafed to them continually, by means of what Christians already possessed in the Sacraments ordained by Christ himself. The First Epistle — ^the preface as it seems, to the Gospel — sets forth the faith and love which above all things are needful to bring or to maintain the Christian in this spiritual state. And in the great vision which the Apostle was commissioned to describe, he beheld the veritable heavenly Jerusalem, and was shown the realization above of all the shadows of the Law, as well as how the faithful on earth have their present share in the glories and blessings that shall in time reach per- fection. Besides all this, St John, answering present needs, gives the first and deadliest blows to the crop of errors that men's busy fancies were leading them into ; and from the very force of his intense love to his Master, he speaks with the sternest severity to those who fall from the faith. In his addresses to the Seven Churches, he, or more truly his Lord, likewise reproves all the principal forms of evil into which the Church would at any time be prone to Digitized by VjOOQIC riii PREFACE. fall ; and in the latter part of the Visions he carries prophecy on, gives tlie key to the Christian fulfilment of almost every Book of the Elder Testament, and, as it were, points and collects into one faith, one hope, one meaning, all those writings of the last i»500 years by which God had spoken to man. Such was St. John's work — to gather together what his brother Apostles had done, and to hand on to the Church Universal the sense of the enjoyment of all that was promised to the chosen people of old. As Joshua in his old age, in the promised land, had called Israel to witness that no good thing had failed that the Lord had promised them, and only warned them of the future, so St. John showed his people that they were within their promised land, in the complete enjoyment of their spiritual promises, and, while regulating them in their inheritance, warned them of the traps and snares beyond. And St. John's first pupils — " the mighty men that over-lived " him— have shown his manifold influence in their histories, so far as we know them. Ignatius, with his zeal for self-sacrifice, and his earnest desire to impress the need of Church unity through the bishop and his flock ; Quadratus, boldly meeting philosophy on its own ground ; Polycarp, striving for the faith, and rejoicing in the flame; even the poor repentant robber, rescued by the love of the Apostle, Digitized by VjOOQIC PREFACE, and Papias, with his pious though ignorant and material hopes, — all testify to the strong personal impress of his teaching and character. And from these direct scholars, we have passed to their scholars, and to those Churches with which St. John's name is chiefly connected. Thus we have the Chris- tian philosopher Melito of Sardis, Theophilus of Antioch, arguing between Revelation and Mythology ; Aristo of Pella carrying on the exposition of the types of the Law ; Irenaeus of Lyons continuing St John's own. work of refuting the false Gnostic philo- sophy, and collecting the last traditions respecting the great Evangelist And again, we find the Churches founded or superintended by him showing their constancy and joy in the deadliest of per- secutions. In Gaul, Smyrna, Antioch, and Parthia, all Churches on which the influence of St. John or his immediate followers had told, noble instances of martyrdom took place — as indeed they did in all the Christian world, until the full victory over heathenism under Julian was finally gained ; for not these cities only, but every true Christian, must be taught by St. John. On this principle, then, has this little book been composed, — namely, that of following as far as may be the life of the Apostle himself, then those of his immediate disciples, and beyond them of the persons Digitized by VjOOQIC xiv PREFACE. who had been instructed by their teaching; then of showing how the Churches thus formed met trial and persecution, and, as far as possible, sketching the vicissitudes of their history to the present time. This has, of course, been very imperfectly done. Materials are scanty ; some of them are uncertain, and without real knowledge of the classical languages can only be used at all at second-hand ; and in spite of referring to the best modem authorities, such igno- rance must tell in a work of this kind, which has perhaps been presumptuously undertaken. Great pains, however, have been taken with it, in the earnest hope that it may at least draw attention to the remarkable position and influence of the great Apostle and Evangelist; and also that, to the un- learned reader who has not access to large libraries, it may help to bridge over that first space of Church his- tory that lies close beyond the conclusion of the Acts of the Apostles. And the example of St. John and his pupils is one that none can look at, as we hope, without being strongly moved towards the burning faith, love, zeal, and constancy that they possessed. May it be so with the readers of this feeble attempt ; and if they are not so already, may they be thus impelled themselves to become direct and personal pupils of St John, the simplest, the sweetest, yet the deepest and most sublime of writers, full of the Digitized by VjOOQIC PREFACE. soaring might, yet the tender brooding love shadowed forth by the Eagle he saw beside the Throne. What better can be wished for us all than that we should show ourselves indeed the disciples of St John ! Yet, not exclusively. Some of the classes here mentioned professed to be pupils of St John, to the exclusion of his fellow-labourers. Such gained a one- sided view of the truth, and soon became perverted. For as in ancient times narrow Judaism, so in modern days wild fancies of apocalyptic interpre- tation, have shown the evil of only studying in one line, — without the balance. Therefore it is to the Master, not to the servant, that the discipleship can safely and truly belong. May this little book prove, if not a help, at least no hindrance in that direction. It has been put together, according to the general design of the " SUNDAY LIBRARY," to afford reading which may accord with what should be the character of the Sunday. The habits of the time are somewhat tending to secularize the Sunday, rendering it, in the desire that it should not be weary, less set apart for a holyday than it has been. But if religious books are not read on a Sunday, they are generally not read at all ; and surely it is well that all on that day should bear a sort of Easter consecration, and should be bright without frivolity, enjoyable with as little as possible of the earthiness of every-day life. Digitized by VjOOQIC xvi PREFACE. Therefore it has been hoped that some of the highest and purest examples of past lives, and some of the most striking words of holy men of old, put forth in an attractive and easily accessible form, may fill up a want that has been felt in some families, of reading at once interesting and not too much alien to the thoughts suited to the "Easter-day of every week." As may be seen by the list of authors, no one class of opinions has been exclusively represented; and since no one can write well or heartily who does not completely express his own conviction, the authors cannot be responsible for each other's expressions of belief. C. M. YONGE. January 23, i86;S. Digitized by VjOOQIC CONTENTS CHAPTER I. PAOK THB WONDER OF THE WOULD T CHAPTER 11. ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE lO CHAPTER III. THE BELOVED DISCIPLE ^ . I9 CHAPTER IV. THE PARTING OF BRETHREN « 4I CHAPTER V. THE EVANGELIST. 61 CHAPTER VI. THE EXILE OF PATMOS JX Digitized by VjOOQIC xviii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PACK THE APOSTLE OF LOVE . • 96 CHAPTER VIII. IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT IO3 CHAPTER IX. THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES I43 CHAPTER X. THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST 154 CHAPTER XI. QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER 169 CHAPTER XII. HOW POLYCARP PLAYED THE MAN IN THE FIRE 1 79 CHAPTER XIII. PAPIAS AND MELITO, THE CREDULOUS AND THE THOUGHTFUL BELIEVER 201 CHAPTER XIV. THE WITNESSES IN GAUL 214 Digitized by VjOOQIC CONTENTS, xix CHAPTER XV. PAGB IRENiKUS, THE CHAMPION OF THE FAITH 235 CHAPTER XVI. TRIBULATION AT SMYRNA 25O CHAPTER XVII. ST. SIMEON OF SELEUCIA AND THE PARTHIANS 265 CHAPTER XVIII. THE VICTORY 279 CHAPTER XIX. THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN 299 CHAPTER XX. PRESENT ASPECT OF ST. JOHN'S CHURCHES 3IO Digitized by VjOOQIC LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE POLYCARP^S PRAYER Frontispiece. ST. JOHN AND THE ROBBER To face ^ii THE DREAM 07 THE TRIUMPHANT MOURNERS . » ,> I40 Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PUPILS OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE. CHAPTER I. THE WONDER OF THE WORLD. *'From haunted spring and dale. Edged with poplar pale; The parting genius is with sighing sent, With flower-enwoven tresses torn, The nymphs in twilight shade of tangled thickets mourn.'' Milton. A GLANCE at the map of Anatolia, or Asia Minor, shows that it is a region where travelling is extremely difficult. The great peninsula is all seamed with ridges of steep hills, with valleys between them. When the valleys come down to the sea-coast, the water fills them up, and makes deep gulfs and bays, and when the mountains reach the sea, they stand out into it as capes and headlands ; and further on, where all but their summits are submerged, these rise above the sea, and form the many rocky islands that are scattered through the waters of the Archipelago. Down every mountain height dashes a torrent, and B M Digitized by VjOOQIC 2 THE WONDER OF THE WORLD. these torrents meeting together join into streams and rivers, that flow on along the valleys to the sea, bringing with them all the earth and fragments of stone or gravel they have washed off the mountains. When, in spring, the snow melts on the tops of the hills, these rivers swell and come out in floods, spread- ing all over the valleys, and covering them with the soil they have brought from above. A traveller, riding along the sea-coast, would some- times be hindered by having to clamber over steep ridges of hill, with sides of rock, making dangerous precipices ; sometimes would have to cross rivers run- ning fast enough to sweep him off his feet, and so icily cold from the snow that feeds them, that they would chill him to the bone, and might even cause his death ; sometimes he would have to creep cau- tiously along the shore, taking care not to be lost in quicksands by the sea, or stuck in the bogs round the rivers, or overwhelmed by the water. All the way it would be very beautiful; the land side rising up in fine shapes of hills, many of them shining white with snow, and looking very near in the clear bright air, and the valleys between green with beauteous grass, and fine trees, and choice flowers. Out towards the west there would be the blue sea — blue and bright beyond our home imagination; and here and there with beautifully shaped rocky islands standing out, purple with a rich soft bloom, or brought into clear full light by full sunshine, and with white-sailed vessels passing between them. But, for all its beauty, it would be a very dangerous journey, not only on Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WONDER OF THE WORLD, 3 account of the precipices, the rivers, and the bogs, but because there are plenty of robbers hidden in the narrow ravines of the hills, ready to leap out on travellers in difficulties, and either shoot them down with their long guns or make them prisoners, and threaten them till they have paid a heavy ransom. Indeed, it is hardly possible to travel at all without a guard of soldiers. Another difficulty is that there are few towns, and the villages are mostly of very dreary huts, so that it is hard to get food or shelter for the night. But it is plain that this was not so always. By most of the rivers, in all the larger valleys, there are heaps of ruins. Fragments of stone piers run out into the sea, and here and there tall marble pillars stand up like sentinels over the heaps of broken stones around them ; the hovels of the few inhabitants are built up confusedly of pieces of beautiful marble, carved with foliage or animals, and the goats and their kids nestle under overthrown altars, with inscriptions in old Greek letters, hidden by the luxuriant leaves of the acanthus. Opposite the isle of Samos is the mouth of the river Cayster ; and along the banks lies a whole world of these fragments. There are high hills crowned with pine-trees on either side above, and many of them are cut away into quarries of fine marble, which once built those ruined temples and halls, and still bear the marks of the tool, though it has not been lifted up on them for a thousand years. At their foot lie broad meadows, forming a valley B 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 4 THE WONDER OF THE WORLD, on either side the meandering rivers, broken up by salt marshes and great pools, and thickly bestrewn with ruins, which come far up the slope of the southern hill, where fine fragments of houses and temples peep out from among the thickets and brushwood. It is hardly possible to walk among the pools and marshes below, but on the hill side there can still be found the great amphitheatre, a place shaped like an enormous horse-shoe, cut out in galleries, mounting higher and higher one behind the other, all in the solid rock, and looking down into an open flat place beneath, to which the well-marked race-course leads up. Bits of square towers and remains of gateways show the old inclosure of the city to have been very large ; but where men once swarmed to the market- place, or the harbour, there now is scarcely a living thing. Eagles sweep round the heights, and have their nests in the crags, white sea-birds float high or low between the blue sea and blue sky, tall lonely herons stand on one leg in the marsh, watching for fish, jackals prowl and howl at night, and by day per- haps little flocks of silky-haired goats, or fat-tailed sheep, are driven out to pasture by brown half-naked children. If the little shepherds were asked where they lived, and were not too shy to answer at all, they would point to some huts on a hill a little way off, and would say, " Ayasaluk." And what is the meaning of Ayasaluk }* The people who use the word little understand it, for they * Some explain it as Asalook, the city of the moon, meaning the lame as EphesuS; but this is not so probable. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WONDER OF THE WORLD. 5 are only Turkish peasants ; but even they own by the very word by which they call their abode that a great man once dwelt there. For Ayasaluk is an alteration of the Greek words Hagios TheologoSy and these mean Holy Divine, or writer upon the things concerning God. When those ruins were upright, when those walls with their square towers and deep gateways stood in all their strength, guarded by resolute Roman sentries, when the harbour was crowded with ships from all ports, when that amphitheatre was fitted with marble benches, and thronged with spectators, when the valleys and slopes of the hill stood thick with goodly dwellings and swarmed with busy crowds, who would have believed that the only name that would remain to mark the spot was that of one aged fisherman, the son of a hated people, without a country or a home — for the terrible destruction of the city of his fathers was still fresh in the memory of all men 1 What 1 would they have said, should the time ever come that they should be beholden to an old exile for a title for their great city of Ephesus, called by all men the Eye of Asia, and containing the wonder of the world, the temple of the great goddess Artemis, or Diana, whose image had fallen down from heaven itself, and after whom the city was often called the Guardian of the Goddess ? That image was their pride. The whole temple was centred round a small cell, where it stood in a shrine inclosed by a rich curtain. Round the ceii Digitized by VjOOQIC 6 THE WONDER OF THE WORLD were colonnades of pillars, each sixty feet high, and of beautiful marble, and of jasper, porphyry, and all that was precious, each given by a king. There were 127 of these ranged in an oblong form, making a double rank, not rooted over ; but within these was another parallelogram of pillars which were roofed with cedar, and contained a building with doors of cedar wood, and a staircase made from a single vine of the isle of Cyprus. Altars smoked in front of this building, beautiful statues adorned the colonnades, on the pillars many a brave soldier had hung his own weapons or those he had taken from the enemy, trea- sures from all the East were heaped in the chambers round the cell, and within was the goddess — shown on a few rare and festive occasions to favoured worshippers. What was she like ? Was she a lovely statue or a beautiful huntress-queen, crowned with the crescent moon, the quiver at her back, the bow in her hand, the fawn at her side, carved by the choicest art in ivory, as might have befitted the dweller in the inner- most shrine of the noblest temple in the world } No, — she was a little rude lump of black stone, the part from the waist downward not shaped at all, and the upper part merely carved out into a head, a pair of arms, and an immense number of teats, supposed to express that she nourished the whole earth like a mother; and there were strange old letters carved, on her. Nothing could well be uglier; but this frightful figure had been worshipped at Ephesus long before Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WONDER OF THE WORLD. 7 history or recollection began, and it was therefore thought to have been made in heaven, and sent down by the father of the gods for the Ephesians to guard and worship. They had thought no cost over much for such a treasure ; and, while they were building their temple, and looking for marble beautiful enough for it, it so happened that two rams, in a flock of sheep that were feeding on the mountain side, began to fight, and one trying to butt at the other, missed him, and, striking against a rock with his horns, tore away the crust that had overgrown it, and showed beneath the purest white marble. The shepherd ran into the city with the tidings, and the marble proved to be so valuable that he was ever after called Evangelus, or the messenger of good tidings, and a statue was set up to him in the temple. The temple built of that marble was so exquisitely beautiful as to rank among the seven wonders of the world. And when it was burnt down, on the night of the birth of Alexander the Great, that which has been described was built up with still greater splen- dour. Multitudes of priests and priestesses conducted the worship ; the former were among the richest and most leading people of the city, and the priestesses, who were called the melissce or bees, were held in high honour, and had crowds of slaves under them. Grand festivals took place there, in the month of May, which was called Artemisium, in honour of the goddess, when the amphitheatre was crowded with spectators, who listened to hymns sung, watched plays performed, or applauded matches in running, wrestling, or the Digitized by VjOOQIC « THE WONDER OF THE WORLD. like, all in honour of the great Artemis; and the noblest men in the country took it in turn to preside over these feasts as Asiarchs. All round the temple dwelt persons who dealt in scrolls bearing the letters of the image. By these all sorts of spells were wrought, and they were thought to secure good luck. Deep study was expended, and many scrolls written, on these rude letters scratched on the black stone, and many magic arts depended on them. Kings spoke the words in the extremity of danger, and to carry copies of them about the person was thought to prevent defeat. There was a perfect school of con- jurors and magicians, who reaped no small gain in the month of the goddess. It was a festival for the whole world. Rich men came from far and wide to offer their gifts, conquerors hung up their spoils, those who had made their vows paid them. The building was the favourite pattern for other temples to the goddess, and the chief trade of the inhabitants was making little silver, ivory, or even gold, models of the temple, to be sold to the many pilgrims to the shrine. The temple and the goddess were marked on the coins of the city, and Diana of the Ephesians was the glory of the East. Where is the temple now } You may look in vain among the ruins of Ephesus. Not the least trace can be found. A few of the columns may be found in distant lands, but the site of the building is lost. And as to the true Evangelus of Ephesus, ne is, indeed, a shepherd who taught how the Temple may be built of pure stones of the Living Rock ; and he Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WONDER OF THE WORLD, 9 is that very old man, the Holy Divine, whose name is traced in Ayasaluk, the only spot where human life remains in once-glorious Ephesus. Nay, it was the good tidings of which he was a messenger that really overthrew the great temple, and destroyed the hideous little black goddess to whom so many noble souls had so long been in bondage. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER .11 ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. **0 ye vain false gods of Hellas, Ye are silent evermore." — E, B. Browning. The first blow at the idol-worship of Ephesus had been struck nearly forty years before John, the son of Zebedee, the fisherman of Galilee, chose it for his abode. Ephesus, like every other great city of the Roman Empire, had among its inhabitants many Jews. Ever since the Jews had been carried captive to Babylon, they had remained scattered through the cities of the East and West. It was true that their Temple and their holy city of Jerusalem had been rebuilt, and they all regarded these as their centre of worship and their home; but the rocky hills of Judea would hardly have maintained a numerous nation, and at Babylon the Jews had learnt that remarkable skill and aptitude for trade which has ever since distinguished them. Their Divine laws, too, gave them such high principles of honesty and uprightness of dealing that they were trusted as were no other persons, and were often chosen for high and responsible positions. All this led to Digitized by VjOOQIC ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. u their taking up their residence in many places at a distance from Jerusalem. They would at least once in their lives visit the Temple at one of the great festivals of the year ; they regularly sent a portion ol their gains for the embellishment and maintenance of the Temple and its services, and they met every Sab- bath-day to worship in their own synagogues, where their Scriptures were read, psalms were sung, and prayers offered. The Greek language had become universal in the East, and these dispersed Jews had so entirely forgot- ten their own Hebrew that the Greek version of the Scriptures was read after the portion in the original language, and seems to have been in the hands of every-one. All this was silently undermining the worship of this black goddess. The persons who lived in in- tercourse with the Jews were likely to be struck with their pure spiritual worship and high standard of duty ; they inquired into their law, and read the glorious writings of Moses and the Prophets with much admiration. Some persons were convinced, many noble ladies held to the Jewish law, and many more had a sort of half-hearted belief, thinking much of the Jewish faith beautiful, but unwilling to give up the grandeur and feasts of the heathen gods, or to join with a people who were disliked and despised. Among the Jews of the dispersion and their half- converted friends, there gradually spread a report that there were persons at Jerusalem who declared that Digitized by VjOOQIC \2 ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. the long hoped-for Christ had come, that the promises made first to Adam and Eve, and then renewed to the patriarchs and prophets, were accomplished, and that the great redemption of all the world had really- taken place. But no one in these Greek cities heeded greatly such stories. The Jews were busy with traffic, the Greeks, some with philosophy, some with poetry and amusement, and the Romans with public business and military discipline. It was no uncommon thing to hear that a false Christ had appeared at Jerusalem, and indeed the Jews who resided there were becom- ing so turbulent and so fierce in their resistance to Roman authority that their more moderate Graecised kinsmen feared to be involved in their disgrace, especially when tidings came that the Emperor Claudius had driven out all the Jews who had settled at Rome. One Sabbath-day in the 8o8th year since Rome had been founded, or, as we reckon, in the year 55, one of these expelled Jews, a tentmaker by trade, came into the Jewish synagogue at Ephesus, with his wife, and another tent-maker, whom he had met at Corinth. It soon was known that this second tent-maker, a small, slender man, with a noble and earnest coun- tenance, was that Cilician Benjamite, at home called by his Jewish name of Saul, and enrolled as a Roman citizen as Paulus, who, after having been a vehement persecutor of the believers in Christ, had become the most zealous among them, and had already travelled through many cities both of Asia and Digitized by VjOOQIC ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. ij of Greece, declaring the faith that he had so heartily embraced. After the reading of the Scripture, it was cus- tomary that one of the assembly should stand up to expound, and any learned stranger did so of right Thus Paul, who was well known to be a scholar of the most learned Jewish masters, as well as deeply versed in Greek culture, naturally stood up and spoke. What he then said, proving that it was indeed the true Christ who had appeared in Judea, made such an impression on his hearers that they be- sought him to remain and explain further, but he was bent upon reaching Jerusalem in time for the approaching feast, and proceeded at once, leaving behind him, however, his companions, Aquila and Priscilla. They, though less instructed, kept the interest his words had excited from dying away, and they were further assisted by Apollos, a Greek Jew, of the great school of Alexandria, who had gathered up some knowledge of the Saviour, and eagerly proclaimed it, imperfect as it was, till he was further taught by Aquila and his wife. Thus, when Paul returned the next year to Ephesus, he found twelve men already eager to understand more, and to be admitted to the full blessings which the true Christ had brought to them. He continued his teachings in the synagogue, but after a time he found that so many were hardened against his doc- trine that he ceased to preach there, and betook himself to one of the schools where philosophers were wont Digitized by VjOOQIC 14 ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. to argue on questions of life and death, right and wrong, and to instruct their pupils. This was the beginning of the warfare with the great goddess of Ephesus. Hitherto Paul had dealt with Jews, already known to abhor idolatry. Them he had to convince that jESUS is the Christ, and to them he spoke as the learned pupil of the great Rabbi Gamaliel. But when he stood forth in the school of Tyrannus, he had to argue as a Greek philosopher, and to begin by proving that there is but one God Almighty, and that idols- are mere vain things. For two full years he thus taught at Ephesus, and the great gift of miracles that accompanied his words had great effect. The priests of Diana pretended to miraculous gifts in her name, and hosts of diviners and magicians dwelt round the temple, pretending to guide the inquiries or influence the luck of her devotees; but their incantations and secret arts seemed to shrivel up beside the openly worked miracles of St Paul, and not merely the worshippers, but the magicians themselves, were convinced of the delusion in which they had lived. Many a man who had yearned after truth, and struggled to find it through curious arts, now brought his bewildering books together, costly though they were, burnt them, and with free unburdened heart drank at the pure well of truth, and knew how muddy were the wells he had left behind him. Here Timotheus, Paul's young half-Jew companion, became known and loved, and a warm affection sprang up Setween the Apostle and his large flock of believers. Digitized by VjOOQIC ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. 15 All was peace, until the success of the new teacher began to alarm the numerous silversmiths who had hitherto made the little models of the Temple of Diana. What was to become of their trade if people ceased to worship idols, and to buy models of the temple ? Paul had founded his Church at Ephesus. For nearly three years he had been able to teach full Christian doctrine, and had ordained elders or priests to carry on the teaching, and conduct the worship of the Church in his absence, and it was time to leave them for the present. He had already sent on Timotheus, and was waiting to follow till he had kept his Pentecost with the Ephesians, when the month of May arrived — the month of the feast of the goddess ; and the silversmiths finding some slack- ness in their trade, deemed it the effect of the new philosophy. A most frightful tumult was raised . among the Ephesian mechanics. Into the market-place and theatre, and over the hill-side, they rushed, howling for vengeance . on the man who would ruin the pride of their city, and source of their profits. The authorities warned Paul to keep himself in retirement, and, though he would have ventured forth, his friends prevailed to withhold him, and only a few of his converts were dragged into the theatre. The tumult was intolerable, and all the more so as many who made the most noise were ignorant of the cause. The rock-hewn galleries, still remaining on the face of the rock, re- echoed to these howls, and, when the Jews put forward Digitized by VjOOQIC i6 ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. one of their number to explain, the rage of the mob against such a known contemner of idols became unanimous, and for two whole hours they shouted with deafening cries, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " When at length they could shout no longer, one of their magistrates stood up and appeased them. He said that, as their precious image had fallen from heaven, it was not insulted by any preaching against figures made by human hands. If any man had suffered real injury, let him go to law ; but as to this uproar, it could only bring on them the displeasure of the authorities, and therefore the best thing to be done was to go home quietly in peace. And, having thus exhausted themselves, the mob took his advice and slunk home, nor does it appear that for a long course of years the Ephesian Church was exposed to danger. Paul went away in the evening, and was not seen again in the city, though, after two years, when he was again returning to Jerusalem, when his ship touched at Miletus, about twenty or thirty miles from Ephesus, he sent the elders a message to come and meet him there. Over the hills these faithful priests hastened to the mouth of that tortuous river Meander, whence the very term " meandering " is taken. There upon the beach, his ship lying ready, stood their beloved Apostle watching for them, and then, as they stood round him, he spoke tenderly to them, warning them to guard their flock against the grievous wolves who he already foresaw would enter in among them, and Digitized by VjOOQIC ARTEMIS A TTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. 17 exhorting them to diligence in their holy task, the more because he believed that they would see his face no more. Together on the wild sea-shore did the Apostle and his elders kneel together and pray, until the moment of parting came, the Apostle went on board with sails spreading for the south, and bonds and imprisonment before him, and the priests, as they strained their eyes after his lessening ship, were " sor- rowing most of all for the words that he said, that they should see his face no more." Still the altars of Artemis smoked, still her silver shrines were sold, still signs and seals bore her im- press; but the little band of Christians heeded her little, and kept up their deep love. Two of their number had gone with Paul, Trophimus and Tychicus, and shared his danger at Jerusalem, when the Jews, fancying he had brought Trophimus within the bounds of that part of the Temple appropriated to Jews, made that terrible uproar from which the Apostle was only rescued by the Romans. After nearly four years, the loving hearts of the Ephesians were rejoiced by the return of Tychicus, bearing a letter from St. Paul, written from that hired house at Rome, where, under the guard of a soldier, he was living, awaiting his trial by the Em- peror Claudius. It is a letter full of peace and joy, dwelling first on the Love that has redeemed and set us free, setting forth the glorious state to which Christians are raised, and then showing how pure holy lives are needful, and how each person, in each station, old and young, master or servant, parent or c Digitized by VjOOQIC i8 ARTEMIS ATTACKED IN HER TEMPLE. child, husband or wife, may live as becomes the member of a risen Lord. After the feverish magic of the wild feast of Artemis, the calm, lofty teaching of that beauteous letter must truly have made the Ephesians feel them- selves "sitting together in heavenly places." And thus it was that their city was prepared to become the special home and head-quarters of the holy man, who may be called both the first and last of the disciples of our Lord. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER III. THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. *' Two brothers freely cast their lot With David's royal Son, The cost of conquest counting not : They deem the battle won.*' — J, H, Newman. John was the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of either Bethsaida or Capernaum, and of Salome, who is said by Papias (one of St. John's own pupils) to have been either the sister of the Blessed Virgin, or the daughter of her husband Joseph by a former marriage. He had a brother named James, who seems to have been a year or two older than himself, and they were both brought up to assist their father and his hired servants in fishing upon the lake of Gennesaret. This lake is formed by the spreading out of the river Jordan at the feet of the mountains of Galilee, and it is very beautiful, often as clear as glass, and reflecting the tall hills and rocks above it, though sometimes, when a fierce wind sweeps down on it from the narrow clefts among the hills, it is all torn and tossed up, and dashes about in foam and spray. It is full of delicious fish, and many persons got their livelihood by fishing from their boats, Spreading out long nets, with weights at the bottom C 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 20 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE, to keep them upright under water, and then drawing them up when the fish had become entangled in the meshes. In the time of St. John, the hills and valleys of Galilee were closely filled with people. There were little villages nestling in the green valleys, or perched on hill tops, always with walls of rough stone to guard them, and there were larger cities, some on the lake side and some on the hills. Many of the fishermen, farmers, and the like, were of the old tribes of Zebu- Ion and Naphthali, to whom Galilee had first been given ; and there were besides rich men in the cities who paid court to Herod Antipas, the half-Jewish, half-Edomite prince, who had only a fourth part of the power of his terrible father, Herod the Great. Also there were in every chief place Roman soldiers, to keep guard over the country for the Emperor Tibe- rius Caesar, and Roman tax-gatherers, who employed publicans under them to collect tribute for the Govern- ment. The common people spoke Syriac, the rich and noble spoke Greek, and the Romans Latin, but as everybody knew a little Greek, it was the language in which business was managed by persons of different nations. As Zebedee does not seem to have been a very poor man, his sons would probably have been taught Greek as well as to read their own Hebrew Scriptures and understand the rules of the law, and every year, after they were thirteen years old they would go up to Jerusalem for the three great feasts, before and after harvest and after the vintage. There they would see the beautiful city rising on her own mountain, and crowned by the gilded pinnacles of her Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE.: marble temple. They would be admitted to the court, surrounded with marble cloisters, and there watch the burning of the sacrifices on the great altar, attended to by priests in white garments, and by bands of Levites, who, standing on the steps, chanted the Psalms with all the glory of stately music ; and in front of the Holy Place, where none save priests might enter, could be seen the great golden vine, whose clusters of molten grapes were of the height of a man. And yet no one could really and thoughtfully dwell on the religion of the Jews, and be happy about him- self. God had given a law so perfect that no one could keep it, and the threats against those who broke it had been proved to be in awful earnest. Dull, self- satisfied people were apt to fancy that they were keep- ing it perfectly, but this could never be with the deeper souls who had a finer sense of the purity of the standard to which they ought to attain. All the old confessions of holy men of old did but show that they too felt that their guilt needed to be taken away, and that they looked forward to some great sacrifice to be made by a mighty King, who would gain the victory over all that was evil, and bring with him peace and glory. There was at the time John was growing up, a feel- ing that this great Deliverer was soon to be looked for, and every one watched for signs of His coming, but they were apt to think much more of the great kingdom that was promised than of the freedom from sin, and though the prophecies declared that Digitized by VjOOQIC 22 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. the Anointed, the Messiah or Christ, as they were wont to call their Deliverer, must suffer as well as reign, no one attended to this sadder part of the prediction. When John was between twenty and twenty-five years old, it was reported in Galilee that a priest, who had been brought up in the deserts, was preaching in a wonderful manner on the banks of the Jordan, and that all men were going to hear him. Many Galileans went, and among them the young John, and there, among the rocks and thickets of the deep ravine of the swift Jordan, stood the spare form of the priest, John the son of Zacharias, wrapped in a coarse dark garment of such cameFs hair as was used for the tents of the Arabs. To all who came to him, he showed their sins. He let no one rest in the fancy that his own way of keeping the law was the right one, but held up before them its beautiful but terrible purity, and their own shortcomings, and then, when their hearts were beating with pain and shame, and longing to do better, he washed them in the pure rapid stream, as a token of their repentance and desire to cleanse themselves. But would that water purify their souls as it purified their bodies ? Alas ! no. It gave no forgiveness, no strength to do better. That must be left for the great Deliverer, the Messiah. Many had hoped that the Baptist was the Messiah, but he clearly declared that he was not, and that he was only the voice that the prophet Isaiah had declared should foretell His coming and closely precede it. He even declared that his own light should grow dim and pass away before Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 23 the surpassing brightness that was coming; and at last one day when his hearers, and John among them, were crowding round him, he said, ** Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." He added that One was standing among the throng Whom they knew not, Whose very shoes he himself was not worthy to unloose, but that he had not been aware of Who that Holy One was until, submitting to baptism. He had been marked out by the tokens of the descending Dove and the voice from heaven. The crowd dispersed, and Who this Person was had not been understood ; but the next day, as John (as it seems) and a much older man, Andrew, his father's partner in fishing, were standing with the Baptist, he pointed to a single figure passing by, and again said : — " Behold the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world." It was Jesus of Nazareth, the carpenter, a kinsman both of the Baptist and of John, Whom, if they had already known Him, they had never thought of as the Deliverer. Nevertheless, they joined Him, and at His invitation, went with Him to the place where He was passing the night, and there they became so im- pressed by the holiness and heavenliness that breathed around Him, that from that time they never doubted that such ineffable goodness could alone belong to the Messiah, however different He was in other respects from the Messiah of their imagination. Andrew went in search of his own brother Simon, and of two more Galilean neighbours, who had like- wise come out to hear the Baptist, and fully believed Digitized by VjOOQIC 24 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE the glad tidings that '' we have found the Messiah." All then returned together to Galilee to attend a wedding-feast at the village of Cana^ and here for the first time the disciples became aware of their Master's miraculous power, which, as St John himself tells us, clenched their belief. The time for the Passover was at hand, and these five joined themselves to jESUS for the pilgrimage on foot* to Jerusalem. Probably there were others with them, including James the brother of John ; and both on the way and at Jerusalem there was more and more to impress their souls with intense reverence, and certainty that they were with One who spake as man never yet spake. On their return, it was the summer season of labour, and each man betook himself to his usual work. James and John returned to their father, and, in com- pany with Andrew and Simon, nightly swept the lake for fish. One morning, however, when they had toiled all night and taken nothing, and were wearily seated on the shore washing out the weed and slime from their empty nets, they saw their Master approaching, closely pressed by a dense crowd who had learnt to listen to His teachings, and to bring the sick to be healed by His touch. To avoid the throng. He entered Simon's boat, and, bidding him push out into the lake, continued the discourse from the boat. After this. He bade that the nets should be again lowered, and the fishermen, though unused to catch by day, and having toiled all night in vain, obeyed, and were recompensed by the enormous number of Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELO VED DIS CIPLE. 2 5 fish that thronged their net, even till it began to break. But even as they brought their prize to shore, they were called away from it, — " Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men." The word was spoken by One who had already shown that He was to be obeyed without a question. Zebedee and his servants remained in charge of the heaps of fish that lay glistening on the grass, and his two sons, with the elder pair of brothers, were thence- forth constant followers of their Master, who had now ceased to dwell at home and work like other men, but had begun to pass from one city to another, doing good, working miracles of healing, and speaking to the crowds who came round Him of their simplest, most obvious duties, in words so clear and plain that only thinkers could feel that they were of the utmost depth and breadth. Others, likewise, became His constant followers ; but these four always remained knit to Him in a closer manner than the rest Simon Peter, the Rock, as the eldest of the band, and the most fervent of nature, was always the foremost ; but John, full of ardent affection, and with the fresh innocence of youth, received in fullest measure that tender love and human friendship by which the Son of God has made us to feel Him to be the Son of Man. John, with his brother James, were called, by their Lord, Boanerges (Sons of Thunder), as though they were to be voices proclaiming Him, like the thunder- ings and voices around the Throne in heaven — ^voices of grave majesty and deep awe, strong and weighty. Digitized by VjOOQIC 36 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE, and leaving a sense of solemnity on the soul, even as does a thunder-peal. Of James we know little per- sonally, but John's great mark was the sweetness and constancy of his love, joined, however, to a zeal and fire that were ready to become terrible to whatever insulted or injured that which he so deeply and reve- rently adored. Thus the brothers forbade a man to cast out devils in the Lord's name, because he had not come to Him for authority ; and when the Samaritans denied him a passage through a village, they would fain have seen Him manifest His glory by a miracle such as that by which Elijah consumed the troops of Ahaziah. In truth, they constantly looked to see Him reveal Himself in splendour to the world ; and when they with their tea companions were chosen as His mes- sengers. His Apostles, or men sent forth, they felt it the proclamation of a King. Yet still the task was only wandering from place to place, healing the sick, discoursing on hill-sides, or on plains, and even in the streets, to the crowds who gathered round Him, and, at the recurring festivals, going up to Jerusalem, and there teaching in the courts of the Temple, and holding more abstruse arguments with the scribes and learned men who attempted to silence Him. After almost every discourse, what had fallen on the careless ears of the multitude was commented on and more closely explained to the inner circle of followers, who cared to hearken instead of merely hearing ; and from these the Twelve were specially chosen, as special attendants and ministers to the crowds who collected Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 27 at each spot, and on whom they were enabled to work some miracles of healing in proportion to their own strength of faith. Many wonders were either not seen or not understood by the heedless crowd. On the two occasions when the loaves and fish were mul- tiplied, the Twelve were the distributors to the hungry throng; and in the two storms upon the lake, it was the Twelve who were struggling with wind and wave till their Lord made the restless blast and tossing water sink into a great calna. In one, they awoke Him in their terror ; in the other, they beheld Him walking calmly on the surface of the water, and their cry of alarm was calmed by His voice, " It is I ; be not afraid," There were wonders reserved for the special con- templation of the three Whose love and faith were strongest : Peter, James, and John were alone admitted to see the actual raising of the little daughter of Jairus, and were ever the closest to their LcM-d. They, with all the others, seem to have imagined that all their present work was preparation for the great pro- clamation of glory, and that, when everything was sufficiently prepared, and numbers knew Him to be the Christ, He would raise Himself to the throne of David, overpowering His enemies at Jerusalem, and subduing the cruel house of Herod, and the stern Roman power. For this it seemed to them, the Twelve first, and afterwards the Seventy, were sent two and two throughout the cities and villages to make Him known to the inhabitants; and, strong as was the hatred shown by the rulers at Jerusalem to all that Digitized by VjOOQIC 28 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. concerned Him, that there would be triumph in the end was certain to all His followers, though they had no understanding of what kind of triumph it would be, and only expected to share the earthly splendour of a more magnificent David or Solomon. David had wandered homeless and persecuted, and they were content to follow their Master, when the Sanhedrim, or council of priests and elders at Jeru- salem had been enraged at His rebukes of their crimes and hypocrisies, and had determined on cutting Him off; and when they had persuaded Herod Antipas that He was a factious person, so that Galilee was no longer safe for the wanderers. The many times when the malice of the rulers and the anger of the mob had been disappointed, had given the disciples trust that His person was inviolable ; and, great as the sufferings of the three years and a half of His ministry had been, the little band were full of hope when the third Passover approached, thinking, pro- bably, that the supporters who would come up from all parts of the country would overpower, the Jewish authorities, Herod, and the Romans, even if there were not some great and public manifestations of His power and His wrath. These favoured Three were the more certified of His glory when one night they had gone with Him to the heights of a lone mountain, and there, awakening from their sleep, they beheld His glory unveiled, His countenance glistening, His raiment white as the light, and the two holy ones of old, Moses and Elijah, talking with Him. Heavy with sleep, and entranced Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE, 29 with awe as they were, they knew that they had seen the glory of God, and though, even in that flood of light, they heard words concerning the decease that was to be accomplished at Jerusalem, and though He told them plainly even the manner of His approach- ing death, their hearts would not take in the belief. Even when, at the peril of their lives, they had hurried to Bethany on the tidings of the death of Lazarus, was not that journey crowned by the greatest miracle ever yet witnessed, and performed in the sight of- men who would not choose but own that it was a surpassing wonder ? Already the Twelve were looking on themselves as princes of returned Israel, to act perhaps like David's thirty mighty men, and three mightiest of all, and disputes arose which should be the greatest. Salome, the mother of James and John, was especially forward in her hopes that, both by intimacy and relationship, her sons would have the foremost claim, and perhaps there was some jealousy of Peter in her request when she came to our Lord, entreating that in His kingdom her two sons might sit the one on His right hand, the other on the left. His reply was grave, and full of repression : — " Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with } " " We can," said both the fervent young men, seeing no doubt further than their mother, awestruck, but ready to endure all for their Lord. Then came the answer, " Ye shall indeed drink of the cup that I drink of, and with the baptism that I Digitized by VjOOQIC 30 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. am baptized withal shall ye be baptized ; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared." The brothers must have turned away, struck with awe at the rebuke for their presumption ; but the other Apostles were much displeased, and their anger was only stilled by their Lord, who called them to Him, and taught them that in His kingdom humility is greatness, and that he who was truly chief would make himself last of all and servant of all. When from this time forth we mark how John seemed to attach himself to Peter, always with him, and attending to his slightest beck, we seem to see how the reproof was laid to heart. On then the company went to Jerusalem, and the first entrance confirmed the expectations of the most hopeful. Their Master Himself for once ceased from His ordi- nary practice of attracting no attention by outward demonstration, and, obtaining a young ass, rode into the city in the manner practised by the mountaineer princes. His forefathers, and which had been predicted by more than one prophet as the commencement of glad days for Jerusalem; the people, flocking in for the feast, and already prepared by His miracles, accepted the sign, hailed Him as the Son of David, and flung their own robes, and branches of trees on the path. The people of Jerusalem, recently impressed by the raising of Lazarus, came out with the same shouts of rapture, and He refused to silence them at the bidding of the angry rulers. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELO VED DISCIPLE, 3 » Scarcely recking that His eyes were streaming with tears, and that His words were bewailing the cruel fate that would fall on Jerusalem, the Twelve rejoiced in the triumph, and when at night all sat at supper in the house of Lazarus, at the neighbouring village of Bethany, there was little heed paid to the assurance that the precious ointment poured by the loving woman on His feet was for His burial. Two days of exultation succeeded. For the second time He cleared the Temple courts of the sellers of the animals needed for offering, and of the changers of foreign for Judaic coin, and no one durst dispute the authority which He openly exercised as the Son of that House. Every one of the many sects of the Jews came to Him with some question by which they hoped to make Him overturn His own popularity, or speak against the law, but each in turn was con- founded; and all the ruling classes, who preyed on the people with their avarice, and tyrannized and con- fused them with petty regulations of no importance, were denounced by Him with dread predictions of woe. All His foes were silenced and confuted when He left the Temple. They felt that nothing more was left but for Him to take upon Him His power, and reign, and in their obduracy only sought to bribe one of His followers to betray Him. He, meanwhile, as if to check the rising hopes of His followers, told them that soon no two of the enormous stones of the Temple would be left standing, and then, on the further inquir}^ of the Galilean brethren, as they stood on a Digitized by VjOOQIC 32 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE, hill outside the walls, He described in terrific detail the miseries that would come on the guilty city, and the signs that would precede the destruction, joining therewith predictions not yet accomplished, of a still more dreadful vengeance. On the Thursday evening, He and His little band quietly entered the city again, and betook themselves to one of the guest-chambers that the houses at Jerusalem usually provided for the concourse who came up to the feasts. They were as one household, and on that evening they kept that first supper of un- leavened bread, which initiated the seven days of the feast, for the lambs were not killed till the next day. That evening was the beginning of a space of awe and mystery. Then it was that the Lord appointed the Sacred Feast that was henceforth to become the Paschal meal whereof Himself was the Lamb. Then as they reclined, in Eastern fashion, on couches round the table, with the beloved John leaning on his Master's breast, the assurance was given that the time of suffering and desertion was nigh at hand — nay, that one present there was a traitor. Each feared for himself; and it was John who, obedient to Peter's sign, asked who it was, and was told it was he who should at the same time with our Lord dip his bread into the dish of liquid common to all. It was plain to the traitor Judas that his purpose was known, and he left the room to accomplish it before (as he thought) it should be baffled. Then followed the deepest, most myste- rious, and most heavenly discourse that the other Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 33 Apostles had ever yet heard, but which seems to have fallen on dulled and perplexed understandings, though they were one day to unravel its precious import They sung a hymn — ^probably the Hallelujah Psalms always used at Paschal suppers — from the I nth to the 1 1 8th Psalm, and then in the darkness, lighted by the Paschal moon, the Lord, taking His three favoured Apostles, went out to pray among the olives of the garden on the bank of the brook Kedron, which flowed between the city and the ascent of Mount Olivet. Sleep fell on John, James, and Peter, as it had done on the night of the Transfiguration, but when He awoke them it was not to see His face shining with glory, but worn with agony and stained with blood from His brow. He warned them to watch and pray, and they could even hear His strong cry of agony, " Let this cup pass from Me I " Then, it may be, the brothers began to know of what kind of cup they had pledged themselves to drink, but still grief and perplexity weighed so heavily on them that they could not keep awake, even though He called them again, gently bade them watch lest they should enter into temptation, and returned to His own unspeakable grief and intensity of prayer, " Not My will, but Thine be done." On the third wakening there were sounds approach- ing, and the quiet garden was filled with soldiers with lantern torches, and weapons, led by priests, and guided by the traitor Judas. His promised token, the perfidious kiss, was given, and yet the captors D Digitized by VjOOQIC 34 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE, paused, struck with terror, till their Victim Himself asked, " Whom seek ye ? " and at their reply said, " 1 am He." Their minds were so full of terror that at His mere word and presence they recoiled in sudden fright, and fell to the ground ; and, when He commanded them to let His companions go their way, they offered no opposition, even though Peter actually inflicted a wound in the defence of his Master. The terror and consternation of all the disciples was extreme, and John alone ventured to keep near the Victim, who was being dragged away to undergo an examination in the high priest's house. John had some acquaintance with Annas, the high priest ; it is said he had sold his patrimony to him, and could therefore not only venture himself into the hall of his house, but seeing Peter shivering at the door with grief, fear, and the chill of early dawn, could fetch him in to the fire which the servants had kindled at the lower end of the great hall, where, at the upper end, the two high priests were striving to find some legal colour for the death that they had already resolved to inflict. There John beheld the mockery of justice that was brought to bear on Him whose innocence was His sole offence. And so far from there being any such demonstration of power, as perhaps the disciples still hoped, the doom became each moment more certain. All the other Apostles had fled ; and John heard Peter — ^the eldest, the bravest, the most zealous and most looked up to of all the Twelve — actually Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 35 in his despair deny all connexion with Him whom he beheld treated as a criminal No heart could bear that trial save that which was strongest in its love. And though John does not mention himself in the next scene of "that guilty morning," there can be little question but that when the Victim was dragged to the Praetorium, and given up by the weak Pilate to content the raging populace, there was, when the purple-robed, thorn-crowned, bleeding Form was presented to excite compassion that the crowd were too enraged to feel, one face amid the maddened throng that looked up in an anguish of loving indignation, troubled faith, and despairing affection ; yet still with ** Behold, I have told you before," ringing in his ears. Those faithful steps followed along the path of pain that led from the Praetorium to Calvary; and when, in the darkness that overspread the earth, the eyes that he had learnt to look to with unspeakable awe and love gazed down on him again from the tree of agony, they beheld him standing by the holy Mother at the foot of the cross. " Woman, behold thy son ! " and to the beloved disciple, " Behold thy Mother ! " were the words that entrusted to John the most precious chaise ever left on this earth, and from that hour the home of John was the home of the Blessed Virgin. Still, with unflinching constancy, the beloved disciple watched the last hours of awe and agony, gathering each mournful and solemn event deep into his heart, and not parting from that sacred Form even when the D 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 36 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. Soul had quitted It, and the worst was over, as It hung lifeless on the cross. He saw the soldiers come round, by Pilate's order, to complete the work of death, and break the legs of the two thieves on the other crosses; but, finding the Lord to be already dead, merely pierced His side, so that the mysterious gush of blood and water took place. Then came the two rich men who had begged the body from Pilate, and these faithful few took It down and carried It to the neighbouring garden, where lay the rock- hewn sepulchre. As the sun was setting and the Sabbath drawing on, there was no time to do more than wind the corpse in linen, together with sweet spices, myrrh, and aloes, before they were forced to return to their several homes for the Paschal night, scarce yet knowing that they themselves were truly touched with the literal blood of the true Paschal Sacrifice, the blood that was but typified by the red strokes that gleamed on every door-post. The mournful, silent Sabbath sped its hours, and the disciples only knew that their approach to the beloved Sepulchre was rendered more difficult by the Roman guard who watched the great stone that had been sealed up by the priests. It seems, however, that John had sought out the broken-hearted Peter in his bitter self-reproach; and, while Judas in his remorse was destroying his own wretched life, the penitent tears of the once self-confident Simon were cheered by the tenderness of the one man whose brave love had never failed. For John and Peter wore together in the early dawn of that First Day of Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. V! the week, when, breathless and distressed, the devoted Mary Magdalene came running in upon them with the piteous cry, "They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him." Uprose the two disciples at once, and hastened to the spot, John's more youthful limbs out- running his elder companion, for whom, however, he waited till he had reached the cave, when both entered together, and beheld the linen shroud care- fully laid by, and the napkin, that had bound the bleeding Head, folded as no rude spoiler of the tomb would have paused to do. i Then flashed on them the understanding of the words they had heard from Himself, and found implied in Scripture, but which had hitherto been too utterly strange to them to reach their minds, " He should rise from the dead." He was then risen ! He had left His tomb empty. Then, as John himself tells us, they believed, and so believing, they returned home, soon to be followed thither first by Mary Magdalene, and then by John's own mother, Salome, and the sister of the Blessed Virgin, with tidings that they had themselves actually seen the Lord, alive and risen, and with messages from His own mouth. Some of the disciples were slow to accept what they heard, but in the course of that wonderful day, Peter, too, had been blessed by the sight ; and in the afternoon, two other disciples, going to the little village of Emmaus, were joined by Him, and talked with Him, though they knew Him not till He vanished from their sight At nightfall, ten met Digitized by VjOOQIC 38 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. together in their Paschal guest-chamber^ each with so^e fresh confirmation of the wondrous news, ** The Lord is risen indeed ;" when, behold. He Himself stood in the midst, though the door had not been unbarred — stood there even as He had stood four days ago, save for the wounds in His hands, feet, and side. " Peace be unto you," He said, and as they shrunk together, feeling as though the presence must be that of a mere spirit or phantom. He called them close, and bade them touch and handle Him, to feel His substance, then ate before them of their broiled fish and honeycomb. Intense and awful was their joy as they received His full commission to win all nations to His faith, and as their understandings were opened to see that all these sufferings that had so sta^ered and confused their faith had been laid down long ago, by David first, and then by many a prophet, as not only the marks of the true Messiah, but the very purpose for which He came into the world at alL Then, too. He bade them make known to all nations that pardon for the repentant had been won for all mankind by His suffering. Thenceforth they were the messengers of a pardoning King, declaring His forgiveness on the condition of being sensible of the need of it, believing in its efficacy, and testifying that faith by fulfilling certain terms, the primary one the being baptized, or washed in water in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, — ^that really cleansing baptism, which the first John had fore- told that He who should come after should confer. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. 39 That day week, to satisfy the one absent and doubting Apostle, He appeared to them again in the same manner ; and then, the Paschal feast being fully over, the disciples returned as He had bidden them to their homes in Galilee, uncertain what was to come next, or if they should return to their old habits. When Simon Peter proposed " to go a fishing," all his fisherman friends joined him, but again came the long weary night of toil in vain, until morning dawned upon the hills, and they made for the land- ing-place, where, in the morning twilight, they saw One standing, and heard Him say, "Children, have ye here any meat ? " and as they answered, " No," He bade them cast the net on the right side of the ship. Then John knew the beloved voice, and said to Peter, " It is the Lord :" and Peter, only pausing to gird his garment round him, flung himself into the water, and was at his Lord's feet, while the rest were dragging the net heavy with the hundred and fifty- three great fishes. A fire burnt on the shore, and broiled fish and bread were ready for the fishers again to " eat and drink with Him after He had risen from the dead." When the meal was over He gave His earnest charge to Peter, " Feed My sheep," thrice re- peated, and then foretold to him the mode of His death, at which Peter, anxious to learn what was in store for the friend, who he must have felt was more worthy than himself, asked, '* Lord, and what shall this man do ?" The reply repressed curiosity, " If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? Follow thou Me." Digitized by VjOOQIC 40 THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. Of any other appearances of the Lord to the dis- ciples we know no particulars^ only that once James beheld Him> and at another time five hundred, who must have comprised nearly all the Galilean believers, assembled on a mountain, and were there blessed by His presence. By His direction, as it would seem, the Apostles went back to Jerusalem, and there, on the fortieth day from His resurrection, they met Him again on the Mount of Olives, where, near Bethany, they beheld Him ascend by His own power into the sky, assuredly the most marvellous triumph ever wit- nessed by mortal eyes. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER IV. THE I'ARTING OF BRETHREN. '*As kk death He hung, His mantle soft on thee He flung Of filial love, and named thee son ; When now that earthl^f tie was done. To thy tried faith and spotless years Consigned His Virgin Mother's tears." Iraac Williams, translation ofAnciatt Latin Hyinn. Going back to Jerusalem, the Apostles waited according to their Lord's command to "be endued with power from on high," and when that power came, on the Day of Pentecost, the strength and ability inspired into them brought them to the fuller perception of their mission, and how to fulfil it Jerusalem remained for the present their home. The three thousand who had become believers on the Day of Pentecost were ministered to by the Apostles, and all lived like devout Jews, going to the Temple daily, at the stated hour of prayer, for their worship, but, instead of the daily sacrifice of the lamb, celebrating that holy rite which their Lord had instituted. At one of these occasions of worship at the Temple, Peter and John together worked the miracle of healing Digitized by VjOOQIC 42 THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. on the impotent man at the Beautiful Gate, and as the people came about them in wonder, the elder Apostle proclaimed the glory of their risen Lord, until they were dragged away to the council of the Sanhedrim for raising a commotion in the temple. There again they boldly maintained their Master's cause, but, angry as the rulers were, there was so entire an absence of grounds for punishing them, that they were released with a warning. The only effect of the warning was to cause the assembled disciples to raise a hymn of praise to their Saviour and God, that they had been counted worthy to suffer shame for His name. Nor did this attempt at persecution put a stop to the numerous conversions of both Hebrew and Greek Jews, and a community was formed where all posses- sions were shared together, the rich, like Barnabas, bringing all their means, and living with the poor After the sacred Feast instituted by their Lord had been partaken of, a table of love was spread, at which all partook of the food supplied from the common stock, and the whole Church seems to have lived together in a sort of rapt state, expecting their Lord's speedy return, and not at all understanding His parting commission to them to teach all nations. The falsehood of Ananias and Sapphira — which was really contempt of the Holy Spirit, the unpardonable sin — occasioned their sudden death, and this, together with the numerous miracles of healing, roused the fury of the priests, who were of the unbelieving or Sadducean party. The Apostles were thrown into prison, but at night were released by an angel, and Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. 43 were again found preaching in the Temple cloisters. Again they were apprehended, again Peter maintained their cause ; and the candid-minded Rabbi, Gamaliel, was so impressed as to recommend their release, "lest haply we be found to fight against God." The others of the Sanhedrim, therefore, only scourged these innocent men, and let them go free. But on the one hand, the young Stephen, a Greek Jew, newly chosen as one of the first seven deacons, began to perceive that the Gospel was to extend far beyond Jerusalem ; and on the other hand, Saul, also a Greek Jew, and a pupil of Gamaliel, a young man lately come to Jerusalem, viewed these innovations with terror, and stirred up a fresh persecution. Stephen was the victim in the strife, and most of the believers fled from Jeru- salem, the Apostles alone standing their ground. The dispersion, however, led to the spread of the Gospel, and the next time we hear individually of John, he accompanied Peter to Samaria, there to fill up what had necessarily been left imperfect by Philip the deacon, who had been the first to carry on the work that had been begun by the Lord Himself in His own conversation with the woman at Jacob's well. There John for the first time came in contact with that form of misbelief which the latter part of his life was to be spent in combating. Simon, born at Gitton, a village in Samaria, was bred up in the wild loose teachings that had pre- vailed among the strange people who had mingled the true worship with their own superstitions^ and Digitized by VjOOQIC 44 THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, he had then gone to study at Alexandria. This city, founded by the great Alexander, and the home of the most scholarly among those generals of his who became kings upon his death, had been from its very birth a home of learning, science, and speculation. It had a library unrivalled in the ancient world, and in which the sacred Scriptures of Israel, freshly trans- lated for the purpose, were stored up together with the old mystic lore of the Coptic Egyptian, and the poetry, history, and philosophy of the Greek, and there was a constant round of reasoning and dis- puting, in which men fancied they sought after the truths but bewildered themselves more and more. Many Jews dwelt at Alexandria ; they had haunted Egypt ever since the «captivity. Alexander had invited them there ; and, when Palestine had been won by the Syrians, many more took refuge there from the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes. A whole quarter of the city belonged to them, and they affected much of the habits of thought of the philo- sophical Greeks with whom they consorted. Their faith in the spiritual, all-pervading essence of the Godhead greatly assisted the Greeks to shake them- selves free of their faith in the numerous idols of the classic world; but, on the other hand, these Greek Jews lost much of the strict, earnest, exclusive faith of their brethren at Jerusalem, and of their close attention to the typical ceremonies of the law of Moses, and acquired a good deal of the magic prac- tised in Egypt, and of those superstitions that almost always enslave the minds of those who fall from the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. 45 truth, as if it were a judgment that those who will not believe what they ought, come to believing what they ought not Here Simon seems to have picked up and formed for himself the notions that became widely spread through the East, and were the subtlest foes with which the Apostles had to deal. Silence he said is the eternal root of all things, whence sprung iEons, Beings or Powers, Angels, and Nous (Mind), and Epinoia (Intelligence), from which pair sprang all earthly things. A woman named Helen, whom he had bought in the slave-market at T)nre, he gave out to be an incarnation of Epinoia, the wandering im- prisoned intelligence, and- he represented himself as a great iEon Manifestation, or power of God, come to set the spirit free from its struggles against law and order, and the bonds of the flesh. With a mixture of Greek philosophical language and of perverted verses of the Scripture, he obtained much attention, and his followers became known as Gnostics — a word identical in sense, and almost in sound, with Knowers. He added to his fame by wonders, worked either by trickery or by the agency of evil spirits, and thus acquired the name of Magus, or the Magician. The teaching of Philip had so far struck him that he offered himself with others for baptism. And when Peter and John came, and proceeded to lay their hands on the baptized, to impart to them the Holy Spirit, as now in confirmation, the signs which were then vouch- safed to assist the faith of the converts seemed to his low nature such a means of increasing his influence Digitized by VjOOQIC 46 THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. that he offered the two Apostles money if they would give him the power of conferring such gifts. Peter's indignant answer, "Thy money perish with thee, be- cause thou hast thought the gift of God could be purchased with money," has rendered Simon's name so proverbial that all attempts at buying or selling the gifts of God left in trust with His Church are termed simony. It was, however, rather the doctrine than the practice of the unhappy man that effected mis- chief in his own day. Though crushed for the moment under the stern rebuke of the two Apostles, and entreat- ing them to pray for his forgiveness, he soon returned to his former pretensions, interwove into his teaching all that suited his purpose of the Apostles' own doctrines ; and, what was worse, infected some of their disciples, so that Knowers or Gnostics often met them in their own Churches, and required many a stem admonition and warning. It is said that, g^rowing more confident in his delusions, Simon tried to fly from the top of a high tower, but fell and broke his leg, and that his death was caused by his insisting on being buried alive, in the expectation that he could raise himself from the dead on the third day. But the teaching he had spread did not die at once with him. However, for the present, the defeat he had sus- tained at Samaria was complete, and the Apostles returned to Jerusalem, John probably feeling how mistaken had been the zeal of old, which would have revenged upon the Samaritans their first re- jection of the Master, whose name they had so readily accepted. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. 47 In the meantime, the wonderful conversion of Saul freed the Church from her only active enemy on principle, and a time of peace ensued, during which the central knot of believers at Jerusalem had time to grow firm, and to learn the full bearings of their new faith, while Saul was, in the wilds of Arabia, entering into the depths of that which he was to set forth in future, and the deacons and others who had fled from his persecutions were spreading their doctrine in the Jewish synagogues of Antioch and Cyprus. The Apostles apparently moved about within the confines of Palestine, which was again united into one kingdom under the favourite of the Emperor Caligula, Herod Agrippa, an exceedingly clever and subtle man, who was very vain of his good understanding at once with the Romans and Jews. John must have been absent on one of these expe- ditions when Saul, after his three years' retirement, visited Jerusalem, for there was no meeting between them. Shortly after came the vision that announced to Peter that the time was come when the Gospel was to be preached to other than the Jews, and this was followed up by such great conversions of the Gentiles at Antioch, that believers were no longer regarded as a mere sect among the Jews, but were known by that glorious name of Chris- tians, which still continues our highest honour. Indeed, these new Christians at Antioch proved themselves so well worthy of the name, that to them is owing the first charitable collection on record, the sum which they sent by Saul and Barnabas to Digitized by VjOOQIC 4S THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. relieve their brethrea in the famine then prevailing at Jerusalem^ Eleven years had passed in comparative peace since the resurrection of the Lord, and the Church had had time to gather strength and become firm in her faith, when Herod Ag^rippa, wishing to secure further popu- larity among the Jews, began to seize the leaders of the Christians, whom they had all this time watched with the ferocity of muzzled dogs. The first victim was James, the brother of John. Bloody was the baptism, short and sharp the draught of the cup, that he partook with his Lord, when first of all, save the young deacon Stephen, he "drank His cup ot woe, triumphant over pain ;." but John, willing as he was to die with his brother, still remained untouched, though the other of the three most favoured Apostles, Peter, was thrown into prison, and kept for execution after the Passover. We know not whether John were among the many who were gathered together in the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, praying for the safety of Peter, when behold his knock and voice sounded at the gate, and when in their joy and wonder they admitted him, they heard how he had been set free by an angel from heaven. Almost immediately after, the sudden and terrible death of Herod Agrippa rescued the Church from his enmity, and Palestine fell more entirely into the hands of the Romans, who as yet saw no difference between Jews and Christians, and merely wished to keep the peace between both. There was again a Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. 49 quiet time at Jerusalem, during which Paul and Barnabas came back to ask the opinion of the Apostles as to how far the Gentile converts were bound to observe the ceremonial part of the Jewish law. The council was held under the presidency of the surviving James, to whom the chief seat in the Church at Jerusalem had been given. The decision was that the Gentiles were in no wise bound to those rites of the law of Moses, which had, in fact, been partly typical and partly intended to draw so sharp a line as to prevent the Jews from becoming insensibly corrupted by heathen intercourse. All, therefore, that was required was the observance of the eternal moral law, and the abstaining from practices in the slaying of animals for food which would have been abhorrent to a Jew. The first twelve years had passed, and the Apostles had come to the full comprehension of their com- mission to teach all nations that the ransom of the world was paid, and that all that remained was to accept that redemption. The Jewish Church had been like a kernel with a seed within ; the first sprout had shot forth to Antioch, and now the roots and branches were to spread far and wide into a great tree overshadowing the earth. After that first council on the treatment of the Gentile Christians, it was agreed that Paul and Barnabas should devote themselves to the Greeks, and John, James, and Peter to the Jews. This we know from St. Paul's own words to the Galatians, and there was a belief in the Church that all the other £ Digitized by VjOOQIC 50 THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, eight Apostles set out on their several journeys at the same time together, agreeing before they parted on the symbol or watchword to be taught to every convert, namely, what we call the Apostles' Creed ; and fancy has further added that each of the Twelve composed one of its twelve clauses or articles. There is, however, no real certainty that our Apostles' Creed was the same in form and arrangement, as we have it now, till a century later, though a symbol the same in substance there certainly was. Matthew is also thought to have written the record of the life of our Lord in Hebrew and in Greek, so that the Apostles might have copies of this to leave with their converts. The Apostles acted as mis- sionaries, going from place to place ; but, wherever they found believers, they placed in authority men whom they termed elders, after the old Israelite, or indeed universally Eastern, term of elder for a man in authority. The Greek word was Presbyteros, which has been cut down into our word "priest." The elders were made to receive the special gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the Apostles' hands, and thenceforth conducted the Christian worship, and celebrated the Supper of the Lord in remembrance of Him, and under them were the deacons or ministers in whose special charge the poor were placed. Most of the eleven who then parted, after fifteen years of the closest brotherhood, never met again, probably never heard of each other again. Some died by popular fury, some were executed, three shared their Saviour's cross ; but in a few short years Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. 51 all were together again, tasting the full measure of that glory and triumph which went so far beyond the impatient dreams of earthly greatness tfiat they had feasted on in early days. John was apparently de- tained at the holy city by his sacred charge of the mother of our Lord, whom he tended with reverent care until her death, fifteen years after the Ascension. By this time neither Jerusalem nor Galilee were places where the calm precepts of the Gospel could be listened to with consideration and reverence. The Roman yoke was being welded tighter and more heavily on the land, and the Jews, having let the true Messiah do His work among them without knowing Him, were fast becoming crazed with their vain ex- pectation of false Christs. All who would listen to the truth were already gathered into the fold ; the rest raged against it, and were barely restrained by the stern Roman power from savage cruelty to those Christians who consorted with Gentiles. Tumults broke out at Jerusalem, and, at the Passover of A.D. 54, twenty thousand perscms are said to have been trampled to death. Galilee, once the happy home of John, his brother, and his friends, had be- come the abode of desperate robbers, who nestled like vultures in its crags, and the peaceful Christians were no more in number than could well be presided over by James, so that John, now about forty years of age, might now set forth on his journey. Parthians, Medes, and Elamites had been among the first to hear their own languages spoken by the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost. These words Digitized by VjOOQIC 52 THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, mean Israelites residing in those lands, and speaking their language instead of that of Palestine ; for great numbers of the members of the ten tribes who had been placed by the Assyrian kings on the Median rivers continued to dwell there, though looking to Jerusalem as their home. The Parthians were a gallant people, in whom had revived again the best of the old spirit of the Persians, and to them the Jews were beginning to look as allies in their earnest desire of breaking away from the Roman power. It was to the Parthians then that John directed his steps, towards the banks of the Euphrates, where Abram had heard his first call. St Peter and St. Thomas likewise preached there, and they succeeded in laying the first foundations of a Church which flourished mightily till it was nearly extinguished by a fresh outbreak of fire-worshipping zeal among the Persians. John did not, however, there continue, but made his way gradually into Asia Minor, and came to Ephesus about the year 65. It was at this very time that the Emperor Claudius had acquitted Paul after his long imprisonment, and, instead of seeing his face no more, the Ephesians hailed their beloved teacher with Joy, when, after a journey into the further west, he arrived among them. On the other hand there were tidings from Jerusalem that James " the Just" had been led by the furious Jews to the top of a part of the Temple overhanging a precipice, and thence, when he refused to deny his Master, hurled down, and slain at the bottom with fullers' clubs Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, 53 ! What other Apostles still survived besides Peter is uncertain, but it was plain that it was time to make provision for the Church when the first generation of her founders should have passed away. There is every reason to believe that John and Paul, and per- haps Peter, here took counsel for the future with any other Apostle who remained, and with that goodly band of disciples who had grown up under their care. Luke too was there, the learned Greek friend of Paul, who seems to have used the time of Paul's long deten- tion at Caesarea to collect materials for a record of **all that Jesus began to do and to teach." There too were the half-Jew Timotheus, and the Greek Titus, and the Epliesians, Trophimus and Tychicus, who had likewise long been companions of Paul ; and we may suppose that from Colossae would come Onesimus, once the runaway slave of Philemon, but converted by Paul in his prison at Rome, and sent home to " be not a servant but a brother beloved," and Archippus, almost certainly the son of the good Philemon, and accepted for his sake as a Christian teacher, though already some slackness on his part had called for an exhortation from Paul. One was at Ephesus about this time, whose ex- ample might show Archippus that those bred in a holy home among saints are not free from temptation to weakness, yet that they may recover themselves — namely John, surnamed Mark, the nephew of Bar- nabas. Companion of his uncle and of Paul in one journey, he had left theni in the stress of toil and danger, and, when Paul refused to take him again. Digitized by VjOOQIC 54 THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, Barnabas had so supported him that the Apostles had been for a time offended with one another, and had parted. Since that time Mark's entire repentance had been shown by his conduct, — first with Barnabas at Cyprus, and then with Peter (probably) at Rome. Under the dictation of Peter, he had written another life of Christ, apparently using St Matthew's as a sort of guide in the arrangement ; but, as it was chiefly for the practical Romans, with more detail as to the facts, less discourse, and hardly any reference to the elder Scriptures. John had his own circle of disciples, among whom were Ignatius, whom old Syriac writers declared to have been the child whom our Lord set jn the midst of his disciples, to show them the humility of soul that is true greatness ; the able and highly instructed Athenian Quadratus; Polycarp, a very young lad, whom a good lady called Calisto had redeemed from slavery; Papias, and many others whose names are unknown. From such men as these it became needful to select those who might carry on the gifts of the Apostles to future ages, and who might preside over the various congregations as chief shepherds in each place. The twelve Apostles, with Paul and Barnabas, had been, except the two Jameses, wanderers, acting chiefly as missionaries, and only revisiting their Churches from time to time ; but a resident head was needed by the settled Christians of each city, and the universal belief of the ancient Church assigned to St. John the first settled arrangement of this description. The Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. 55 spiritual gifts of the Apostles were transferred to their successors by the laying on of their hands ; and the charge of the flock was at the same time committed to them, with the most earnest injunctions to preserve the true doctrine. They had in their hands, already as standards to which to refer, three Gospels, many letters of Paul, one of Peter, and one of the newly- martyred James ; and regular habits of worship were in course of being ordained to take the place ot that in the synagogues from which the Christians were excluded. The Holy Communion as before con- tinued the idea of the daily sacrifice, and the Syna- gogue services were imitated by prayers, reading of Scripture, singing of "psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs," the arrangement and sequence being not uniform, but yet similar in all essential points. Such rules as these, then, were imposed on the new generation who were to succeed the original band of chosen witnesses. Simeon, the brother of James, who had been martyred at Jerusalem, seems to have already been chosen into his place at Jerusalem ; Timotheus was to act as resident overlooker or Bishop at Ephesus ; Titus was sent to the great island of Crete ; Euodias and Ignatius are said to have been made, the one the Bishop of the Jewish, the other of the Gentile, Christians at Antioch ; Archippus is believed to have gone to Laodicea ; Quadratus to Philadelphia; but whether all these appointments were made at this period must be uncertain. Our knowledge is confined to the facts, that immediately after this these men occupied these Digitized by VjOOQIC 56 THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, several posts, that the regulation of the episcopacy is ascribed to St. John, and that St. Paul visited Ephesus at this time and could hardly have failed to hold council with St. John. Moreover, soon after he had quitted Ephesus, he addressed to Timotheus and to Titus each a letter of earnest advice and exhortation on the government of their Churches, and of all classes of persons within their fold, — letters which have ever since been the guides of the Christian ministry. It may be observed that he puts Timotheus on his guard against* the endless genealogies of the Gnostics, by which Simon Magus derived everything by regular descent from his Nous and Epinoia, and also against *' oppo- sitions of science falsely so called," meaning then the arguments of so-called knowledge or Gnosticism, though the words, being divinely inspired, apply quite as well to all learning or science that is set up against faith. Times of trial were, however, fast coming on the Church, Such a great fire broke out at Rome as to destroy a large number of the houses; and the Emperor Nero, a thoughtless and excitable young man, who was in the country at the time, was so much struck with the sight of the flames, the rolling smoke, and lurid sky, as, while watching it, to sing to his lyre the verses of the iEneid that describe the burning of Troy. This ill-timed levity made the Romans think he had occasioned the conflagration, in order to enjoy the spectacle ; and, as he always lived m an agony of alarm lest he should lose his popu- Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. $7 larity, he turned away their anger from himself by declaring that the fire was the work of the Christians, against whom he was angered because one of the partners of his crimes had been converted. Thus began the first real persecution. The Christians of Rome were seized, and while some were made to fight with wild beasts for the amusement of the Romans, others, by a refinement of cruelty, were made to light up the horrible spectacle, being smeared with pitch and oil, tied to stakes, and slowly burnt alive during the dark evening when the frightful entertainment was offered to the barbarous idlers of Rome. Nor was Nero content with those who were within the city ready to hand. He sent to gather up the absent persons whose names were known as chief teachers of the Christians, and among them were the two great Apostles Peter and Paul, once so unlike, now drawn closely together in their latter days. St. Paul seems to have been arrested at Nicopolis in Bithynia, just after having written to Titus. His faithful Luke and Tychicus held close and fast to him, but Trophimus had to be left at Miletus on account of sickness, and Demas could not endure persecution, and deserted him '* for the love of this world." When he came to Rome, and was placed before Nero*s tribunal, he was quite alone, save for the feeling of his Master's presence, and '* he was delivered out of the mouth of the lion," as he wrote to Timotheus immediately after, meaning probably that the plea of his Roman citizenship had spared him from being the prey of beasts in the arena, and Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, that he was reserved for a more formal trial. In the interval he sent Tychicus to Ephesus, apparently carrying his last letter to summon Timothy to his side once more, and, in case he should not arrive in time, to exhort him to constancy and resolution. The faithful saying which he quotes is evidently, in its original Greek, part of a hymn : — ** If we be dead with Chiist, we shall also live with Him ; If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him ; If we deny Him, He will also deny us ; If we believe not, yet He remaineth faithful" St. Peter, likewise, addressed a last letter to his converts, in the full prospect of the death his Lord had long before predicted. Linus had, as it would seem, been already appointed to the care of the flock at Rome, and both saints were ready to be offered, ready to receive the crowns laid up for them in heaven. The last days of their lives were, according to the belief that has ever since lasted at Rome, spent in the dim, underground, Mamertime dungeon, a doleful cell walled rouad with heavy stones, but which assuredly echoed with their songs and hymns, though no earth- quake rent the chains of Paul as at Philippi, no angel came to set Peter free as at Jerusalem. Their fight was fought, their race was done, and the time was come when Peter both could and would follow his Lord. They were put to death on the same day, the 29th of June, 66, the Roman citizen by the execu- tioner's sword, the Galilean fisherman by the cross, which he esteemed too great an honour for himself, Digitized by VjOOQIC THE PARTING OF BRETHREN, 59 intreating that in order to "change the cross, yet suffer with his Lord," he might be crucified with his head downwards. So passed from this life the greatest names among the brethren, the great Apostle of the Jews and the great Apostle of the Gentiles, men who had once differed, but who were held so close and fast together by the love of their Lord, that their paths became blended close together in the shining light of perfect day that shone round them as their steps neared the eternal glory that has ever since enwrapt them. Timothy was thrown into prison by St. Paul's enemies, but was released, and the other companions of the saints were guarded from the storm. Some strangers then dwelling at Rome must have grieved, yet rejoiced, at the crowning of these martyrs. Even when St. Paul first visited Rome, in the time of the Emperor Claudius, the gallant though betrayed British chief, Caradoc, or Caractacus, had been brought captive to the city, after his nine years' brave defence, and with his family had been made to walk behind the Emperor's funeral car. Ever since they are believed to have lived at Rome ; and moreover, Claudia, daughter of the British king of Chichester, was (almost certainly) a hostage at Rome. She was fair, bright, and clever, and the Spanish poet. Martial, wrote verses in her praise, when she had become the wife of the Roman senator Pudens, -little thinking that his mention of her would chiefly be valued because it coincides with that kind message of greet- ing to Timothy, which shows that she was one who Digitized by VjOOQIC bo THE PARTING OF BRETHREN. ministered to Paul in his prison. And according to tradition it was Timotheus, son of Pudens, who laboured to teach the Gospel in Britain^ so that the senator and his royal lady must, in their love and veneration for their friend and fellow-disciple, have departed from the old Roman habit of naming their sons after their forefathers, and called him after the son of the Jewess Eunice. The father of Caractacus is said to have returned to Britain, taking with him that other disciple of St. Paul, Aristobulus, to teach his subjects. St. Timothy himself returned toEphesus, but shortly after, during a great festival of the goddess, he ven- tured into the streets, and was pounced on by the mob, like Paul before him, as a contemner of her worship. He was torn to pieces by the mob, and thus, after this terrible period of trial, only John remained, one brave vessel still riding on the waves, not yet in haven, but not submerged, and destined yet to put forth. a brighter light, not for Ephesus or for Asia only, but for us and for the whole world. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER V. THE EVANGELIST. "Whether in his lonely course, Lonely, not forlorn he stay, Or with love's supporting force. Cheat the toil and cheer the way, Who hath the Father and the Son, May be left, but not alone." — KebU, That persecution caused by the caprice of Nero, does not seem to have been very violent except at Rome, and towards the persons known as leaders of the Roman Christians. There were edicts then made which remained in force, and under which, any person refusing to sacrifice to the gods, might be put ^to death ; but unless an3^hing happened to provoke the governors of the provinces, they were not eager to seek out the peaceful subjects who committed no other offence, and the gaps made in the Church below by martyrdom were filled up, and new Churches were founded in more distant places. It is believed that the new angel, or messenger of God, who was set in the place of Timotheus, was Onesimus, the slave of Philemon j and the people of that great old city of Aries, in the south of France, Digitized by VjOOQIC 62 THE E VANGELIST. • which still shows such wonderful Roman remains, reckon as their first bishop, Trophimus, the good Ephesian, whose sickness at Miletus was perhaps sent him by Providence to preserve him, that he might bear witness in France to the teachings of St Paul and St John, and of the outer glories of the Temple at Jerusalem. The very suspicion that he, a Greek, had been brought within it, had caused St Paul to be nearly torn to pieces, but he was a worshipper in the innermost shrine of the Christian Covenant, where there was no difference between Jew and Greek, barbarian, and Scythian, bond or free. The last storm that was to overwhelm Jerusalem was fast gathering. The Jews were ripe for revolt, and reckless violence on the part of the Roman officers drove them on, till they broke into open rebel- lion. Then the full severity of the Roman conquerors was prepared for them, and Vespasian, the wisest general of the army, marched against them, and began his work by taking and destroying, one by one, the steep hill-forts of Galilee, with terrible struggles, where the Jews showed all the ferocity of despair. At Jerusalem, fearful portents alarmed some minds and embittered others ; a fiery sword was seen waving in the air; the heavy Temple-gate swung open of its own accord, and a voice cried, " Let us go hence ! " and a maniac wandered up and down the streets wildly crying, "Woe! woe to Jerusalem." Men's hearts were indeed failing them for fear, and for look- ing for the things that were coming on the earth, and the Christians called to mind that discourse of their Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EVANGELIST. 63 Lord which bade them take warning by such tokens as these. At last Vespasian absolutely advanced, and attempted to besiege Jerusalem; but in the midst, thick, hurrying messages came from Rome, with tidings first that Nero had been murdered, and then of the rapid rise and fall of the men who aspired to be emperors. The army, and the governor oi Syria both felt that Vespasian was the only person fit to take the headship of the empire at such a time as this, and he was saluted as emperor, and marched away to make himself master of Rome. But the sign had been given ; Jerusalem had been encompassed with armies, and while the more violent of the Jews rejoiced, and fancied they had beaten off the enemy, the Christians were confident that the time was indeed at hand ; and, obeying the warning given nearly forty years before, they quitted the city in a body, leaving not one man, woman, or child behind, and profiting by the fine spring weather — for their flight was " not in the winter," — they safely gained the city of Pella, in the district of Decapolis, beyond Jordan, which had once been their Lord's refuge from the spite of the Pharisees and Herod. There, with Simeon at their head, they kept their Paschal feast, while the miserable Jews were flocking to their empty passover, to swell the numbers of those whom Titus Flavius Vespasianus, the son of the new emperor, was sent back to coop up within the city, there to meet their dreadful deaths. When those Christians turned back to the Books of Moses, and read that the hornet was to be sent among the Digitized by VjOOQIC 64 THE EVANGELIST. rebellious Israelites for their punishment, the name oi the general must have fallen strangely on their ears, for it meant no other than a hornet ; and singularly- enough, too, nests of wild bees were let loose in the mines by the Roman besiegers, to annoy the Jews who met the enemy underground, and waged a deadly warfare there. The horrors and miseries of that siege form no needful part of our history. The chief occasion for dwelling on it is, that the event explained many of the Saviour's prophecies, to St. John and his fellow- disciples. Much that seems hitherto to have been taken as solely relating to the final vengeance upon the whole world was literally accomplished by the woes of Jerusalem, and many predictions and injunctions, both in the older Scriptures and in our Lord's dis- courses, which had hitherto been almost passed over, were felt to apply to a lengthened period of the Christian dispensation, and the disciples were forced into feeling, what St. Paul had again and again assured them, that their Jerusalem was not the earthly city, but the Church universal in heaven and in earth. To the Christians of Asia this seems to have been a quiet time, Vespasian was a just man, with a strong hand, who secured quiet to the peaceful and orderly ; there was no attempt at persecution, and as the Jews were no longer able to exert their malignity, times of peace began. Unfortunately, times of quiet are apt to be also times of error. When those who openly professed their belief were in danger of suffering for that pro- Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EVANGELIST. 65 fession, they were quite sure in their own minds before they made the avowal that involved them in peril ; or if they had spoken hastily, then like Demas in time of persecution, they fell away, for no one who did not believe with his whole heart that Christ had died for him, and that heaven lay before him, could die for that faith. And therefore those who so died bear the name of witnesses — martyreSy in Greek — as having given the fullest witness man can give to the sincerity of their belief. In quiet times, however, many persons less firm and decided would naturally join themselves to the Church, and besides there were some now grown up who had, like ourselves, taken their Christianity from their parents; and though some were all the better and purer Christians for having never known the vices of the heathens, yet some — not having thought and struggled out the matter for themselves — held their belief in a weak, tame, lukewarm way, and of these it may be feared that Archippus, supposed to be son of the good Philemon, and angel of the Church of Laodicea, was one. There were others who tried to accommodate Christianity and old philosophy; not by bringing the philosophy that had been feeling after God like a man groping in the dark, into the full light of day, but by darkening Christianity into the obscurity of philosophy, and shading down the truths that were above human reason. It was providential for us that such offences should have come in these early days, since they elicited the inspired replies that have taught us ever since how to meet error. F Digitized by VjOOQIC 66 THE EVANGELIST, The Gnostics were, as we have already seen, the first of these false philosophers, and throwing aside some of the magical pretensions of Simon Magus, they reasoned about their iEons or beings, and Logoi, words or manifestations, and would fain have made out that the Lord jESUS was one of these. Among these were certain of the residents at Ephesus, who called them- selves Nicolaitanes — some say after Nicolas, one of the seven original deacons, but Nicolas was such a common Greek name that there is no reason to lay such heavy blame of apostasy on the prosel5rte of Antioch, as would be involved in believing him the founder of these Nicolaitanes, whom the angel of Pergamos was not firm enough in reproving. Those half-converted Jews who had so perplexed the Church by their Judaizing practices in St. Paul's time as to call forth his Epistles to the Galatians and Hebrews, as well as great part of that to the Romans, had now shaken off all allegiance to St. Paul, whom they chose to declare not even a Jew. They would own no Apostles but St. Peter and St. James, and the others of the circumcision, and their doctrine they greatly perverted, declaring that there was no inherent Divinity in Him whom St. Peter had confessed as the Christ, the Son of the living God. They were called Ebionites — probably from Ebion, a word meaning poor. Worst of all was Cerinthus, a man who taught that the blessed jESUS was bom a mere man, with an earthly father, but that on His Baptism a heavenly aeon descended from above and dwelt within Him during His ministry. This blasphemy, ungratefully Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EVANGELIST. 67 denying the Lord jESUS who bought us, was exceed- ingly grievous and terrible to the loving heart of the aged apostle John. He was one day in one of the bath-houses of the city of Ephesus, the great marble halls built at the public expense to afford to every one the plentiful refreshment of hot and cold bathing, so needful to health and comfort in those warm countries. Hearing that Cerinthus was in the same building, he started up and hurried out without waiting to assume his full dress, saying to his followers, of whom Polycarp seems to have been one, that it would be no marvel if the bath should fall on the head of such an one as this enemy of truth. Diotrephes, one of the elders, or else perhaps bishop, of one of the churches around Ephesus, was so far infected with the general insubordination as actually to refuse and drive away the messengers sent from the Apostle himself; so that on sending them again John wrote to Gains, or Caius, a faithful householder in the same city, to secure them a refuge in his house, and support in their protestations against error. He also wrote to an elect lady a gentle, affectionate letter, warning her and her children against being led away by the deceivers, and assuring her that the only safe test of a teacher was his acknowledging the Godhead and Manhood of the Lord jESUS Christ. In the disputes that arose, it became felt that the three Gospels already existing, dwelt more on the outward doings of our blessed Lord than on His hidden Divinity, and the bishops of Asia Minor, who had often heard from St. John's own lips of those more F 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 68 THE EVANGELIST, deep and private words that he had heard, and tokens of present Godhead that he had seen, besought him to record them in a fourth Gospel, that might fill up what was wanting to the rest, and set forth the Lord jESUS in His divine glory. He complied, setting forth first, as it appears, what we number as his first Epistle, and which used to be marked as the Epistle to the Parthians. We may fairly suppose that, written as it was for the Church at large, he may have sent a copy with a special address of remembrance to his original converts in Parthia, the first-fruits of his missionary labours. He begins the Epistle by saying he is about to set forth that which he and his companions had seen, heard, and handled of the Word of Life, when made manifest in the person of Christ, and this opening would hardly apply to the Epistle, though it fully does so to the Gospel. The Epistle seems, in fact, the preface to the Gospel, teaching the spirit in which it is to be read, and deducing from it the great twin lessons of Faith and Love, neither of which can stand without the other, and which " his little children " as he delights to call his disciples, must gather from the depths and heights to which he leads them. When Matthew, Mark, and Luke had written, they were still under the influence of that reserve which forbade holy things to be openly disclosed to those who would not enter into them. So they had given the visible life, the miracles witnessed by everybody, the discourses spoken to beginners ; but John, writing for his children whom he had trained in fear and love Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EVANGELIST. 69 — for Ignatius, for Polycarp, Quadratus, Onesimus, Trophimus, Papias, John the elder, his own namesake, and the Elect Lady with her children walking in the truth — set down the words that he had pondered in his inmost heart for half a life-time, and which the Holy Sphit brought back fresh to him, words heard as he lay on that Human Bosom, whose glorious Godhead he was unmistakeably to proclaim. Not like Matthew would he begin by showing that Jesus was the kingly Son of David, not like Luke by proving Him the Human Son of David, but his solemn voice crushes all the blasphemy about aeons and logos by the great words, " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.*' It has been said of the Scriptures that their waters are such that in them a lamb may wade, or an elephant may swim. No where do we feel this so strongly as in St. John's Gospel. The language is so simple that the little children, whom he loved so well, have almost always beg^n with it as their first book of Greek. And no Gospel furnishes more plain, sweet, loving sayings that are ever on our hearts for cheering and for hope ; and yet there is none of such exceeding depth and difficulty. What had been already fully established by the testimony of the previous writers, he, for the most part, did not repeat, but told what- ever had been left untold by them, dwelling on the events that had chiefly served to build up his own faith in the Godhead of his Lord and Master. Digitized by VjOOQIC 70 2^HE EVANGELIST, The other Evangelists had given the simple Galilean discourses ; but he says little about Galilee, and rather describes the teachings in the Temple courts, and the arguments with the Scribes. The others tell of the institution of the two Sacraments ; he gives the dis- courses upon their spiritual signification — the one as birth into spiritual life, the other as the food sustaining it. He scarcely touches on the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but he had shown the raising of Lazarus, which had filled the shouting multitude with wonder, and the chief priests with malice. Passing over the days of argument and victory in the Temple, he takes us into the solemn privacy of the upper chamber, and recounts the parting lessons of the Saviour, repeating to us that most tender and awful prayer by which our great Intercessor has commended every one of us to His Father. His Resurrection chapters are the fullest and most glorious of all, dwelling on repeated appearances in full and bright detail ; and throughout making it plain that the Living God shone forth on faithful ^yts through the veil of Manhood, though at the end — feeling how words failed him, and how events crowded on his memory — ^he tells us that were all our Lord's doings and sayings upon earth recorded, "the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER VL ' THB BXILS OF PATMOS. ** Through Rome's infuriate city, From Csesar's judgment chair. They drag Chrises loved disciple. The Saint with silver hair. ** To desert islands banished, With Gk>d the exile dwells. And sees the future glory His mystic writing tells." Ancteni Latin Hymn, St. John ended his Gospel with the true explanation of our Lord's words, " What is that to thee, follow thou me:" but his pupils still fancied that he was to live till the second advent, and this must have served to console the Ephesian Christians when their Apostle was summoned to answer for himself before the Emperor at Rome. That Emperor was no longer the just Vespasian, nor the gentle Titus, but the gloomy Domitian — a suspicious, wrathful, and bitter man, who wanted to bring back the old habits of the proud days of Rome, and imagined that the disasters that threatened his country arose from lack of worship to the gods. More- Digitized by VjOOQIC 73 THE EXILE OF P ATM OS. over, the homeless Jews were showing themselves restless and turbulent, and kept him in much alarm, and a sect of the Jews who were said to acknowledge a living prince of the house of David, the old royal house, seemed to him specially dangerous. Was not the frenzy creeping into his own house ? Flavius Clemens, his first cousin, husband to his niece, Domitilla, whose two sons were being brought up as heirs to the throne, and the Consul, Acilius Glabrio, a brave active man, once so ardent for fame as actually to have gone voluntarily to fight with the wild beasts in the great new amphitheatre, the Colosseum, were accused to him of being " tainted with atheism, and of Judaizing." Atheism meant, in the heathen world, the refusing to take part in idol worship, or pour libations to the gods. It was thought that such an one would over- throw the State, and was hateful to gods and men ; and when Acilius, Clemens, and Domitilla refused to deny the charge, their fate was certain. Acilius was told he might die by his favourite sport, and was ex- posed to the beasts in the arena. Strong, active, and practised, he overcame the animals ; but this did not save his life, he was sent into exile, and there put to death. Clemens was sentenced and killed at once, Domitilla was banished to an island ; and, as no more is known of their sons, they probably were cut off with their parents. Many other nobles are said to have been then banished, and Domitian sought out dili- gently — as Herod had done before him — for this King of the line of David. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 73 That old man at Ephesus, who was even said to have almost ruined the worship of the great goddess, was ordered to Rome, for was not he averred to be of this royal line ? And, moreover, according to a beau- tiful tradition, here were two young men dragged forward, who could have shown their father's name in the great census of Augustus, as a son of David at Bethlehem, and had not their father been one of those twelve who had chiefly preached that strange new error ? The two men stood before the Emperor. True, they said, they were sons of Judas, son of Cleopas ; their father and two of their uncles had been of the twelve, they had been cousins, called brethren, of their Lord ; they were, like Him, of the old lineage of David, but, for their own part, they sought no earthly thrones for themselves or any one else ; they were hard-working men — and in witness thereof they spread out their hands, horny with the use of the spade — and they owned nothing but a few acres of land. "But what is this kingdom?" still asked the Emperor. " It is a kingdom," said the sons of St. Jude, ** a kingdom far away. We look not f(»r it till earth be at an end, and our King cometh to make new heavens and a new earth." Domitian feared them no longer, but let them depart to their homes, and even became convinced that the Christians meant him no harm. There was quiet, and the Ephesians learnt before long that their Apostle was in one of the little isles that studded Digitized by VjOOQIC 74 THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. their beauteous sea — ^whence he had been forbidden to return to them. Wondrous tales of his charmed life were whispered. It was said that he had been dragged to the Lateran Gate at Rome, and plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil, but that it had been unable to hurt him ; and another story was afloat that a cup of poison was given him without doing him injury — ^some stories even averring that the venom had come forth in the shape of a serpent, at his touch. But there is no evidence that his real, trustworthy pupils, Polycarp, Ignatius, Fapias, or John the Presbyter, ever related these adventures, though the boiling oil was believed in not many centuries later. The cup with the dragon may have first been drawn beside St. John, in allusion to the brazen serpent of Moses, and the sacramental participation in the Sacrifice of the Cross, and thus the latter tale may have arisen; but, be it always remembered, that neither wonder was impossible. It may have been the will of God to save the holy Apostle by wonders resembling those that marked the life of Daniel the Prophet, "the man greatly beloved," to whom he bore most analogy ; and these marvels may have stilled the persecution for a time, as well as have preserved St. John, a martyr in will though not in deed, to be a living witness throughout this trying period of the Church, when the first fervour was passing away, and a new generation rising up. Ere long the Asiatic Churches had certain intelli- gence of their holy Apostle, from his own pen, in the most awful and wonderful letter that ever was framed Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 75 by mortal man. He wrote from the isle of Patmos, a small and exceedingly rugged, rocky islet, with barely soil enough to bear a few olives and cypresses, and chiefly fitted for the wild goats on the rocks, A village on the east side would contain a few inha- bitants, and to the south lay a high steep hill, with a cave in the midst Hence the Apostle might stand and gaze far and wide over the blue waters, with their purple isles of rock rising among them, and at the outline of the coast of Asi^, and the rising hills against tlie horizon that shut in the cities that were his own special chaige. Seven above all were dear to him — ^founded some by himself, some by St Paul, with angels or bishops, chiefly of his own training ; and their number, seven, chiming in with many of the notes of the Old Law, which he had learnt to regard as the bud of the blossom in which he was rejoicing. Seven had always been regarded as a holy symbo- lical number. There were seven days in the divinely- appointed week, seven of each clean animal entered the ark of Noah, there were seven branches to the golden candlesticks in the Tabernacle, and the seventh day, the seventh week, the seventh month, the seventh year, and the seven times seventh year had all been consecrated, and thus it has come to be believed that the number seven expressed the completeness of what was good and holy, and that in accepting and con- secrating seven, all the rest were by that number offered and accepted. Thus, as the hallowed seventh day consecrated all the days in the week, and the seventh week all the weeks in the year, so the Seven Digitized by VjOOQIC 76 THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. Churches, immediately under St. John's eye, served, as it were, as an emblem to him of all the other Churches on the earth — that of Pella where the fugi- tives of Jerusalem were gathered ; that of Parthia to which he had written; the first Gentile Church at Antioch, governed by his pupil Ignatius; that of Greece where dwelt so many dear to him ; that of Rome which he had visited in such anxious times ; that of Gaul where ruled the faithful Trophimus ; that of Britain where the Druid superstitions were being fought with by Aristobulus. All these, and many more, were symbolized, and as it were included in his thoughts and intercessions as he gazed on the bays and vales where nestled his own Seven. And all these, and many more — nay, every Church of every place, and at all times, throughout the world — are addressed in the wonderful letter written from Patmos to the Seven Churches of Asia and their angels. It was not of his own accord that St. John wrote these messages. Wise and holy as he was, they were the words of a greater than he. He has told us how, on the Lord's Day — that day which he had kept holy ever since that blessed morning, sixty years before, when he had found the sepulchre empty — ^he heard a great voice as of a trumpet talking with him. The Patmos islanders say that he was in the cave, which they call by his name, when this marvel happened It might be that the exile, after spending himself in the toil of pouring the truth on their ears, had, like his Master of old, climbed the mountain apart to pray and give himself up to communion with his Lord. All Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF P ATM OS. 77 we know is, that he " was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day," when at the voice he turned and saw — saw his Lord and Master — Him on whose bosom he had lain, whose hands and feet bore the wounds, whom he had watched rising into heaven — standing even as he had seen Him stand in morning dawn on the shore of the blue lake, still perfectly to be recognised by loving eyes, but in the majesty of His glory, robed from head to feet in the long garment of king or priest, white and dazzling, as at the Holy Mount of Transfiguration, and girt about with a golden girdle. His countenance was as the sun in his strength. His voice as the sound of many waters ; yet, in some inexplicable manner, the face, the voice, were verily the beloved countenance and tones of jESUS of Nazareth, the same that had become known and loved by John on the banks of Jordan, and though the flesh quailed, and he fell on his face in terror, it was that voice which said, '* Fear not," that wounded hand that set him on his feet ; the bodily touch thrilled through him as when in the upper chamber he had been bidden to handle and feel the flesh and bones belonging to no mere spirit. "Perfect love casteth out fear, because fear hath torment." So St John had already written ; and he, whose love came nearer to perfection than that of any other man on earth, felt the comfort of his own dear Master's presence, and feared not to look, and to listen to the precious words that came from His mouth. The Holy One' was In the midst of seven golden candlesticks, or rather lamp-stands. The one seven- branched golden candlestick with seven lamps had Digitized by VjOOQIC 78 THE EXILE OF PA TMOS, been a special treasure of the Jews. Fashioned by Moses, after the pattern shown him in the Holy Mount of Sinai, it had been carried to Babylon, but there, as it seems, when brought forth to light Belshazzar's godless banquet, over against it had come forth the wondrous handwriting — ^the king's doom upon the wall. It had, even in the sack of Babylon, been pre- served, and was brought back safely to Jerusalem to be restored to the holy place. There, on festal days, St. John had seen it afar off from the court where he worshipped, with the high-priest Annas or Caiaphas standing beside it ; he had seen its likeness carved on the wall of the synagogue of Cana in Galilee, and probably on many more. He, like every other faithful Jewish Christian, had mourned when Titus and his soldiers had borne it away from the burning Temple, and set it as their choicest trophy in the temple of Peace. Nay, he might himself have seen it there, and felt thankful that at least it was in no shrine of one of the unholy, demon-like deities worshipped with foul demoralising rites, but in a fane raised to one of the attributes of the Prince of Peace who might be there ignorantly worshipped. He, on his way to trial and danger, might have looked up at the very same sculp- ture that travellers gaze at now — of that beloved and lost candlestick carved upon the splendid arch over the triumphal road, along which it had been borne to swell the pride of Titus and his fierce-counte- nanced nation on their return to Rome. But what truly mattered it that the temple candlestick was yet to be taken away by plunderers to Africa, reconquered Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 79 and brought to Constantinople, sent back again to Rome as a dangerous possession, and finally sunk deep beneath the yellow waters of the Tiber, where it still lies buried in the sands and mud, safe from further desecration ? What mattered the fate of the old symbolical can- dlestick, when here before his eyes John beheld the true one, the very pattern Moses had seen in the Mount, the very lamps that Zechariah had beheld fed by olive-trees that, he was told, were the two anointed ones. More than Moses, more than Zechariah did he see ; the Lightbearing Candlestick was not one, with seven branches, but seven Lamps : for now the light of one day had become as the light of seven days, and the one people who bore the light of God at Jerusalem were now sevenfold multiplied into many peoples, nations, and languages. And in the midst no false, murderous priest like Caiaphas was "walking — no, nor even the beloved Simon in his long garment, nor good Jeshua the restorer, nor Zadok the first temple priest — no, nor Aaron himself. It was the real Jeshua, " the Priest upon the throne for ever," the Priest for ever after the order of Mel- chisedec ; his jESUS, his Saviour, his God, who walked in the midst of those golden lamps, and held in His hand the Seven Stars, that mysterious cluster of which the Almighty had long ago said to Job, *' Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades } " and which we now know to have among them that central star around which all suns and stars revolve. The holy voice told St. John that those Seven Stars Digitized by VjOOQIC So THE EXILE OF PATMOS. were the angels of the Seven Churches, and that the Seven Candlesticks were the Seven Churches — a mystery indeed that we can only thus far understand, that in the number seven is collected all that are dedicated to God upon earth, and that the lamps or candlesticks represent Churches because it is the Church that displays the light of God to man, as the lamp shows light; also that the stars being in the hand of Christ show that He bears within His hand, and acts by, the faithful rulers of His Churches. He Himself mentioned by name the Churches of the seven cities most immediately connected with St. John, commanding His Apostle to write His message to each ; and there can be no doubt that, just as the special joys and woes of David and Asaph were made to suggest promises and prayers fitted for all generations since, so the particular needs of the Seven Churches of Asia were providentially brought about, so that the messages of warning and admonition might serve for every branch of the Universal Church throughout the world. Indeed, at every pause the great Speaker so proclaims His message : " He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the Churches." Let us then try to have ears to hear, what is peculiarly our own message, given in Christian times, and in our own Europe, amid the isles of the Gentiles, and let us see how those first Seven Churches and their angels received the message, and acted upon it, and what is known of the pupils of St John who first heard that wondrous letter in trembling awe and joy. There have been many questionings what was Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 8i meant by the angels of the Churches. It is plain that as some are blamed, they cannot mean those hea- venly messengers of God whom we are used to call angels, nor would St John have had to write to them. They must therefore be human beings, the messengers of God, to whom was deputed the rule over the churches, the messenger shepherds sent forth by the Chief Shepherd, the overseers of the shepherds of the flock. And thus all ancient commentators understand the angel of each Church to mean its bishop, to whom Christ addresses exhortation, blame, or praise on behalf of himself and his own Church. Ephesus we know best of all these seven, the home of the Apostle himself as it was, and guided by the elders who had wept and prayed round St. Paul on the shore of Miletus. The beloved Timothy first, and his successor after him (probably Onesimus), had been faithful overseeing shepherds, bravely guarding their flock from the grievous wolves, against whom St. Paul had warned them ; and applying the test St. John had given them, by which to try those who taught among them, namely, whether they confessed the Godhead and Manhood of the Lord jESUS Christ; and thus the sensual and reprobate Nico- laitanes were kept aloof and put to silence. But, though they were so sound in faith. He who trieth the heart " had somewhat against " the angel of Ephesus and his Church, for there had been a cooling down of that devout love and zeal that had prevailed there when the converts burnt their curious books, sorrowed around St Paul, and saw the martyrdom of G Digitized by VjOOQIC 82 THE EXILE OF PATMOS. Timothy. To the present generation Christianity was a matter of course, not a great freshly- won victory, and slackness was coming over them, which their Lord mercifully rebuked, warning them, that unless they returned to what they once had been. He might have to visit them, and remove their Candle- stick — that is to make their Church cease to be one of His great lightbearers, setting forth the truth of His Gospel before men. But to those who should win the victory by love as well as by faith, the Saviour holds out the promise of being restored to the enjoyment of the Tree of Life, of which our first parents were deprived for their disobedience. Smyrna, the city of Myrrh, would be dear to St. John for the sake of its bishop, his own pupil Poly- carp, who, young as he was, seems to have been already there as angel. It stood in a lovely valley, so warm that the vines bore fruit twice a year, and figs, spices, and all that was precious abounded there, and it was also near enough to the sea to have an excellent port where traffic was briskly carried on. It was full of temples — one to Rhea, the mother of the gods ; another to Dionysus, the god of wine, whose riotous orgies were observed at regular seasons, com- memorating the Eastern story that he had been slain, cut to pieces, and placed in a cauldron, whence he was brought to life by the gpreat mother, Rhea. This was, of course, a fable of the fruits apparently consumed, by the heat of the sun, reviving again under the fos- tering care of Mother Earth; but when all these powers of nature were personified and turned into idols, the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PATMOS, ^^ stories were monstrous and the worship horrible, and, their commemoration called into play all the worst passions of humanity. Moreover, the Smymiotes had a more absurd temple still, for they had earnestly striven for the privilege of raising one to the Emperor Tiberius in his own lifetime, though if they had known how absurd the grim, satirical Caesar felt their adu- lation to be, they would have grudged their pains. In such a rich, licentious place, given to such foul idolatry, Christianity had a hard battle, and dread of the evils round kept the believers the more spotless in life. The unbelieving Jews, doubly spiteful since their city was gone, never failed to point the Christians out to the scorn and cruelty of the heathen, and if it be true that Polycarp, the bishop, had been once a slave, there would have been endless occasion of taunting him and his followers with their poverty and vileness. But He who " seeth not as man seeth," was " countihg and measuring up their tears." He, the First and Last, Whose death and life eternal were shadowed in the decay and restoration of nature, so foully travestied in the idol story — He told the suffering Church that in His sight her poverty was riches, and that even though she should suffer still worse afflictions, they would be but trials — purifying and tending to glory ; and to the angel himself, with a sudden change from plural to singular, the promise was given, *' Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life." A crown was wont to be given at the year's end to the priest of the wine god, but the angel of Smyrna's G 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 84 THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. service was to be until his death, and at the end was reserved for him such a crown as St. Paul had looked for on the other side of the Roman's sword blade. Very deep did the words sink into many a heart besides that of Polycarp, through many an age of the world They formed the text of the Coronation Sermon preached in Westminster Abbey on the 2d of February, 1626, when, in white and jewelled robes, a young king sat and listened, little foreboding that the promise would return upon him on a black- hung scaffold, where axe and block awaited his grey, discrowned head. The last sentence, the promise to him that over- cometh, is the revocation of Adam's sentence, " Ye ^all surely die," for it assures us that the conqueror shall not be hurt of the second death, but with him who giveth the victory, shall be alive for evermore. Further inland lay the tall conical hill that gave its name to Pergamos, the burg, or fortified mountain from which it was said' the birth of the great god Zeus had been beheld. Beneath was a perfect assemblage of temples, standing in a beautiful grove of the choicest aad loveliest trees, that shaded the shrines and statues of a whole assemblage of deities, but the chief and favourite god of all was Asclepios, the god of healing. He was said to be the son of the sun-god, Apollo, and to have learnt his art from a serpent which brought its dead companion to life again with a certain herb. This story was told to account for his figure being always represented with a serpent twined round his staff — or even as a large Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PATMOS. 85 serpent alone ; but it is almost certain that this was an invention to explain and soften to European minds an old Eastern worship of the serpent itself, as the power of evil, and that the honour paid to the dragon of Asclepios was no better than devil worship. Sick persons resorting to the god observed certain rites, and then slept in the temple, expecting the remedy- to be revealed to them ; but the Greeks had grown too shrewd to trust to dreams, and kept a college of medicine attached to the temple, though, as Asclepios had all the honour of what was done by human skill, he was known as the Sotdr, or saviour god So learned and full of the love of literature were the Pergamenes, that the best sort of sheepskins prepared for writing were known ^s charta pergamena, a word perpetuated in our parchment. Thus the Christians of Pergamos had to resist dangers more subtle than the false sorceries of Ephesus, or the open scorn and malignity of Smyrna. They dwelt in the very seat of Satan, the serpent idol, the mock saviour, and under his open enmity they had not been faint-hearted, but had boldly confessed the true Saviour's name. One faithful martyr, or witness, is even mentioned by the great Shepherd who knoweth His sheep by name, "even Antipas;" but though Christ knew and gave him praise, no record has been preserved of him, only a tradition that he had been the last bishop, and in this very persecution of Domitian had been thrust into the inside of a hollow bronze bull, and there baked to death by a fire be- neath, — a horrid torture invented long before in Digitized by VjOOQIC 86 THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. Sicily. But as these refinements of cruelty were not generally practised on the Christians till the later persecutions, it is likely that this story is a late in- vention, and that Antipas — the martyr of St John's daughter Church of Pergamos — ^was one of the many whose history earth knows not, though it is safe upon the heart of the great High Priest in heaven. Open attacks, then, the Pergamene Christians bravely defied, but it was more difficult to hold out against the men of science and learning, who knew as well as they did that Asclepios and his cures were all a cheat and sham ; and who only maintained their heathenism because the state and all society would be convulsed if the system were overthrown. Let it be granted that the gods were only fancies to amuse the vulgar, and nothing in themselves, and then there could be no harm in sporting in their pageants, or eating of their sacrifices, or following the little observances that had become a part of daily life. The Gnostic Nicolaitanes told the same story, and thus science, falsely so called, was doing exactly the same work as Balaam had done thousands of years before, when he led the Israelites "to join themselves to Baal Peor, and eat the offerings of the dead : " and the angel of Pergamos was not clear- sighted like his brother of Ephesus, but was dealing too leniently with those who were leading his flock back blindfold to the evils they had left As the sword of Phinehas the priest had put away that sin from Israel, so the sharp piercing two-edged Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 87 sword of the Word of God. proceeding from the mouth of the great High Priest, was held up threaten- ingly to warn the Pergamenes ; and again, to those who overcame the temptation was promised that which the priesthood of Israel alone approached, even in symbol — the hidden manna, or bread of life imparted to the soul, and the white stone of light and perfec- tion by which the will of God was made known to the High Priest. The next two cities mentioned, answer to our great manufacturing cities. Thyatira and Sardis. Sardis stood near the banks of the river Pactolus, the sands of which were mixed with gold-dust, and it had been the abode of that fabulously rich king of Lydia, Croesus, who displayed all his treasures to the wise Solon without being able to draw from him the avowal that he was so happy as the two virtuous youths who died in the midst of an act of filial piety. There, too, it is said, had first been discovered the purple dye which is contained in the glands of certain moUusks, and is capable of imparting the richest purple and crimson to wool. A Sardian, seeing a dog stain his mouth by crushing a murex in its shell, applied the discovery, and made the fortune of his city. Heaps of fragments of shells throughout the Levant attest the multitudes of the creatures whose juices brightened the royal, the consular, the imperial garment, but nowhere did the manufacture reach such perfection as at Sardis. The Persian kings had exacted a tribute of Sardian carpets, on which to tread as they mounted their horses, and Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF P ATM OS. coverings made at Sardis were considered as the most sumptuous of adornments. The city of Thyatira had been founded by the Macedonians when they overran the East, and had become almost equal to the neighbouring Sardis in her own arts. There were great guilds or companies of potters, tanners, weavers, dyers, and robe-makers, and it was one of these dealers in the rich robes of purple, who, travelling into the northern country of Macedonia, had thence brought back the knowledge of the gospel. It was Lydia, a purple seller, whose trade had no doubt brought her into contact with Jews, from whom she had already learnt to know and honour the true God, and to join their worship by the river side at Philippi, where they had no regular synagogue. There she listened to St. Paul, and was lifted to the higher truth that he unfolded out of Judaism; and thence the good seed was carried home, which had so grown and prospered that, un- like the Ephesians, ''the last was more than the first," and the Saviour in heaven commended the, works, and charity, and service, and patience of the Thyatirans. But as it was a woman who brought home the truth to Thyatira, so strangely it appears that a woman was the chief scandal and temptation to the Church there. She is spoken of in the message by the name of Jezebel, that queen whose witchcrafts were so many, and who worked the ruin of Israel by her devotion to the service of Baal. From other sources, we gather that this woman, who did the work of Jezebel, was Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 89 known as the sybil Sambatha, and that she was either a Jewess or a Chaldean by birth, and practised magic rites in a temple outside the walls. From what is here said, it is plain that she had once been a Chris- tian, and we can imagine her one of those beautiful and gifted Jewesses, able — as was said of Judith — ^to deceive the whole earth ; once baptized, but falling gradually under the temptations of power and admira- tion, having come to use her grace and skill to keep up her influence alike with Christians and heathens, and in earnest, or in deception, practising magic arts. Even the angel of Thyatira tolerated her, but the Lord, who had given her space for repentance, directs His fearful threats against her, foretelling the shame and destruc- tion that should come on her and those she had led away ; while the faithful should have their share in the kingdom of their Lord, and to them should be given the Morning Star. Christ Himself is called the Bright and Morning Star, and thus this beautiful promise must mean that He will be especially im- parted to such as withstand the temptations that unsanctified love of beauty and of dealing with un- hallowed mysteries held out at Thyatira. Sardis does not seem to have had any such definite temptation; indeed the Church there had a name for life. It had once warmly received the truth. Once it heard the Word with joy, but the good seed had been stifled in cares, and riches, and pleasures — in purple and fine linen — and no fruit was coming to perfection. It was all death and dying, and the warning is stern that the time of judgment would Digitized by VjOOQIC 90 THE EXILE OF PATMOS. fall sharp and speedily, unless there were a great repentance and renewal of zeaL And yet there were still a few who had kept their garments undefiled, and they receive the promise of walking — not in the purple robes of Sardis — but in the glistening white of their risen Saviour's robes. White garments — a name not blotted out of the Book of Life — these are the hopes held out to the faithful and victorious men of Sardis — victorious, some over the trials of business and wealth, some over the temptations of scorn and poverty. The city and the Church of Philadelphia were alike poor. The place was in a volcanic region, much shaken by earthquakes, and in the time of the Emperor Tiberius, forty years before, had been laid in ruins by one of these terrible visitations. All the other seven cities had suffered greatly, and some had needed the aid of government to rebuild them, but Philadelphia had been the very centre of the shock, and had never entirely recovered from the desolation. Yet it is no wonder that when, sixteen centuries later, a city full of new hopes and schemes of good was founded in the New World, it was named after poor earthquake-stricken Philadelphia; for not only does the name mean the City of Brotherly Love, taken indeed from a heathen prince, yet the most beautiful title a Christian town could bear, but " He that is holy, He that is true," spake to that Church in terms of almost unmixed commendation and of the highest promise. Men who make a right use of life in the midst of awful natural phenomena, are likely to be the most Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 91 impressed with a sense of God's power and presence, and to rest most gladly in the sense of His pro- tection ; and so the Church of Philadelphia and her angel, whom we believe to have been Quadratus, are blessed for having kept Christ's word, and not denied His name, but having shown strength, though it was but little. He who bears the key of David, the royal key of the kingdom of Heaven, had opened that none could shut the door before these true-hearted men ; and He further promised that the Jews, the chief enemies, should learn the truth and come and worship, convinced by the faith and love of the true Israel of God in the City of Love. Yet more, Philadelphia should be shielded in the day of trial that should befall the rest of the world, and the promise to him that overcometh, was of becoming a very pillar in the Temple of God, that Temple of living stones, where he should be one of the polished, beauteous columns of the inmost sanctuary., Philadelphia and Smyrna are the happy Churches, with blessings for the present and promises for the future ; but it is sad to turn from them to the last Church of the Seven, to Laodicea, which had been a daughter-Church so beloved by St. Paul, that he addressed to it an epistle, which was to be exchanged for that to the Colossians, so that each might be read aloud in either city. It is probable that it had been con- verted by St. Paul's disciple Epaphras, and over it, as we gather and infer, had been set Archippus, the son of the noble, free-hearted Philemon, a friend kindly greeted by St. Paul, and under the superintendence Digitized by VjOOQIC 92 THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. of St. John. What better beginning could there be ? And yet may we not take it as a token of the languid careless temper of Laodicea, that, while the private letter of Paul to the good Colossian has been carefully treasured to show the free mercy and justice of the Christian temper in small details, yet the letter to the Church of Laodicea, written in bonds at Rome, has been utterly lost and forgotten, so long ago that forgeries were abroad in early times, professing to be the Epistle to the Laodiceans. The epistle from St Paul is lost, but this is a terrible epistle from St John, or rather from St John's Master, rebuking the Laodiceans for their lukewarmness. They were neither cold nor hot, but feebly, decorously religious, and perfectly contented with themselves and their own fair appearance, while they were absolute subjects of disgust to their Lord — fit only to be rejected, spued out of His mouth. They complacently rejoiced in their gifts ; while in His sight they were poor, and blind, and naked, and miserable ; and nothing could restore them but His eye-salve, which should clear their sight to behold themselves even as they were, so that they might repent while yet there was time. Perhaps no warning among all those to the Seven Churches comes so fearfully home to our hearts as that to the indifferent Laodicea. And yet the hopes at the end are very sweet, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.*' This is the blessing even on earth, and in the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. 93 end the promise to him that overcometh is of sitting down with Christ in His Father's throne— even as He overcame, and there sat down. He knows that, to many, the victory over sluggish ease and self-complacency is infinitely harder than that over poverty, scorn, or persecution, and thus the very greatest privilege of all is set forth to rouse the Laodiceans. So closed the direct exhortation to the Seven Churches, and those seven angels or messengers who had been placed there and guided by the Apostle, who was charged to record the message. The un- veiling of heavenly mysteries did not, however, close here. Probably, at a different time, John again was sum- moned by the Voice, and beheld a door opened in heaven, and, beyond it, that of which the now- destroyed temple had been a mere model — the very pattern once revealed to Moses after which the Tabernacle had been made, and which again Ezekiel had seen. There John beheld the true Mercy Seat, the true Cherubim, the true Lamps of Fire, the true crystal Sea, the true Altar of Incense ; and heard the voices of praise from Cherubim and Seraphim, angels and saints, the Church in heaven, the Church at rest, the Church struggling on earth, all in unison glorify- ing the Almighty, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, and adoring the eternal Sacrifice of the Lamb slain, and yet alive for evermore. That great sight remained steadfast, while other mysterious visions came before him, showing in figure Digitized by VjOOQIC 94 THE EXILE OF PA TMOS. the strife between good and evil, the Church and the powers of darkness, even to the consummation of all things, and the final purifying of the earth from evil, and the eternal restoration of Paradise, with the Tree of Life, the glorious city of our God, and the perpetual light of God's presence. Then, and not till then, he lost sight of the heavenly temple, the crystal sea, and all those intermediate modes of bringing man back to approach his God ; but the full and entire presence and glory blessed those of man- kind who had been redeemed out of every people and nation and tongue. And he beheld the full com- pletion of the great work of his Master : as he had watched the agony of the conflict, so it was vouch- safed to him to witness the triumph, the glory, and the fulness of the achievement — the perfect restoration. When he came back to the rocks of Patmos, and his solitary exiled old age, well might the words recur to him with the most comfort : " Behold I come quickly ; " so that he could not but in recording them, reply, " Even so come. Lord jESUS." And though "as men count slackness," it may seem as if long years, seventeen centuries indeed, had passed since that announcement, the Advent will assuredly show itself to have been veritably prompt and sudden, when we, alike with St. John and the seven angels of the Churches, shall be awakened with the sound of the trumpet. The Apostle wrote the marvels he had seen, so far as human language could .express them, and there- Digitized by VjOOQIC THE EXILE OF PATMOS, 95 with sealed up the books of the Holy Scripture, being as we may believe caused so to do as being the last of that series of writers who at intervals during two thousand years had been inspired by tht Holy Ghost to write the messages of God to man. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER VII. THE APOSTLE OF LOVE. " A gate, that opens wide to those That do lament their sin." Lamentation of a Sinner. On one of the steep slopes of the wild ravines of Asia Minor, with a torrent rushing beneath, and among the wild rocks overgrown with brushwood and the luxuriant herbage of shady places in the East, might have been seen an aged man, with snowy hair and beard, and keen, undimmed eyes, bright with a lofty, upturned expression, as though ever looking at a joy beyond mortal knowledge, with a look of radiant loving- kindness beaming round him, such as would win all who came near him to lean on him for comfort and for sympathy, and which made it seem only natural that a tame partridge should nestle in his bosom, and court the caressing touch of his hand on its brown speckled feathers. Though evidently very aged, his form was not bowed, nor was there any air of^weakness or decay, as he drew the rein of his horse, and asked his guide if they were not near the place. Few persons were wont to linger in that valley ; most Digitized by VjOOQIC THE APOSTLE OF LOVE. 97 hurried through it with terror and alarm ; but, though an anxious expression for a moment ruffled the broad, clear calm of his brow, his lips moved in prayer, and when loud shouts and trampling sounds were heard behind the rocks, before and behind, instead of the deadly terror such sounds were wont to inspire^ his countenance lighted up with an unspeakable beam of joy and hope, like that of a father hearing the first footsteps of a long-absent son. Forth rushed, with threatening cries, a horde of wild-looking men, with streaming hair, loose white kilts, and bare feet — ^some with the short Roman sword, some with a long lance, and some further off with bows and arrows levelled against that one old man. They took rudely from him his horse and bound his guide, but when they saw that he only stood still and smiled a kindly greeting to them, they paused in wonder. He waved his hand, and bade them take him to their captain, and there was an authority in his manner, a dignity in his bearing, that, though he was clad in homely garments, overawed them, so that they scarcely spoke as they guided him to an open space of grass, where there sat, on horseback, a tall, handsome young man, bravely equipped with the bright helmet, breastplate, and spear of a warrior. He was a lordly-looking youth, but no sooner did he catch a sight of the venerable head in the midst of the robbers, than, with a cry of mingled fear and anguish, he turned his horse, and was about to flee, as though from the face of a centurion and all his band. The old man, however, sprang forth, holding out his H Digitized by VjOOQIC 98 THE APOSTLE OF LOVE, arms affectionately, and calling him with the tenderest names to come to one who had longed after and sought for him ; and, as that voice fell on that captain's ears, he threw himself from his horse, and dropped absolutely on the ground, weeping aloud, and laying his forehead in the dust in an agony of shame and misery, waving off the old man, as though the very sight of him were overpowering ; but as the old man continued to approach, still speaking to him with fondling words, as a shepherd rejoicing over a lost sheep that he had just found, the unhappy man so far arose as to embrace his knees, sobbing forth that it was all in vain, there was no pardon for such as he, no renewing for one who had so fallen away, and hiding away his right hand which had dealt so many cruel blows and defiled with so much blood. When last those two had met it was in one of the chambers which Christian rich men set apart for wor- ship. There had stood that aged man, robed like a priest of the old sanctuary, with a fair mitre on his head, and over his brow a plate of gold, on which were graven the great words, "Holiness unto the Lord." And as, at the head of his ministers, he led the prayers and hymns, or spake forth the love of his Saviour and the redemption of the world, with that intense, glorious purity of life that had become possible, that youth's face had glowed with eager hope and enthusiasm, and his heart had burnt within him. He stood but in the outward part, he had to turn away ere the full feast was held ; but the kind bright eye had singled him out, the sweet tender voice Digitized by VjOOQIC St John and the Robber, Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC rHE APOSTLE OF LOVE. 99 had spoken to him, and encouraged him to seek full peace, pardon, and strength, then presented him to the bishop of the place, praying that, as a favour to himself, the youth might be specially instructed, watched over, and prepared for baptism. Noticed by that most venerable man — the man who had himself been loved by the Holy One — how was it possible, then, thought the lad, but that he should walk in those holy paths ? And so had he b^un 1 But, alas ! what a history lay between that day and the present! Hope, eagerness, kind teaching from the bishop of the place at first ; then the solemn bap- tism in "the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ;" but after this, the finding that the eager desires of hot youth had not passed away. The ban- quet of the heathen, the garland-bound brows, the rich wine poured out, the merry songs to Dionysus or Aphrodite, the hunt in honour of great Artemis, the dance around the Midsummer fires, had not lost their charms; there had been a weariness of the tame life the Christians were leading, a wandering into for- bidden paths ; then a sharp rebuke from the bishop — a rebuke that fretted and drove him farther into wilfulness; then an excess that could not be over- looked ; a ceasing even to show himself among the Christians ; a sense that all was lost, an offence against the orderly laws of the heathen government, a hasty flight from the city, a meeting with the robbers, reck- less despair making him the boldest of all, plunder, spoliation, murder perhaps. Oh, what could be in store for him — him for whom there could be no H 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC loo THE APOSTLE OF LOVE, second washing in baptism ; him who had heard that there was a sin unto death, and that there were fallen men who could not be renewed unto repentance? Why should that terrible old man, that true Son of Thunder, have sought him but, save to reproach and overwhelm him with the threatenings of the anger he had but too well merited ? Nay, there are no thunders. The thunder has come from his own guilty conscience. It is the still small Voice that tells him, as it has told aching hearts ever since : — "And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins." Who should tell of the Shepherd's love for His sheep like him who had leant on His bosom, who like Him had come forth into the wilderness for the lost sheep, and, in his strong faith, could well-nigh near the rejoicings of the angels at the tears that were bedewing his feet ? He lifted the lost and found from the earth, gathered him into his arms, and es- pecially grasped and kissed that blood-stained hand, for the sake of the good that he said it should yet do. Robber-helm and sword were cast away, the wild ' men stood awed, some touched, some ready to scoff, as their leader, holding the kindly hand that had been put forth to save him, meekly trod the path that led away from the wilderness back to the haunts of men. Long he sorrowed, long he wept and prayed, long was his probation, but one voice, one face, never let him sink again into despair; the hand that had Digitized by VjOOQIC THE APOSTLE OF LOVE. loi plucked him from the fire never relaxed its support, the prayer of the righteous man never ceased, and the repentant sinner was once more a partaker of the heavenly feast, never again to fall away. The story above is the simple truth, save that a little description has been added to the short sentence of St. Clement of Alexandria, who tells us how St John, after his return from his banishment at Patmos, thus reclaimed a fair and comely youth, whom he had noticed on one of his visitations, and committed to the bishop's charge for baptism. His fall had been owing to the neglect of the bishop, whom St John had rebuked with the words, "Where is that pledge which I gave to thy keeping ? " It is also true that St. John wore the dress above described during divine service: and his love for his tame partridge has likewise been handed down to us by the loving recollection of his disciples, who would fain have believed that they should never lose the glorious old man. He continued for many years longer at Ephesus, a very aged, feeble man, unable for any exertion, but witnessing still by his very presence to the wondrous years of the Divine Saviour's stay on earth. And as he was borne in a litter through the streets of Ephesus, he would ever and anon lift his hand when he saw members of his flock stand reve- rently by to watch him, and would murmur the watchword of his life: ''Little children, love one another." When at last his spirit departed and he went to be Digitized by VjOOQIC I02 THE APOSTLE OF LOVE, with his Lord, he is reckoned to have been at least a hundred years old, and even then there were some who would not believe him to be really dead, but deemed that he was lyir^ in a deep sleep in his tomb at Ephesus, awaiting his awakening at the second Advent, and tarrying till his Master should come. But this was a vain superstition, for had it so been^ the beloved disciple would have obtained a lot far inferior to those of the thousands he beheld with white robes and palms in their hands. He slept indeed, but his spirit had found its home, and joined the friends, the brother, and the more than brother, more than friend, of his lifetime ; and his words, deeply instinct with the Spirit of God, are living with us still, living, soaring, and bearing us up. So that whereas each Gospel is considered to have an emblem among the cherubic forms, the emblem of St. John's is the eagle, which has the loftiest flight, the keenest eye, the highest and surest nest, of all created beings. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER VIII. IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. ** They met the tyrant's brandished steel, The lion's gory mane ; They bowed their necks the death to feel, Who follows in their train?" — Bp, Heber, When the disciples were wrangling at Capernaum as to which should be the greatest, their Lord rebuked them by calling a little child, placing him in the midst, and as He held him in His arms, saying, ** Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and whoso shall receive one such little child in My Name, re- ceiveth Me ; but whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea." It has been from the earliest times the belief of the Syriac Church that this favoured little child was Ignatius, and that it was therefore that he was sur- Digitized by VjOOQIC 104 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. named Theophorus. This word, according whether the accent be placed on the first or the second o, signifies in Greek, either the God-carried, or the God-carrier. And as we shall see, Ignatius himself explained it in the second sense, but this might have been because the first would have been even more incomprehen- sible to his auditor; and though the legend, iden- tifying him with that child is utterly unproved, there are circumstances that dispose us to receive it as not improbable. Ignatius is known to have been bred up from earliest childhood among the Apostles, nursed up among them, and always with them; and certainly the words of the Saviour, while applying to all His little ones, give the impression that He was preparing the Apostles for the tenderness, reverence, and watchfulness that the presence of a young child among them would require. May Ignatius not, then, be reckoned as the first of the many orphan babes whom the Church has received and bred up in Her Master's Name, and for His sake } No record of the nation or country of Ignatius has been preserved ; but if this legend were true, he would probably have been a native of the lake country of Galilee. And his name, which signifies " Fiery," is a corrupt Latin one, such as was sometimes borne by the Jews. It was also accordant with the spirit of St John, that just as he kept himself subordinate to St Peter after the second rebuke to his ambition, so he should have made the child thus put forward by his Master his own special charge ; and Ignatius was Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT 105 his own pupil, brought up by him, and thus con- versing also frequently with St Peter and St. Paul. He probably remained in close attendance on St. John, following him as Luke, Timothy, Titus, and Trophimus waited on St. Paul, until his training was completed ; and, about the year 65, when he would have been between thirty and forty years of age, he was sent to govern the Gentile Church of AntiocL How perilous a position, and how wise and firm a man was there needed, we shall understand by a glance at the city and its history. The peninsula of Asia Minor projects almost exactly at right angles to the coast of Syria, each country being built, as it were, on the frame-work of its skeleton range of mountains — the Taurus forming the horizontal line running east and west, and the Lebanon coming down southward from it At the meeting angle of these two chains of hills, the river Orontes rushes out between them on its way to the sea ; and this nook, with the glorious mountain back-ground, the sea in front, the river in the midst, and the fertile soil, sure to be produced by these combined causes, formed a most inviting place for a city. None was, however, built there till B.C. 300, when Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals, having succeeded in mastering Syria, Baby- lonia, and great part of Asia Minor, founded a city to be the capital of his mighty dominions, and named it Antiochia from the name of his father and his son, who were both called Antiochus. In peopling his city he invited a large colony of Jews thither, promising them a magistrate of their own nation, and equal Digitized by VjOOQIC io6 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT, rights with those of the Greeks whom he settled in the same place : and though the Jews properly belonged to the Egyptian kingdom of Ptolemy, a large number accepted his invitation, and lived and traded prosperously at Antioch. It became a magnificent place, consisting of four cities joined in one, built by four successive kings, and its most special beauty was a great wide street four miles long, and on each side adorned with double colonnades of pillars, beautiful in themselves, and supporting roofs that gave shelter from the noonday sun. But Antioch was for many years a word of evil omen to Jerusalem. There dwelt those kings of the north, prophesied of by Daniel, whose wars with the Egyptian kings of the south were mostly fought out in Palestine ; and when the Jews had weakly and treacherously deserted the mild, friendly rule of the Ptolemies, and given themselves over to the house of Seleucus, they had fallen under that deadly persecution which had led to their independence and to their fatal alliance with the Romans. The Levant has an enervating climate for men of European birth, and the Greeks of Antioch dete- riorated in a few generations. The Romans con- quered them in due time, and made Antioch the head-quarters of the Proconsul of Syria. Then it became more magnificent than ever, and was con- sidered as the third city in the empire — Rome itself, and Seleucia on the Tigris, being its only superiors in wealth, splendour, and population. Beautiful gardens bordered the river, and the delicious breezes from the Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 107 mountains and the sea made it a favourite resort of the Ramans, who regarded the station there as the most delightful • that could be assigned to officer or soldier. Indeed, the legions were apt to live so much at their ease there as to be hardly fit for serious warfare when summoned thence. Such a climate, with no real cares of state, could not fail to demoralize the people, and as Greeks could not help being quick-witted and excitable, the games and shows of the theatre occupied them almost to frenzy. They were extremely turbulent and fanciful, and gave much trouble to their rulers by the frequent frivolous disturbances that broke out among them, and were further provoked by the universal turn for bestowing nicknames. The Jews, who had continued to flourish and trade there through all the dianges of rule, were the most trustworthy part of the population. And this was the first place, beyond the confines of the Holy Land, where the believers, when scattered by Herod Agrippa's violence, came and brought the knowledge of the truth with them. Here the better sort of heathens, who had begun to regard the religion of the Jews as a refuge from the weary gaieties, shows, and strifes of Antioch, eagerly accepted the still higher teaching. And here the idle, laughing popu- lation bestowed on the believers that nickname which is our chiefest glory — that of Christians. Here was the first centre of action of St Paul's teaching among the Gentiles, and here he found the one Gentile Evangelist, St Luke, companion of the Digitized by VjOOQIC io8 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. Saints ; but here, too, was a strong contention between the Jews and Gentiles. And so distasteful to the Jews were the habits of the Greek converts, that even St Peter was, for a time, led to hold aloof from those who were not bom to the Jewish ritual. It seems that this dislike prevailed so strongly that the Jewish and Gentile Christians could not at first be gathered under the rule of a single bishop, and St Peter, having appointed Euodias for the Jewish Christians, Ignatius was placed by St John over the Gentile believers. After the death of Euodias the Jewish part of the Church, having become less opinionated, were ready to come under the rule of one who, if we read his story aright, was of their own nation by birth, but so brought up as to be above the mere Jewish prejudices. And when his master was taken away from his head, Ignatius was the connecting link with the days of the Saviour's presence upon earth, and was revered accordingly. Armies might march, parties might rage, revellers might laugh, crowds might shout through those wide streets and make the colonnades ring, now with intoxicated merriment, now with rage and derision, but in one quarter of the city a grave, gentle, childlike man was showing what love and purity were, and keeping those around him in continual mind how far their hidden life lay above and beyond that of the world sunk in wickedness around them. In the place of worship, where believers gs^thered around him to celebrate their feast, he taught them to sing hymns and psalms antiphonally — that is, one Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT, 109 side answering another, and the verse most appro- priate to the season recur at intervals. So sweet and elevating was the sound 'that it was whispered that even thus he had heard the angels praising God in heaven ; but, at any rate, it is certain that his master, St John, had heard the angelic choirs replying to one another : and even on earth, it was thus that many of the psalms had been sung by bodies of priests and Levites on the Temple steps, where Igna- tius would have heard them in his boyhood. There is no trace of persecution at Antioch for many years. Indeed, Ignatius ruled between forty and fifty years without apparently being molested by the heathen government ; but in the year 115 Antioch was shaken and almost destroyed by a tremendous earth- quake, and the light-minded population in their terror began to imagine that the gods were offended at their desertion by so many worshippers. Numerous great catastrophes had happened in the Roman world ol late, and the dread and terror that were spreading over men's minds made them imagine that the gods were to be appeased by terrifying the Christians back to their services. The savage Emperor Domitian had perished, and the men who in succession came to the purple after him were not reckless tyrants, but thoughtful and able men, bred up in the discipline of the army, anxious to be just, and with a strong craving to restore the old self-ruling, majestic cha- racter of the ancient Roman, of what they deemed the golden age of their commonwealth. Trajan, the reigning emperor, was one of these Digitized by VjOOQIC no IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT, men ; upright, hardworking, and sensible. He had striven hard that all persons should have justice, and when the question of persecution of the Christians had been set before him by his firiend Pliny, he had first caused a careful inquiry to be made into their prac- tices, and then, he had desired that no one should be encouraged to inform against them, though if they were brought before the tribunals, the law must take its course. Trajan himself was in the East at the time of the earthquake at Antioch, and in the fierce excitement and terror it occasioned, and the wild accusations raised against the Christians, the aged Ignatius, pro- bably knowing his just and reasonable character, thought it advisable for the benefit of his flock, to present himself before him, and rebut the unreasonable charges laid against the Church. Trajan's Eastern experiences had, however, alarmed him since he wrote his moderate letter to Pliny. There had been great insurrections of the Eastern Jews, the Bishop of Pella, Simeon, had been put to death chiefly because his descent from David kept the Roman governors anxious ; and the emperor was disposed to ridicule and trample on whatever would not accommodate itself to the great uniform Roman system. Seated on his ivory chair, his lictors round him with their bundles of rods, the purple-robed old weather-beaten soldier, in whom was centred all the might of the Roman Empire, then at its very widest extent, gazed on the pure calm countenance of the aged man, in its firm gentleness, and his first words were bitter and ungracious, as using Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT in a term, literally meaning bad demon, but applied generally to signify an unlucky wretch, he exclaimed, "Who art thou, Kakodemon, who dost dare to transgress my commands, and cause others to perish miserably ? " The bishop gave the name by whicii he was usually known, — Ignatius Theophorus. " What is this Theophorus ? " demanded Trajan. "It means one who beareth God in his heart," returned the prisoner. " Dost thou aver," returned Trajan, " that we bear not in our hearts the gods who aid us to conquer our enemies ? " To this old doctrine, perceived by Socrates of old, when there was nothing better to perceive, Ignatius answered, "The demons whom you adore are no gods, for there is but one God who made the heavens and the earth and all that is therein, and one jESUS CHRIST, His Only Son, to whose Kingdom I long to come." " You mean," said the emperor, " Him who was crucified under Pontius Pilate." "Even so. He it is who by His death crucified sin with the origin of sin, triumphed over the malice of demons, and cast them down beneath the feet of those who bear Him in their heart," replied Ignatius. " Then, you carry this Christ in your heart ? " asked Trajan. "Assuredly, for is it not written, 'I will dwell in them and walk in them ? ' " It seems as if Trajan could have understood the Digitized by VjOOQIC 112 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. guiding presence of a genius or demon, such as the Socratic philosophy recognised, but to have these beings identified with one single crucified Man was foolishness to him; and, besides, Antioch must be appeased, and an example made to intimidate the sect So he spoke, — " We decree that Ignatius, who says he bears the Crucified within him, should be bound and carried to Rome to be thrown to the beasts, and become a spectacle to the people." In a transport of ecstacy, Ignatius exclaimed, " I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou hast given me love for Thee, and hast granted me to be bound with chains, even as was Thine Apostle Paul ; " and so saying, he himself assisted in fastening on his chains, and placed himself in the hands of the soldiers who were to have him in custody. Ten soldiers were appointed to keep him, and he was sent to Rome by a strangely circuitous route. It would seem that the prudent and not inhuman emperor thought that much might be made of his example by exhibiting him far and wide, and perhaps also, that though the sight of his execution at Antioch might excite the wild passions of the oriental Greeks to frenzy and tumult, yet that he might be saved at Rome. Some of his friends started at once for Rome to meet him there, and three were allowed to accompany him — Philo, a Cilician deacon. Reus, and Agatho- podes, who is believed to have written the history of his latter days. But if the notion was entertained of making his misery serve as a warning to the Chris- Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 113 tians, it was a failure. The old man had kept through life the childlike, joyous, lowly temper that had once been held up an example to the disciples, and was so much delighted to be treading the same path as the holy men he had revered in his childhood, that no ill usage could sadden him. Wherever his ship touched, he was always to be seen with the same radiant smiling look ; and when the angry soldiers tried to sadden him, he merely called them leopards, who only grew fiercer the more mildly they were met They took him by the route that must have suited him best, — namely, by Smyrna, the bishopric of his beloved friend and fellow disciple, Polycarp, who, though much younger than he, must have felt the meeting as almost bringing back the days when both had sat at the feet of their beloved St John, who had been dead about twelve years. Ignatius was allowed to land, and was detained for some time at Smyrna. His situation was evidently much like that of St Paul forty years before. He would probably not have been put in any prison, but would have been allowed to dwell in a private house, guarded by the soldiers, and perhaps chained by the wrist to them in turn, though more pro- bably this would only have been done when he was out of the house. Indulgence might be purchased for him by his friends from his guards ; he would be permitted the attendance of his companion-ministers who had come with him from home, and would freely receive visits from his friends, probably be even allowed to walk abroad, when chained to the soldier who kept him. Thus he had much constant and I Digitized by VjOOQIC 1 14 IGNA TIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. blessed intercourse with his friend Polycarp ; and all the neighbouring bishops came down to see, for the last time, one so deeply loved and honoured — the last visible link between the great thirty-three years and the subsequent generation. Onesimus came from Ephesus, with four attendants ; the youthful Damas came from Magnesia, Polybius from Tralles : and all were so fervent in love for Ignatius as to have no fears in making their Christian profession thus mani- fest to their enemies. These visits called forth letters from the imprisoned Bishop to the different Churches. It seems as though he regarded the Ephesians as having recovered the holiness they had lost at the time when they were rebuked by St. John ; but then Ignatius did not, like his master, write by inspiration. He begins, — " Ignatius> who is also called Theophorus, to the Church which is at Ephesus, in Asia, deservedly most happy, being blessed in all the greatness and fulness of God the Father, and predestinated before all cen- turies to everlasting, unchangeable glory, joined to- gether and elect through the true Passion and by the Will of the Father and of jESUS Christ our God, full of joy through jESUS Christ in His pure grace." After this greeting, on the model of St Paul's, and the like of which begins all his epistles, Ignatius goes on to say that the Ephesians had become known to him, they having sent to meet him, "on hearing that I was come bound to Syria for the common Name and Hope, trusting to your prayers that it might be granted to me to fight with beasts at Rome, Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 115 that by my witness I may become indeed a follower of Him who 'gave Himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to Grod/ I received your whole number in the name of God in the person of Onesimus, your bishop, a man of unspeakable charity, whom I pray you all to love and to seek to resemble. Blessed be He who hath granted you, being worthy, to obtain such a bishop." If this, indeed, were the runaway slave Onesimus, whom St. Paul called his " son, begotten in his bonds," this was a glorious end after a dark beginning. Ignatius then mentions the other Ephesians who had visited him at the same time. "As to my fellow-servant, Burrhus, your deacon in regard to God, and unspeakably beloved, I beg that he may remain longer, both for your honour and that of your bishop. Crocus also, worthy of God and of you, whom I have received as the visible token of your love to me, hath in all things refreshed me, as the Father of our Lord jESUS CHRIST shall also refresh him ; together with Onesimus and Burrhus, and Euplus and Pronto, by means of whom, as re- gards love, I have beheld all of you. May I always have joy of you, if indeed I be worthy thereof.'* After this affectionate opening, the exhortation in the letter begins by his saying that he does not "seek to command, as though he himself were any great one, since he only now began to be a disciple" — meaning, of course, that this was but the commencement of the pilgrimage towards death, which he prized as a follow- ing in the path of Calvary. His first exhortation is I 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC Ii6 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT to complete communion and fellowship : not that they had failed therein, for he says, " Your worthy priest- hood are in concord with your bishop as are the strings with the lyre, and in your union, jESUS CHRIST is sung, and do ye, man by man, become a choir, that being harmonious in love, and taking up the song of God in unison, ye may with one voice sing to the Father through jESUS CHRIST." " If I," he says, "have in so short a time enjoyed a fellowship — not of man, but of the Spirit, with your bishop — ^bow happy do I reckon you who are joined to him as the Church is to jESUS CHRIST, and as jESUS Christ is to the Father, that so all may agree in One Let no man be deceived : if any man be not within the Altar, he hath not the Bread of God ; for if the prayer of one or two possess such power, how much more that of the bishop and of the whole Church! He, therefore, who forsaketh the assembling of our- selves together is condemned by his pride, for it is written, ' God resisteth the proud.' " Still Onesimus was, he declares, the first to testify to the orderliness and submission of his flock, so that ne did not write by way of reproof, but of warning, quoting to them, from the'r own Epistle from St. Paul, the declaration that there is " One Lord, one Fakh, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." This exhortation to unity is the prelude to a warn- ing against false teachers, whom he bids them avoid as wild beasts, or mad dogs, who bite secretly, and can hardly be healed, since there is but one true Physician Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNA TlUSy THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 1 17 — to Whom, the inference is, they would not resort. With regard to the heathen : " Pray ye without ceasing on behalf of other men, for there is hope of repentance for them that they may attain to God. See then that they be taught by your works, if not otherwise. Be meekness your reply to their wrath, lowliness to their boasting, prayers to their blasphemies; in contrast to their error, be ye stedfast in the faith, and oppose your gentleness to their cruelty. While we take care not to imitate their actions, let us be found their brethren in true kind- ness, and let us seek to be followers of the Lord (than whom was any ever more unjustly used, more desti- tute, more despised?) that so no plant of the devil may be found in you ; but ye may remain in all holiness and sobriety in jESUS CHRIST, both with respect to the flesh and the spirit." He then repeats what his master, St. John, had often spoken and written, that these are "the last times," i,e. that the final dispensation has been vouch- safed, and that no fresh covenant will supersede that brought by our Lord, but that we are living with the expectation of His Second Advent before us, as the close of the present state of things. From this he deduces the same lesson as had been done in the Epistle to the Hebrews by St. Paul, whose connexion with Ephesus he loves to commemorate. " Ye are initiated into the mysteries of the Gospel with Paul the holy, the martyr, the deservedly most happy, in whose footsteps may I be found when I shall attain to God, who in all his epistles makes Digitized by VjOOQIC ii8 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT mention of you in Christ Jesus. Take heed then often to come together to give thanks unto God, and to show forth His praise. For when ye assemble frequently in the same place, the powers of Satan are destroyed, and the destruction he aims at is prevented by the unity of your faith. Nothing is more precious than peace, by which all war, both of heavenly and earthly things, is prevented." A great thought is this, that the union of Christians in public worship is their strength and defence, hold- ing Satan and all our spiritual enemies aloof, and being, as it were, a concentration of the forces of the Church against the powers of evil. But lip-service is not what Ignatius means, for " as the tree is known by its fruit," so Christians by their deeds. What is required is not mere profession, but that a man stand fast in the power of faith to the end. As to the heathen without, meekness would be the best argument, prayers in return for blasphemies, gentleness for cruelty. " It is better for a man to be silent and to be, than to talk and not to be. It is good to teach if we do as we speak. One Master alone spake and did all, and whatsoever He did in silence is worthy of the Father. He who hath the Word of Jesus can even understand His silence, that He may be perfect, and be known even when He speaketh not. There is nothing hid from God. Our very secrets are near unto Him." Among those great mysteries of God which he has spoken of as being in their very silence more eloquent than speech, Ignatius numbers the bringing of our Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. ijg Lord into the world, which came to pass in such awful stillness and reserve. But he adds — " How then was He manifested to the world ? A star shone forth in heaven above all the other stars, the light of \rfiich was unspeakable, while its newness struck men with wonder. And all ^* rest of the stars, with the sun and moon, formed a chorus to this star, and its light was exceedingly great above them all. All things were moved as to whence this great sight might be so unlike to anything else Hence every kind of magic was destroyed, every bond of wicked- ness disappeared, ignorance was removed, and the old kingdom abolished, God Himself having been mani- fested as Man for the renewing of everlasting life." The magic of the great Artemis — "the Ephesian letters" — and all the curious arts of the votaries of the black idol, are here spoken of as destroyed. Already is won the victory of St. Paul and St. John. Ignatius ends this letter to the favoured Church of Ephesus with the promise of another letter, if pos- sible, and entreating that both he himself, and his Church in Syria, might be remembered in their prayers. When he wrote to the Christians who had forsaken the worship of Artemis at the great old city of Mag- nesia on the Maeander, Ignatius seems to have been anxious to strengthen the hands of the young Bishop Damas, who had come to him with his priests, Bassus and ApoUonius, and his deacon Sotio. " It becomes you not," says Ignatius to the Magnesians, " to treat your bishop too familiarly on Digitized by VjOOQIC I20 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. account of his youth ; but to yield him all reverence, having respect to the power of God the Father^ even as I have known even holy priests do, not judging rashly by the youthful appearance of their bishop, but as being themselves prudent in God, submitting to him, or rather not to him, but the Father of jESUS Christ, the Bishop of us all. It is therefore fitting that ye should in no hypocritical fashion give due reverence to your bishop, in honour of Him who has willed us to do, since he that does not so act does not thus so much deceive the bishop that is visible as mock Him who is invisible. All such conduct con- cerns not man, but God, who knows all secrets. It is fitting then, not, only to be called Christians, but to be so in reality, as some call indeed a person bishop, but do all things without him. Such persons seem not to me to have a good conscience." The great argument here, as to the Ephesians, is the dependence of communion above upon fellowship below. And in like manner follows a warning against false teachers, in this case it seems with a special reference to the Gnostics, and also to the Judaizers. Here follows (but only in the longer and more doubt- ful version of the epistle) an explanation of the difference between the Christian Lord's Day and the Jewish Sabbath : *' Those who were bred up in the ancient order of things have come to the possession of a new hope, no longer observing the Sabbath, but living in the obser- vance of the Lord's day, on which also our life has sprung up again by Him and by His death." Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT T2I The longer (and more doubtful) Greek version adds further: "Let us no longer keep the Sabbath after the Jewish manner, and rejoice in days of idleness, • He that does not work, neither let him eat ; ' . . . but let every one of you keep the Sabbath after a spiritual manner, rejoicing in the meditation of the law, not in relaxation of the body." ..." And after the observance of the Sabbath, let every friend of Christ keep the Lord's day as a festival, the Resur- rection day, the queen and chief of all the days." One longs to believe these glorious words respecting our Sunday were those of Ignatius himself; but even if they are not, they come from very old times, and show what the Church has ever felt as to the Birthday of Christ from the dead. Tralles, a small insignificant city, had however sent her bishop, named Polybius, who testified of his flock that they possessed "an unblameable and sincere mind," and gave such an account of them that Ignatius writes, " Ye appear to me to live not after the manner of men, but according to jESUS Christ, who died for us." The usual exhortations follow to unity, to obedience, and to staunchness against those who would make tlieir faith an unsubstantial dream — " Stop your ears when any one speaks to you at variance with Jesus Christ, who was descended from David, and was also of Mary, who was truly born and did eat and drink. He was truly persecuted under Pontius Pilate. He was truly crucified, and truly died in the sight of beings in heaven, on earth, and under the Digitized by VjOOQIC 122 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. earth. He was also truly raised from the dead, His Father quickening Him, even as after the same manner Hu Father will so raise up us who believe in Him by CHRIST jESUS, apart from whom the life is not in us. But if, as some say. He only seemed to suffer, ttien why am I in bonds ? Why do I long to be exposed to the wild beasts? Do I therefore die in vain ? " It is St. Paul's argument, " If Christ be not raised, if the dead rise not at all, why stand we in jeopardy every hour ? " since who would be willing to expose himself to shame, torment, and death for a lie and a delusion ? He thus concludes, "The love of the Smymiotes dnd Ephesians salutes you. Remember in your prayers the Church which is in Syria, from which also I am unworthy to receive my title, as last and least of those thereto belonging. Fare ye well in Jesus Christ, while ye continue subject to the bishop as to the command of God, and in like manner to the presbytery. And do ye, every one, love one another with a single heart. Let my spirit be sancti- fied by yours, not only now, but also when I shall attain unto God. For I am not as yet exposed to danger. But the Father is faithful in jESUS CHRIST to fulfil both your petitions and mine, in whom may ye be found unblameable." This conclusion is in the usual manner of those of the Episcopal letters of the Primitive Church. The next IS much more personal. While Ignatius was still waiting at Smyrna, some Christians set forth for Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 123 Rome by a more direct route than that appointed for the prisoner, and he therefore sent a letter by them to prepare the Romans for his reception — thus, like St Paul, writing to the Roman Church before he had ever visited it His object seems to have been to prevent them from making interces- sions to the Emperor, so as to deprive him of the crown of martyrdom on which his heart was set "Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to the Church visited with mercy, through the majesty of the Most High Father, and Jesus Christ, His only- begotten Son ; also beloved and enlightened through the will of Him that willeth all things which are according to the love of JesuS CHRIST our God, pre- siding also in the place of the region of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honour, worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of ob- taining her every desire, worthy of being deemed holy, ruling over love, named from CHRIST, and from the Father, which I also salute in the name of jESUS Christ, the Son of the Father : " To those who are united, both according to the flesh and spirit, to every one of His commandments ; who are filled inseparably with the grace of God, and are purified from every strange taint, abundance of happiness unblameably in jESUS CHRIST our God : By prayer, I have obtained of God that which I desired, — namely, to see your most worthy faces, and even more than I asked ; for as one in bonds for Christ's sake, I hope to embrace you, if that grace be given me to persevere unto the end. The Digitized by VjOOQIC 124 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. beginning is well-ordered, if I may only receive grace to hold fast to my lot, and that nothing should hinder me therefrom. For I fear lest your love should be hurtful to me ; for it is easy for you to obtain what you desire, and hard for me to attain to God, if I be spared. I would not please man but God, as ye have pleased Him. For I shall never have a more fit opportunity of reaching unto God, nor ye, if ye remain quiet, ever have the honour of a better work. If you speak not concerning me, I shall go to God ; but if you love me after the flesh, I shall return to the race. You can obtain no greater benefit for me than to be offered in sacrifice to God while the altar is still ready ; that, when ye are gathered together in love, ye may sing praise to the Father, through Christ Jesus, that God has vouchsafed to bring a Bishop of Syria from the East unto the West It is good to set [i.e. like the sun] from the world unto God, that I may rise again to Him. " Ye have never envied any one ; ye have taught others. Now I desire that ye should now show forth in your own conduct what ye have enjoined on others. Only entreat for me both inward and outward strength, that I may not only speak, but will ; and that I may not merely be called a Christian, but really be found to be one. For if I be truly found [a Christian], I may also be called one, and be then deemed faithful, when I shall no longer be seen by the world. Nothing visible is eternal. 'For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.' For even our God, Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE :SA2NT. 125 Jesus Christ, now that He is with the Father, is all the more manifested. Christianity is not a thing of opinion only, but also of might. " I am writing to all the Churches, and telling them that I shall willingly die for God, if ye hinder me not. I beseech that you will not unseasonably love me. Suffer me to become food for wild beasts. I am God's wheat, and need to be ground by the teeth of beasts to become a pure loaf of Jesus CHRIST. Caress the beasts in hopes that they may become my grave, leaving nothing of me to be a care to any one. I shall be a disciple of jESUS Christ even when the world sees nothing of my body. Pray the Lord for me, that I may be a worthy victim. I command you not, like Peter and Paul ; they were Apostles, I am but a convict ; they were free, I am but a slave ; but if I suffer I shall be set free by Jesus Christ, who will raise me up to perfect liberty. I am learning, in the chains I bear for Him, to desire nothing temporal or vain." He then goes on to say that "from Syria to Rome I am fighting with beasts by sea and land, by day and night, being bound to ten leopards — that is, a band of soldiers, — ^who become the worse when they receive benefits; but these ill-treatments train me more and more, yet am not I hereby justified. May I delight in those beasts that are prepared for me; and I pray that they may devour me speedily, and not deal with me as with some others, whom they durst not touch ; I would rather force them. Pardon me, I know what is for my good Now I begin to be Digitized by VjOOQIC 126 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT a disciple. No creature, visible nor invisible, can hinder me from attaining to CHRIST. Let the fire, the cross, troops of beasts, dismemberment of limbs, separation of bones, destruction of my whole body, the worst torments of the devil, all come upon me, so I may win CHRIST. The joys of earth and all the kingdoms of the world would profit me nothing. It is better to die for jESUS CHRIST than to reign over the whole earth. The prince of this world would have me, and break my will, which is bound to God. Do not you take part with him. " All the pleasures of the world, and all the king- doms of this earth, profit me nothing. It is better for me to die for jESUS Christ than to reign over the utmost ends of the earth. ' For what shall a man be profited, if he gain the whole world, but lose his] own soul?' Him I seek, who died for us: Him I desire, who rose again for our sake. This is the gain which is laid up for me. Pardon me, brethren : do not hinder me from living, do not wish to keep me in a dying state; and while I desire to belong to God, do not ye give me over to the world. Suffer me to enter into pure light When I am come therein, I shall indeed be a man of God. Permit me to be a follower of the Passion of my God. If any one has Him within himself, let him consider what I desire, and let him have compassion on me, as knowing how I am straitened. " The prince of this world would fain carry me away, and corrupt my disposition towards God. Let none of you help him ; rather be ye on my side, — that Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD^LIKE SAINT. 127 is, on the side of God. Do not speak of jESUS Christ, and yet set your desires on the world. Let not envy find a dwelling-place among you. Even should I, when I am come among you, seek to persuade you, then hearken not unto me, but unto those things which I now write to you. For though I am alive while I write to you, yet I am eager to die. My love has been crucified, and there is no fire in me needing fuel ; but there is within me a water that liveth and speaketh, saying to me inwardly, ' Come to the Father.' I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of jESUS Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham ; and I desire the drink of God, — namely. His blood, which is incorrup- tible love and eternal life. " I no longer wish to live after the manner of men. neither shall, if ye consent Be ye willing, then, that ye also may have your desires fulfilled. I entreat you, in this brief letter, give credit to me. jESUS Christ will make manifest that I speak truly. He is the Mouth altogether free from falsehood, by whom the Father has truly spoken. ** Pray ye for me, that I may reach the goal. I have not written to you according to the flesh, but a&ording to the will of God. If I suffer, ye will have loved me ; if I am rejected, ye will have hated me. " Remember in your prayers the Church in Syria, which now has God for its Shepherd, instead of me. Digitized by VjOOQIC Hk' 128 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. Jesus Christ alone will oversee it, and your love will also regard it But as for me, I am ashamed to be counted one of them ; for indeed I am not worthy, as being the very last of them, and one born out of due time. But I have obtained mercy to be somebody, if I shall attain to God. " My spirit salutes you, and the love of the Churches that have received me in the name of jESUS CHRIST, and not as a mere wayfarer. For even those Churches which were not near to me in the way — I mean ac- cording to the flesh — ^have come out to meet me, city by city. "Now I write these things to you from Smyrna by the Ephesians, who are deservedly most happy. There is also with me, along with many others. Crocus, one dearly beloved by me. As to those who have gone before me, from Syria to Rome, for the glory of God, I believe that you are acquainted with them ; to whom then do ye make known that I am at hand. For they are all worthy, both of God and of you ; and it is becoming that you should refresh them in all things. I have written these things unto you, on the day before the ninth of the kalends of Sep- tember [that is, on the twenty-third day of August]. Fare ye well to the end, in the patience of jESUS Christ. Amen." It is hard to the cold hearts and timid nerves of our time to enter into this jealous eagerness for martyrdom and earnest pleading against being inter- ceded for. But in one who, it might be, could recollect the Great Sacrifice on the Cross, could look back to the Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 129 weight and sadness of the desolation of the Passion evening, and to the transcendent joy — that no man had ever taken from him — ^who from childish, half- comprehending awe, had grown each year into deeper understanding, fuller participation in, and higher reve- rence for, that great oblation — who had watched each of his apostolic masters one by one follow in those bleeding steps — it was little wonder that longing for such a death as the fittest crown for a lifetime of self- devotion should be predominant. And be it remem- bered that only this joyous hopefulness and eagerness for suffering could have borne up the Christians, so as to show that glorious example that amazed the enemy, and finally conquered. The blood of the martyrs would not have been the seed of the Church if the martyrs had been merely resigned instead of joyful, and the slightest faltering in Ignatius — any token of desire to escape — ^would have been the pre- lude to multitudes of denials. And with heartfelt earnestness he continues to show his satisfaction in his present condition and hopes for the future, pro- vided the Romans would not inopportunely interfere. The day before the kalends of September was the last of August, and this was the last on which Ignatius should write from Smyrna. The summons to embark arrived, and no doubt the bay of Smyrna beheld such a parting as St. Paul's had been with his beloved Church — when the Christians brought him on their way with wives and children, received his blessing as they knelt on the sea-shore, watched his look full of steadfast joy, and returned sorrowing K Digitized by VjOOQIC I30 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT, for themselves that they should see that face no more. Ignatius had known many such partings, but then he had been left behind ; now it was he who had the joy before him. He went on to the goal ; Polycarp must for many a year still toil on in the course. Coasting along the shore in the many-oared ancient vessel, the next stage of this pilgrimage was Troas, whose interest to the Greeks was in the Trojan war, while to Ignatius that undulating plain was dear for St Paul's sake. Here, while again waiting for a time, he received a visit from the Bishop of Philadelphia, of whom he says : " At whose meekness I am struck with admiration^ and whose silence is more effectual than other men's dfecourses." An epistle to* the Philadelphian Church, dedicated to the Ephesian Burrhus, was the consequence of this visit, containing an exhortation as usual to unity, and a warning against schism, especially against Judaism. " It is better," he says, " to receive Christianity from the mouth of one circumcised than Judaism from one uncircumcised; but if they speak not of Christ jESUS, I look on both as pillars and sepulchres inscribed with the names of men." It is from this sentence that it has been inferred that some of the Jews of Philadelphia had become converted, and were now preachers of Christ, whilst, on the other hand, some of the Gentile Christians were being led away by the followers of Simon Magus into a sort of modified Judaism. Another letter was written at the same time to the Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 131 Smymiotes, among whom Ignatius had been sojourn- ing. The chief subject of this letter is faith in the Resurrection of Christ, and warning against those who tried to argue away the miracle, also against those who neglected the Holy Eucharist Then follow thanks for the hospitality that had been shown to his Syrian friends, and an entreaty that a messenger should be sent to Antioch to congratulate the Chris- tians there on being again at peace. Several salu- tations are sent to Smyrniotes, especially to the house of Tavias, a woman named Alee, and " the virgins who are called widows;" by which are understood the deaconesses, who, though never wedded, were sheltered by a widow's garb when they went about to instruct and cherish the poor. Ignatius hoped to have sent like addresses to other Churches, but a sudden summons came to him to embark for Neapolis, in Macedonia. The great Italian feast of the Saturnalia was drawing on, and the guards, who had loitered at first, now pressed him on, that he might arrive in time for his death to be the crowning spectacle to g^ce the Roman holiday. He had only time to write a farewell letter to his friend and fellow-pupil, Polycarp — ^his Bishop, as he greets him, having been so recently dwelling in his diocese : ** Ignatius, who is also called Theophorus, to Poly- carp, JBishop of the Church of the Smymiotes, or rather, who has as his own bishop God the Father and the Lord jESUS CHRIST. Abundant happiness to thee. K 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 133 IGN Alius, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. " Being assured that thy mind is fixed on God as on an immoveable rock, I glorify Grod the more exceed- ingly that I have been counted worthy to see thy blameless face, which I longed after. I beseech thee, by the grace wherewith thou art clothed, to add swiftness to thy race, and ever to exhort all men that so they may be saved." Much of this letter seems to have been modelled upon St. Paul's three apostolical epistles ; and as it was to serve as advice to other Bishops, it is full of exhortation. There are the like counsels as to the manner of dealing with the various members of the Church, and in this more familiar letter these maxims are cast in short, almost proverbial, sentences : — "Watch, as one possessed of the Spirit that sleepeth not " Speak to each man separately, according to the grace that God giveth to thee. " Bear the infirmities of all, as a good soldier. " When the toil is great, the greater is the gain. " If thou love only the good disciples, what thank hast thou } but rather endeavour that the refractory be subdued by thy gentleness. "Every wound cannot be healed by the same plaster; therefore pour water upon that which is inflamed. "Be in all things 'wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove.' " For this cause art thou formed both of flesh and ipirit; that thou mayest deal tenderly with that which comes visibly before thee. Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. I33 " Stand firm as an anvil that is beaten. " It beseemeth a good soldier to be wounded and to conquer; and we ought especially to bear all things for the sake of God, that He also may bear with us." '* Let not widows be n^lected. Be thou, after the Lonl, their guardian and friend. "Despise not slaves, neither let them be puffed up with conceit, but rather let them be the more obedient, for the glory of God, that they may obtain the better liberty." After thus writing to Polycarp alone, Ignatius pro- ceeds to address a few parting counsels to the entire Church of Smyrna : — " Labour together, struggle together, run together suffer together, sleep together, awake together, as the stewards and fellow-soldiers and servants of God. " Please Him under whom ye fight, and who giveth you your wages. " Let none be found as a deserter. "Let your baptism endure as your armour; your faith as your helmet, your love as your spear, your patience as a complete panoply. "A Christian hath no power over himself, but must always be at leisure for God's service." " Inasmuch as I have not been able to write to all the Churches, because I must suddenly sail from Troas to Neapolis as the Will ordains, do thou, as Digitized by VjOOQIC T34 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. being possessed of Divine judgment, write to the adjacent Churches, that they may do likewise, such as are able, in sending messengers to the others, and transmitting letters through those who are sent, that thou mayest be glorified by a work which shall be remembered for ever, as indeed thou art worthy to be." This seems to be a handing on of that " care of all the Churches " that first St. Paul, then St. John, and afterwards Ignatius himself, had exercised by weight of inspiration, character, and experience, which made them chief authorities over younger bishops. It was a presidency that in time became attached to cer- tain sees, which were termed Patriarchates, of which Ignatius* own Antioch is one, but at this time it belonged to men rather than to places. The last written words of the saint are : — "I salute all by name; in particular the wife of Epitropus, with all her house and children. I salute Attalus, my beloved. I salute him who shall be deemed worthy to go into Syria. Grace shall be with him for ever, and with Polycarp that sends him. I pray for your happiness for ever in our God, jESUS Christ, by whom continue ye in the unity and under the protection of God. I salute Alee, my dearly beloved. Fare ye well in the Lord." Such was the shepherd's song that came cheerily to the watchers of the fold of Smyrna — the last of tlie letters that have been lianded down by the Greek Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT, 135 Church, and which cause Ignatius to be counted as the first of the Greek Fathers of the Church. None of them are argumentative or controversial ; they are chiefly full of simple, practical exhortations, taking the training of the recipients for granted, and breath- ing in every line the child-like love, hope, and reliance of the nursling of the Apostles, the pupil of St. John. Immediately after, taking St. Paul's own course, Ignatius was embarked for Macedonia, and crossing the iEgean Sea, landed at Neapolis, and then was led by his chained wrists over hill and valley to Philippi. Full of memories was that city in that rich plain, now full of the waving corn and luscious grape. There was the river-bank where the few Jews had met for prayer, and where Asiatic Lydia had learnt to believe. The Philippians, so beloved by St. Paul, and the only persons to whom he addressed no word of blame, do not seem to have degenerated. They welcomed the great companion of the saints with reverence, ministered to him during his brief sojourn among them, and, when he set forth again, troops of them came with him on his way, and one and another would try to support and lighten the weight of the chains, his much prized jewels. Along the paved Roman way he toiled, ever seeing the end nearer and brighter, as his pilgrimage continued across Macedonia and Epirus to embark at Epidamnus. He saw Puteoli, and the last disap- pointment of his life was that there was so high a wind that he could not be allowed to land there, and Digitized by VjOOQIC 136 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. to tread in the very footsteps of St Paul, but that he was carried on to the port of Ostia at the mouth of the Tiber. Here a number of Christians, among them his own Syrian friends, came down to meet him, rejoicing at the sight of the holy man, and entreating him to kt them make intercession for his life ; but he would not listen to this, reminding them* of the arguments in his letter, and calling on them to kneel down with him, and pray for the peace and love of the Churches. It was the Sigillaria, the last day of the Saturnalia, to us the 20th of December, and the guards felt bound to hasten on their prisoner to furnish the crown- ing diversion of that mad season. Ostia was eighteen miles from Rome, and the long march must be made along the broad paved road that led towards the seven-hilled city, whose horizontal-lined buildings began to become visible, as the grave yet scarcely sad procession slowly moved onwards, passed on their way by many a gay fantastic chariot or litter, on the way to the scene of festivity. The inmates — perhaps a staid, well-tried old officer ; perhaps a gay perfumed youth in Greek garb, with curled locks or in some absurd disguise ; or a proud lady, covered with jewels and charms, and her hair drawn up and curled in imitation of a helmet — ^would look out eagerly, and then hasten on to secure their seats in the amphi- theatre, before the most interesting part of the games should begin. They would be tiiere long before the white-haired old Eastern man, chained on either side Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 137 by the wrist to a soldier, and surrounded by a crowd of grave men and women, chiefly workmen and slaves set free from toil by the festival, dark Orientals, be- lieving Jews who had found the true Jerusalem, fair- haired Goths and Celts, once slaves, now truly free ; and no doubt with many a brave soldier, and more than one high-bred noble mingling among them, all anxious in turn to hear one of the valiant hopeful words, or win a personal blessing from the firm, sweet voice of him who was that day the happiest man at the feast of the Sigillaria. Beneath the gate they passed, and here the crowd grew thicker and madder. The street was lined with booths, where were sold little grotesque absurd figures in shapes compounded of human and animal forms, which were called sigillcBy and gave their name to the day ; and little children, the boys in white dresses, with a golden ball hung round their necks, under the care of their pedagogue slaves, turned round as they bar- 2^ained for the toys, to wish themselves in the amphi- theatre. Other booths displayed wax tapers, with which at night everybody would be armed, madly trying to put out their neighbour s and keep their own lighted ; and all the street was full of figures disguised in loose robes, and with broad, shady, low-crowned hats drawn low over their brows, or in more fantastic shapes, wear- ing comic masks or the heads of animals, and darting hither and thither, playing the most fantastic tricks. It was the day of universal frolic and licence, the maddest, merriest day of all the year ; and the evening was to end by each party choosing a mock king, who Digitized by VjOOQIC 138 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. was to lead their revels and freaks to the drollest heights. Through all this reckless mirth, the soldiers cleared the way for their prisoner. Outside the walls he had looked on the great family mausoleums of the Romans; within, on the slopes of the Aventine, which bore colon- naded temples, two in especial to the Bona Dea and to Diana. Statues of the gods were set out in the porticoes to do honour to the day, and would seem to the Christian troop tokens of more entire death than even the monuments outside. All the buildings were flat — nothing seemed to rise and aspire to heaven ; they were grand, majestic, costly, but heavy and de- pressing. Only in the Forum, on the other side of the thickly-inhabited Palatine Hill, was rising one tall column, spirally decorated with sculptures of all Trajam's exploits. Little thought Ignatius that one day that column would be surnjounted by the figure of St. Paul. He was now on the Triumphal Way, the broad street where the conqueror's chariot was woat to be drawn by white horses ; but never yet had so real a victor * gone to his triumph along that patih of glory, never one wh5se crown was so incorruptible, never one to whom the slave's whisper that he must die was the veritable note of glory. Full in the midst, confi-ontimg the prisoner, stood a colossal statue, 112 feet high, in marble, made at first to represent Nero, the slayer of St. Paul, but * The scene of the entrance and execution of St. Paul was *in another direction. Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. 139 since converted by a few touches into Apollo, the god of the sun and poetry. Beyond this colossus lay the great Flavian Amphitheatre, called from it the Colosseum ; and here closed the procession. The Roman Christians received the blessing from him in whose presence they had rejoiced with deep reverent awe for those eighteen miles ; Burrhus, Agathocles and Crocus, had his last embrace, and with his own Syrian friends took their leave of him ; and he was admitted with his guard at one of the low dark archways in the basement of the building. Such of the followers as could procure seats, crowded up the stairs and vaulted corridors to the places to which their station gave them a right. They were of the old Roman mould, albeit Christians, and shrinking nerves would not withhold them from the sight of the good confes* sion witnessed by the holy man of Antioch. It must by this time have been late in the day, but such spectacles were at this period rare, and being the strangest of all, wene reserved for the last. The prefect read the letter given him by the soldiers; fresh sand was strewn over the arena that had been the scene of the combats of the gladiators, and the martyr was led forth into the vast glittering space, around which rose on all sides the sloping hill of eager faces, tier behind tier. In the dens beneath were heard the growls and roars of hungry lions, and Ignatius broke out with that favourite thought of his : " I am the Lord's wheat I must be ground by the teeth of beasts to become the pure bread of Jesus Christ." Digitized by VjOOQIC HO IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. As he spoke, out bounded two fierce lions and fell on him. One* who has actually lain in a lion's grasp has told us that the numbing, lulling effect deprives it of the anguish one would have expected from it, and at any rate Ignatius' struggle was very brief — in a few seconds the lions had left no remnant of him but a few of his larger bones. The Christians went to their homes, weeping and praying, entreating to be comforted for their loss by some token of the joy of the sufferer ; and there were some among them who, when they fell asleep> believed that they beheld the martyr in his glory. We give the concluding words of their own letter : — " They pushed forth therefore from the place whicli is called Portus ; and (the fame of all relating to the holy martyr being already spread abroad) we met the brethren full of fear and joy ; rejoicing indeed because they were thought worthy to meet with Theophorus, but struck with fear because so eminent a man was being led to death. Now he enjoined some to keep silence who, in their fervent zeal, were saying that they would appease the people, so that they should not demand the destruction of this just one. He being immediately aware of this through the Spirit, and having saluted them all, and begged of them to show a true affection towards him, and having dwelt [on this point] at greater length than in his epistle^ and having persuaded them not to envy him has- tening to the Lord, then, after he had, with all the brethren kneeling, entreated the Son of God in • Dr. Livingstone Digitized by VjOOQIC !• Digitized by VjOOQIC Digitized by VjOOQIC IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-UKE SAINT. 141 behalf of the Churches, that a stop might be put to the persecution, and that mutual love might continue among the brethren, he was led with all haste into the amphitheatre. Then, being immediately thrown in, according to the command of Caesar given some time ago, the public spectacles being just about to close (for it was then a solemn day, as they deemed it, being that which is called the thirteenth in the Roman tongue, on which the people were wont to assemble in more than ordinary numbers), he was thus cast to the wild beasts close beside the temple, that so by them the desire of the holy martyr Ignatius should be fulfilled, according to that which is written, * The desire of the righteous is acceptable,' to the effect that he might not be troublesome to any of the brethren by the gathering of his remains, even as he had in his epistle expressed a wish beforehand that so his end might be. For only the harder portions of his holy remains were left, which were conveyed to Antioch and wrapped in linen, as an inestimable treasure left to the holy Church by the gfrace which was in the martyr. "Now these things took place on the thirteenth day before the kalends of January, — ^that is, on the twentieth of December ; Sura and Senecio being then the consuls of the Romans for the second time. Having ourselves been eye-witnesses of these things, and having spent the whole night in tears within the house, and having entreated the Lord, with bended knees and much prayer, that He would give us weak men full assurance respecting the things which were Digitized by VjOOQIC 142 IGNATIUS, THE CHILD-LIKE SAINT. done, it came to pass, on our falling into a brief slumber, that some of us saw the blessed Ignatius suddenly standing by us and embracing us, while others beheld him again praying for us, and others still saw him dropping with sweat, as if he had just come from his great labour, and standing by the Lord. When, therefore, we had with great joy wit- nessed these things, and had compared our several visions together, we sang praise to God, the Giver of all good things, and expressed our sense of the hap- piness of the holy martyr ; and now we have made known to you both the day and the time [when these things happened], that, assembling ourselves together according to the time of his martyrdom, we may have fellowship with the champion and noble martyr of Christ, who trod under foot the devil, and perfected the course which, out of love to Christ, he had de- sired, in Christ Jesus our Lord ; by whom, and with whom, be glory and power to the Father, with the Holy Spirit, for evermore. Amen." In such honour was Ignatius held at Antioch, that even now, when the Christians there are divided by a schism, the head of the Monophysite, or schismatical branch of them, always takes, on his appointment, the revered name of Ignatius.* * The date of the martyrdom has been regarded as uncertain. Most Christian histories place it as early aa 107, but Trajan's visit to Antioch took place in 115, so that this is more probably the time of it It is also said that the earthquake of Antioch immediately followed the condemnation; but it is far more probable that the "ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" would be sacrificed to appease the terrified people, who thought the gods offended by the desertion of their altars. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER IX. THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. ** His chamber all was hanged about with rolls, And old records from auncient times derived ; Some made in books, some in long parchment scrolls That were worm-eaten all and full of canker holes." Spenser, 754^ Faety Queene, Before passing further in our history, it may be well to dwell on the many doubts and difficulties that have hung round the seven beautiful Letters that we have quoted. Each of the greater lights among the holy men of the Primitive Church seems either to have written with his own hand, or caused his young deacons and scribes to write from his dictation, letters to the Christians of the other cities commended to his notice : these were transcribed by Christian copyists, and handed about either privately or openly, according to the danger of the times. Sometimes the Christians were required to give up their books. Then they would hide the more sacred, and allow those of lesser value to be seized ; and in many cases large numbers of manu- scripts were entirely lost Those which stood in the Digitized by VjOOQIC 144 • THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. highest esteem were copied and re-copied, and at length, when monasteries began to be founded, were placed in their libraries ; but this was not till more than three centuries later, and in the meantime many books had been lost, and many more again perished in the desolation of the break-up of the Roman empire, or by the carelessness of the monks who had the custody of them. Thus there are numerous authors who are only known through fragments quoted by others, or even merely by name. Ignatius, it will be observed, speaks of an intention to write further letters, which was probably pre- vented by the suddenness with which his long-delayed martyrdom came at last. Such a sentence was, how- ever, almost an invitation to the forgeries that were scarcely considered as deceits, until a comparatively recent period. It seems to have been thought that so long as the contents of a book were good or beau- tiful, it did not matter who wrote it, or whether it represented the original thoughts of the author. Moreover, when every work was transcribed by hand, it was entirely at the mercy of the scribe, who might be either stupid, careless, or conceited ; and while in the former cases he made errors, in the latter he would put in what he thought the author ought to have said, either by way of ornament or explanation. Sometimes, also, a great name was appended to writings entirely spurious, especially when there was reason to think that any analogous composition had once existed and had been lost. The Jews, who alone had possessed writings that it Digitized by VjOOQIC THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. 145 was of vital importance to preserve, had guarded them by making it an absolute crime to deviate by one "jot or tittle " from the most precise imitation of the ori- ginal Hebrew manuscript, and thus the Holy Scrip- ture was guarded from any really serious variation. Yet among the Greek Jews there were some persons who added chapters, or wrote in great names of old. Thus we find three chapters added to the prophecy of Daniel, many passages to the history of Esther, and the whole Book of Wisdom, bearing the name of Solomon ; but the providential care exercised over the Hebrew Scriptures has enabled the faithful from the first to sever between the genuine work of inspi- ration and these additions, which were placed among the writings called the Apocrypha. Christians in like manner guarded the Apostolic books, which the guidance of the Holy Spirit taught them from the first to hold sacred above others that seemed to knock at the door of the sacred treasure- house, and yet not be admitted for want of the ring of the true metal. Such was an epistle claiming to be by St. Paul to the Laodiceans ; another professing to be by St. Barnabas, but confuting its high claim by its own internal evidence ; and one really written by St Paul's pupil, Clement of Rome, beautiful, wise, excellent, but not inspired. If such were the perils that surrounded the Holy Word itself, far greater were the difficulties in pre- serving intact the works of men, holy indeed, but without that wonderful salt of life that has guarded the veritable work of inspiration. The habit of read- L Digitized by VjOOQIC 146 THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. ing these epistles aloud in the devotional assemblies of the Church, like a sort of sermon, would increase the temptation to put in touches to render them more effective, instructive, or comprehensible. So it came to pass, that not only were there extant five epistles falsely ascribed to Ignatius — including one to the Blessed Virgin herself, and another to St John, three of them only in a Latin translation, and all showing in every line that they were mere fancy compositions of a late period — ^but that of the real seven epistles there were two Greek copies, one much longer than the other, and, though agreeing with it in the main, amplifying most of the maxims, and enforcing them with a crowd of Scripture quotations and examples from both Old and New Testaments. Till within the last four centuries, men were content to drift onwards, accepting what was good or edifying as such, without curiously scanning the authority on which they received it ; but when controversy began, and each party appealed to antiquity, it became necessary to know what antiquity really said ; and there were some who considered that the manifestly spurious five, as well as the double version of the seven, proved that all alike were the produce of fraud or error ; while other scholars were willing to give up the five and the interpolations of the longer version, but held fast by the shorter seven, as the actual words of the pupil of St. John. One argument used by the incredulous was, that the epistles use strong language in condemnation of doctrines that are not known to have been rife in the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. 147 time of Ignatius ; but to this it would be replied, that he might probably have watched the beginnings of evils that did not come to a head until long after. Another point, and that which made the question especially pressing, was that the letters strongly enforce submission to the Bishop of each Church, treating such obedient harmony as the very token and means of union with the great Head of the Church. But some of those bodies of Christians who since the Reformation had dispensed with episcopal government, deemed the system a growth later than the second century ; and instead of admitting this testimony to the primitive existence of the hierarchy, declared that it proved that the documents them- selves were a fabrication of a later period ; while, on the other hand, the language of the letters seemed only natural and befitting in the eyes of those who regarded bishops as the direct successors of the Apostles and channels of grace. The English Church of the seventeenth century was especially anxious on this head James Usher, Archbishop of Armagh, and one of the most learned men our country ever produced, was especially earnest in the study of such Eastern literature as might elucidate both the Holy Scripture and early Church history. Every possible assistance was given him by Government, and it was even enjoined that every captain of a ship who made a voyage to the Levant should bring home some manuscript with him. Most of them brought the Koran, as the easiest to come by ; but some precious works were L2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 148 THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. obtained by this means, though nothing throwing light on the Ignatian controversy. A clergyman named Robert Huntington, who was chaplain to the British merchants at Aleppo, was eagerly interested in the research for something that might throw light upon the "Ignatian controversy/' and wrote many letters to Greek ecclesiastics, especially to the superiors of the old monasteries, which had been mostly founded in the fourth and fifth centuries; and, standing in the midst of desolate wildernesses, or perched on the summit of nearly inaccessible precipices, had for ages defied the Mahometan violences, and had never failed to be supplied with monks from the scattered Chris- tian population. Among the rolls of parchment stored in the strongest towers of their buildings, even from the time of their foundation, there must surely be some Greek or Syriac version of the epistles, which would prove the question of their authenticity, and old catalogues made it certain that such writings had once existed. But since the Eastern Christians had fallen under the Turkish power, they had been poor and oppressed, and life had become so difficult to them that the original keenness and vigour of the Greek mind had either passed away, or only was exercised on matters of buying and selling. The monks came from a hard- worked, ignorant race of people, and their minds were sound asleep ; the stores in their libraries had no interest for them, and though venerated for their age, the sacredness of their subjects, and the holiness of their writers, were unopened, unread, not distinguished Digitized by VjOOQIC THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. 149 from one another, and forgotten, so that it was with great difficulty that Mr. Huntington could obtain the scantiest information. One convent, however, afforded good hopes. It was at Nitria, in Egypt, an oasis in the desert on the left bank of the west branch of the Nile. Here lies a valley surrounding lakes impregnated with natron, a native salt or soda, anciently used for making soap, and once supposed to be the same as nitre, which takes its name from this place, which forms a green, well-watered spot in the deserts of Egypt. Scarcely fifty years after the death of Ignatius, Christians who thought to escape the evil of the world themselves, as well as to intercede for their brethren, by uninter- rupted prayer, had begun to seek out this solitude, and dwelt there in small separate huts, only uniting for common prayer. They are said to have preferred the Nitrian valley because of the words of Jeremiah — " though thou wash thee with nitre ; " — and as this longing for incessant devotion spread among the Eastern Christians, their numbers increased, so that in the early part of the fifth century there were actually five thousand of these monks, living no longer in separate huts, but in many different build- ings, where, however, each made a solitude for him- self by silence, except at stated times. At one time, it is said, there were no less than three hundred and sixty-six monasteries in the valley. Their church and their library they had in common, and, as many of them were studious men, there was a great reposi- tory of Christian literature among them. The chief Digitized by VjOOQIC ISO THE STORY OF THE EPJSTLES. of their monasteries was called by their Latin visitors that of "St. Mary Deipara," ie. the Mother of God ; and the whole valley took the name of Scete, or of the Ascetics. Another adjacent monastery was named after St. Macarius, one of the first of the hermit saints of Egypt, and the pride of the valley was, and still is^ a beautiful tamarind-tree, which is said to have grown out of the staff of St. Ephrem which he planted in the sand. When the Mahometans conquered Egypt, they at first spared the monks, because they had a respect for the stem hermit life of devotees of all kinds ; but after a time they fell upon Nitria, plundered, de- stroyed, and sold many of the monks for slaves. Still the hermits returned, and at last permission was gained to surround the convents with a high wall, to secure them from the attacks of the wandering Arabs in the desert. From this time they seem to have afforded a secure refuge to the monks, and likewise to the manuscripts, which were collected from both Syria and Egypt as a welcome gift and precious charge for the recluses. From time to time reports reached Europe of the wealth of sacred literature here stored up, and Robert Huntington, who had left home whilst Arch- bishop Usher and Bishop Pearson were diligently investigating the Ignatian Epistles, accomplished a journey from Aleppo to Nitria, in hopes of there finding the much-desired Syrian copy. Though facilities for European travellers in the East were much fewer in the year 1679 than at present, Mr. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. 151 Huntington reached Nitria, and saw the monks ; but they could not understand the object of their visitor, and probably feared him, for at St. Mary Deipara they refused to let him into their library, and only allowed him to see one grand manuscript of the Bible ; nor would they (nor perhaps could they) even tell him whether they possessed a Syrian copy of the letters of Ignatius. The books which he collected from other sources are now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. He afterwards became Bishop of Raphoe. Some thirty years after, a learned Syrian, named Elias Assemani, was sent from Rome, by Pope Clement XI., and being better understood by the Nitrians, was shown by them a cellar, or cave, filled with manuscripts, which they avowed them- selves to be unable to read. He persuaded them to sell him forty, and conveyed them to Rome, in spite of their being once all submerged in the Nile on their way. But as it is very difficult to obtain leave to study in the Vatican library, and copying is never permitted, no great benefit has accrued to the world from their presence there. Other travellers obtained the certainty that these monas- teries contained most precious stores, which the monks were allowing to decay, tearing up and ruin- ing by neglect, but which they valued in proportion to the curiosity evinced about them by travellers, refusing to sell them at any price, though their own Patriarch gave them permission, and represented that they might thus obtain the means of repairing their broken and ruined buildings. At last, in 1838 Digitized by VjOOQIC 152 THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. an English clergyman, Archdeacon Tattam,* hearing that the determination of the monks was beginning to yield, set forth for the valley of Nitria, and found that the monks, though at first denying that they possessed any such books, might be dealt with so as to part with such as had not in the first page an imprecation from the donor against any who should dispose of them. He was admitted into a dark, vaulted room, the whole floor covered with leaves of books, in which he waded about with a taper in one hand, and a stick to stir them in the other ! Thus having gained permission of the Patriarch of Egypt, and even the influence of a desert sheikh, he succeeded in pur- chasing and carrying off* in a bag on the backs of don- keys, from this and the other monasteries, a number of old Syrian manuscripts, forty of which are now in the British Museum. They were carefully examined by Mr. Cureton, who found among them three of the much-desired Syriac letters of St. Ignatius ! It appeared at first as if a difficulty existed, as far as r^arded these three, — namely, those to Polycarp, to Ephesus, and to the Romans; but on inspection it proved that these three were very much shorter than even the Greek version accepted by scholars, and, though agreeing with them in the main, were like a very brief abstract of them. Some hold that the three short Syriac are the only genuine ones. Others regard them as abridgments of the shorter Greek, and thus confirmations of their * Deceased since these pages were penned. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE STORY OF THE EPISTLES. 153 existence at a very early period, and others continue to view the whole as unauthentic. Such is the doubt in which it is the lot of mankind usually to be left, when very great stringency of proof is demanded for what, in the nature of things, can often not be closely traced out Altogether, however, the consent of the most learned scholars and divines has accepted the shorter Greek version as the pro- bable reality, and as the legacy to the Christian world left by the martyred pupil of St. John. Therefore it is from thence that the quotations given in the last chapter have been taken, with the exception of that beautiful description of the Lord's Day, which is only to be found in the longer Greek, and is an amplification of the brief counsel in the shorter version. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER X. THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. " Reft of thy sons, amid thy foes forlorn, Mourn, widow'd queen ; forgotten Zion, mourn. Is this thy place and city, this thy throne. Where the wild desert rears its craggy stone ; Where suns unblest their angry lustre fling, And wajrwom pilgrims seek the scanty spring ? Where now thy pomp, which kings with envy view'd ? Where now thy might, which all those kings subdued ?" Bishop Heber, Palestine, Among the disdples of St. John must not only be reckoned those Syrian Greeks among whom the latter years of his life were passed, and who appear to have imbibed th^ most of his spirit. His first teaching had been among those " of the circumcision," the Jews, and apparently the Parthians, and the account of his pupils would not be complete if we did not follow the history of the generation among whom his teaching was fresh, although in some cases it was rejected and in others perverted. When the signs and warnings, foretold by our Lord, had begun to gather around Jerusalem, the Christians, as has been already said, had left the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST 155 doomed city, and taken up their abode in Pella, one of the many towns that then studded the beautiful mountainous country on the other side of the river Jordan, under the guidance of their bishop, Symeon, a son of Cleophas, and thus of the seed of David. Though they had lost the temple, and the purpose of their ceremonies had passed away, like the dawn in the daylight, yet these fugitives could not bear to lay aside their old customs : they still circumcised their children; rested on the Sabbath, or seventh day; abstained from the food proscribed by Moses ; held aloof from the Gentiles, and kept up all the rites that were possible in their exiled state. When the Roman armies had finished their work of ruin, a number of these ventured to cross the river, creep back to the desolate Zion, where the marble walls, the majestic towers, the stupendous stairs lay black with fire, and piled over many a skeleton; and there, amid the ruins, they heaped up huts for themselves, and once more set up a lowly Church on Mount Zion — the spot to which they could not cease to apply the literal fulfilment of all the great prophecies that had been the dream of every son of Judah. No wonder that these, though aware that their Messiah was come, still looked to see the mountain of the Lord's house made glorious, and all nations flowing unto it with gifts in their hands, and thence receiving the blessings showered on them by their Redeemer, on His own nation first of all. They were slow of heart to com- prehend what had been perceived by the greater and wider souls among their people — tliat the husk was Digitized by VjOOQIC 156 THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. burst by the growing tree ; that the special privilege of Israel had been forfeited or deferred; that the covenant of Mount Sinai was at an end, and the covenant of Abraham was alone in force ; or that the true Jerusalem, the mother of all, is on no earthy- spot, but in heaven above. Because St. Paul had been the foremost in setting forth these truths there were some among the Jewish Christians who slighted his teaching, and would scarcely acknowledge him as even of their own blood while they set up in opposition; St. John, St. Peter, and St James, blind apparently to the full and true accordance of all the three, and specially blind, both to the charity of the Apostle of Love, and to the spiritual majesty of that mystical Jerusalem that he had beheld and described. Such feelings necessarily gave rise to divisions, and two sects arose among these Judaizers, the Nazarenes (a name given by the heathen in scorn to the whole body of Christians) and the Ebionites. The first were superstitious adherents to the narrowest rule of the old law ; the others — called from a Syriac word for poverty — ^while exalting our Lord as the Son of David, denied that He was the Son of God. Some of their errors seem to have been pointed at by St. Ignatius in his epistles. But the Christians of Pella had not been the only fugitives. Such of the Jews as were not maddened by the wild expectations of the Zealots, — and of these there must have been many, especially among the shrewd men of business and the politic Sadducees, — Digitized by VjOOQIC THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. 157 saw the worldly and natural tokens of ruin; and, leaving the city at the same time with the Christians, made their peace with the Romans, and found a home at the city of Tiberias, on the shores of the Lake of Gennesareth, under the government of their own old Sanhedrim. Of these there were large numbers, who at length accepted the teaching which had once hallowed that lake ; but many more ad- hered to the old Law, and continued to watch for a future Messiah. Among these rabbis of Tiberias were some very remarkable men ; but the Jewish accounts are so much mixed with fable, that it is not easy to do more than distinguish a few great names. Eliezer the Great and Akiba are the two most noted of these. The former seems, according to the Jews themselves, to have resembled the Pharisee in the Temple, for he exclaimed, "What precept of the Law have I not observed ? " to which his pupil, Akiba, answered, ** Sir, you have always taught us that there is not a man on earth who is just and sinless." Akiba, who was said to have been bom while Jerusalem was still standing, and to have lived to the age of a hundred and twenty, has an almost all^o- rical history, in which he is represented as wooing a maiden who required of him wisdom, knowledge, and a crowd of disciples. He left her, to fulfil her behest ; and when he returned, he found her ragged, outcast, beggared ; but still his beautiful bride, the author of his inspiration. This was a parable of Jerusalem, for whose sake he toiled, and to whom he was still Digitized by VjOOQIC T58 THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST devoted, even in her ruined state. The Law was the constant study of these rabbis, and they put on it many fresh, strange, and wild interpretations, which worked up the minds of their disciples into a feverish state of hope. Nor were all the Jewish nation crushed. Only those who had been in open arms against Rome had been made slaves or put to death. Many more lived at large in wealth and freedom in Egypt, where they had had a temple ever since the beginning of the per- secution of Antiochus; there were many others in Cyrene and in Spain, and great multitudes dwelt in the far East, where they had been settled centuries ago, in the time of the old captivities. The great river cities — Babylon, damp, decayed, unhealthy, yet still showing her solid Chaldean magnificence in her decline; Seleu- cia, splendid and flourishing, with the profuse luxuriant ornament of the Oriental Greek, but waning before the more native Eastern quaint glories of Ctesiphon on the opposite bank of the Tigris — all swarmed with busy Jews, as merchants, craftsmen, or sailors in the vessels that brought Indian gold, jewels, silk, and spices, to be dispersed through the West: the rich well-watered ground around the two mighty rivers was owned by many a Jew, who among his com, his vines, and his melons, still thought at times upon Zion as he looked at the weeping willows, among which more earnest-hearted exiles had once hung their harps ; and the green valleys, and wild slopes of the long barrier of mountains beyond, fed flocks of sheep and goats, that were watched by shepherds Digitized by VjOOQIC THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. 159 descended probably from the old pastoral tribes, whose cattle had been their delight and wealth. Over all these ruled a stately personage, who was waited upon with the observances befitting an Oriental po- tentate, and was known as the Resch Glutha, or Chief of the Captivity; and though he paid tribute and owned the superiority of the Parthian king, it was not an unwilling submission; for the Persians of old, ever since the time of Cyrus, had been the friends of the Jews, and the Parthian power that sprang up as the Greek house of Seleucus decayed, might be re- garded as in some degree a revival of the old Persian sway, though their blood was partly Scythian. Thus it was, that no less than five of the Apostles seem to have made Parthia and Mesopotamia their first starting-points, finding there great numbers of the Jews, and founding a Church there, to which, as we have seen, St. John addressed his first epistle. Some are said to have met their death there ; and St. Thomas thence journeyed on to India, while St. John returned westwards ; but the Church flourished for many years there, and the Jewish community was prosperous, wealthy, and exceedingly learned. Any hopes that could be reasonably entertained of a renewal of Jerusalem must be founded on the Parthians, a young, vigorous power, by whom Roman armies had more than once been brought to a miser- able end, and who were quite as averse as the Jews themselves to the pagan multiplicity of idols. Their borders were gradually extending, and, could they but master the strip of land beyond the two mighty Digitized by VjOOQIC i6o THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. boundary streams, Jerusalem would become as ex- cellent a curb as they could desire upon the Roman power. Even Khoosrou, the real name of Cyrus, began to be revived among their kings, as if in augury of a new shepherd and deliverer, from the East. But a great disappointment was coming. Trajan, when he visited Antioch and sentenced Ignatius, was actually on his way with a large army to attack the Parthians, and his success was complete. He drove them far back into their hills, and actually marched into and garrisoned the great cities of Mesopotamia ; so that the Eastern Jews saw the hated eagles set up on the towers of the home of their exile ! The Emperor was indeed an aged man, and his health was warning him to go no further ; so that he made a sort of peace, placed a Parthian prince of his own choice on the throne, and retreated ; but he left garrisons behind him, claimed Mesopotamia as tributary, and showed that the Roman wolf had set his claw upon the oldest cities of the world. Despair and grief stirred up the Jews to revolt, and there was a terrible outbreak, not only in newly conquered Mesopotamia, but in Egypt, Cyrene, and Cyprus, where the insurgents, possessed by the same spirit as the Zealots of Jerusalem, committed unspeak- able barbarities upon the population, and they de- stroyed a little shrine at the foot of Mount Casius, in honour of Pompey, the first Roman who had begun to rivet the yoke of iron on their neck, that Moses had foretold two thousand years ago. Trajan promptly took measures against them, and punished Digitized by VjOOQIC THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. i6i the Egyptian Jews, by depriving them of their temple; and he also made diligent inquiry whether any remnant of the royal line existed round whom they could rally. It seems to have been this that directed the attention of the Romans to Symeon, who was martyred at this time and was succeeded by Justus, also a son of David. The revolt was by no means subdued when Trajan, worn out with fatigue, and by the illness he had con- tracted on the fatal banks of the Euphrates, died in Cilicia, in 117, and left his empire to his adopted son, Publius iElius Hadrianus. Had not the Jews been committing atrocities in Cyrene that turned all minds against them, they might have had good prospects under Hadrian, who was a great inquirer, had studied the Scriptures, and had been sufficiently struck with their force and beauty to make some hopeful Jews deem him a proselyte. But, in the present state of affairs, he could only strike at the rebels, and his knowledge of their religion, perhaps, enabled him to do so more effec- tually. He gave up the three tempting Babylons, aware that the broad line of desert between them and Syria made them a too perilous possession for his Western soldiery to hold ; but he utterly ruined the once wealthy Jews of Egypt, destroyed their temple, and took away their privileges ; and in Cyrene his vengeance was such, that at the end of tJie war the province was so empty that it had to be repeopled. But he strengthened his grasp upon Palestine, and M Digitized by VjOOQIC l62 THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. sent his general, Martius Turbo, to quell the insur- rection. Turbo saw with amazement both the multitude and the courage of the warriors in the gorges of the mountains, but a great concentration of Roman forces obliged them to become quiescent, and peace was restored. Hadrian decided on curbing them further, by entirely Romanizing the remains of Jerusalem, and even changing its name. A city called after himself, iElia Capitolina, was to be reared upon the hill of Zion, and filled with Greek and Latin colonists. Mount Moriah's mighty stones were again built up, but the temple that towered above the marble stairs was dedicated to Jupiter of the Capitol, and over the gate of the city the figure of a hog was carved, as an insult to the Jews, who retorted, with some truth, that the unclean animal was a most suitable emblem, of the foul habits of the colonists themselves. On Mount Calvary, close to the sepulchre that had once held the body of our Blessed Lord, another temple was built, to the goddess Venus ; and thus the Chris- tians were equally grieved with the Jews by the desecration of their most revered spot; but it does not seem certain that this was an intentional insult. This building of -^lia stung the hearts of the Jews with the bitterest grief ; and moreover, the presence of so many soldiers in the land led to heavy exactions and severe distress. All over the empire the Jews had to pay a tribute, such as might keep them in poverty, and so many trades were closed against them, that Digitized by VjOOQIC THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. 163 they were reduced to telling dreams and fortunes. The failing heart and trembling arm had come on those who were dispersed in distant parts of the empire, and, on the testimony of the poet Juvenal and the Emperor Hadrian himself, they were esteemed in Egypt as no better than conjurers, beggars, and mathematicians ! For those who were really men of science were forced to gain their bread by the pre- tended arts that pleased the vulgar and brought their knowledge into contempt among wise men. Still it seems that in Smyrna, the Jewish community con- tinued numerous, wealthy, and unmolested, owing probably to their usefulness in trade. In the mountains of Galilee, however, a fiercer spirit prevailed, ripening fast for revolt, and Jewish legends relate that the first spark was lighted in this manner. It was the Jewish custom on the birth of a son to plant a cedar before the house ; on the birth of a daughter, a pine ; and such trees were never cut until the young owner was married, ,when it was used to form the woodwork of the bed. A Roman lady, whom the Jews call the Emperor's daughter — but this could not be, as Hadrian was childless — when travelling, caused one of these trees to be cut down to repair her litter, and the tumult this occa- sioned ended in bloodshed, and thus open rebellion commenced. The chief leader was one Cozba, a pupil of Akiba, and full of the wildest hopes and projects, the most noted of all the false Christs and false prophets, who deceived many. He took the name of Barcocab, the M 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 164 THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. Son of the Star, and believed himself to be the Star of Jacob foretold by Balaam that should smite the foes of Israel. Great numbers joined him, and he seized the city, once called Beth-horon — that "going down of Beth-horon" which had been the scene of Joshua's great victory — ^but which was now called Bithera, a name that the Jews translated into Bethtar, the place of spies, because certain traitors had lately lived there, and had informed against their countrymen, who went up to worship at the ruined temple. At Bithera, the aged Akiba girded Barcocab with the sword, placed the staff of command in his hand, and held the stirrup when he mounted his horse. He seems to have reigned there for two years and a half, and the revolt required the presence of the Emperor himself. Then the city was stormed, and when Barcocab himself was killed in battle, his corpse was so gigantic that Hadrian is reported to have said that he must have fallen by the hand of a god and not of a man. The Jews, in their disappoint- ment, changed his name from Barcocab, Son of the Star, to Bar Cozaba (Son of a Lie) ; and again their penalty was frightful, their rabbis were tortured to death, and the aged Akiba was torn to pieces by red- hot pincers, still to the last uttering his confession of faith, " God is One." Prisoners of less note were offered for slaves. Strange to say, the place of the chief sale was Mamre, the spot which the holy fame of Abraham had rendered the chief resort of all his children, the Ish- maelite and Idumean as well as the Israelite, so that Digitized by VjOOQIC THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. 165 a great fair was yearly held by the pilgrims, and called the Fair of the Turpentine-tree, in honour of the grand turpentine or terebinth tree, which our translation calls the oak, beneath which Abraham had been sitting in the cool of the day, when the mysterious Three came to him and gave him the promise that Sarah his wife should bear him a son, and that from him should spring the Seed in whom all families of the earth should be blessed. Now the sons of the promise, whose eyes were shut to the fulfilment, and who denied its extension to the families of the earth, led by the false lustre of their wandering star, were accomplishing the piteous prophecy so long ago spoken from Pisgah, and being sold in such numbers that " there was no man to buy them." In the gorges and fastnesses of the hills some Jews, however, still continued ; and wherever a Jew dwelt, in east or west, still his heart yearned to Jerusalem, and once in his life, or when he felt death approach- ing, would he struggle homewards, to lay his bones in the beloved soil of " the good," " the glorious" land of his fathers. There they would stand — those mournful pilgrims, old men and women, haggard, bowed, and clothed in rags — upon the Mount of Olives, where once Ke, who would fain have been their Redeemer, had wept for what was coming upon them — stretching out their arms, and gazing across the deep ravine at the broken walls of their Sanctuary, until at length the Roman garrison, moved with pity, or hoping for gain, consented to admit them on pay- Digitized by VjOOQIC i66 THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. ment, to weep over and cast perfumes upon the great stones of the ruin. ** Oh for seraphic power To flash conviction on the Jew, And bid his soul exulting view His Temple's holiest hour ! " But that conviction has in only a few cases yet come, and still, after 1700 years, do the Jews still sit in the dust, on the north side of the site of the Temple, and wail aloud in mournful psalms for the desolation of their " holy and beautiful house/' It was all important to the Christians of Jewish birth to make it plain that they did not share in the disaffection of their countrymen ; and no doubt they were easily confounded with them, since they had laid aside few of the habits of the Old Cove- nant. A learned man named Aristo, resident at Pella, is said to have come forward on this occasion, and to have presented Hadrian with what was then called an Apology, i.e. a treatise explanatory of the tenets of his brethren, together with a petition on their behalf. Probably it was effectual, for the Christians of Judaea continued to dwell there witliout a great amount of persecution ; and though some fell into heresies, the greater part, becoming weaned from their clinging to the shadows of the ancient Covenant, became amalgamated with the Greeks of the East, in common with whom they have since shared the fate of the soil of Palestine. In Bethlehem, especially. Christians have always worshipped, and still their Digitized by VjOOQIC THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST. 167 grand figures and beautiful faces attest what the chosen people mt£-Ai have been, had they been universally learners from and with St. John, and of his great Master. Hardly anything more is known of Aristo of Pella; but it appears as if he had written a history of the war of Barcocab, from which the Church historian, Eusebius, and St Jerome, may have borrowed their account of it ; and there was also a controversial book attributed to him, namely, a dialogue between Jason, a Hebrew Christian, and Papiscus, a Graecised Jew of Alexandria. " There," says the account of it given by the person who translated it into Latin^ '* we have the obstinate hardness of the Jewish heart softened by Jewish warning and gentle chiding, and the teaching of Jason on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, victo- rious in the heart of Papiscus. When Papiscus was brought by this teaching to an understanding of the truth, and was fashioned into a fear of the Lord, through the mercy of the Lord himself, he put his trust in jESUS CHRIST, the Son of God, and asked of Jason that he might receive the mark of baptism." From a further mention of the dialogue in a treatise of Origen written about seventy years later, it is plain that as would be natural in the work of a Jew, written for Jews, it was full of allusions to the narratives of the Old Testament, and unfoldings of that mysterious foreshadowing which renders the veritable facts of Israelite history one great parable. To Celsus, a heathen philosopher of the Epicurean sect, this appeared foolishness ; and he spoke of the Digitized by VjOOQIC 168 THE HEBREWS OF THE EAST book as contemptible, and even hateful, and one that nobody would have patience or perseverance to read ; speaking evidently from hearsay, prejudice, and, perhaps, a cursory survey; for Origen, one of the greatest writers of early times, answers, that " if any one did really take the book into his hands, he would find in it nothing worthy of hatred, or even of laughter. In it a Christian is described as disputing with a Jew from the Jewish Scriptures, and showing that the prophecies about the Church meant Jesus. The other replies to the argument vigorously, and in a way not unbecoming the Jewish character he assumes." By some, this dialogue was even said to have been written by St. Luke ; but he would have been more likely to take the Greek side than the Jew; and when we regard the work as that of Aristo, the Israelite Christian who stood as champion of his Church before Hadrian, the hints we have respecting its character accord well with the period. Every Jew was then eager for mystic interpretations, and twisted the Scriptures at will, putting strange meanings upon the very letters, apart from the words ; but Aristo, true Israelite of God in heart as well as by descent, seems to have grasped the true meaning, and beheld the sub- stance — ^which alone explained the shadows ; and therewith he would bring conviction to the mind of his hitherto blinded countryman "searching the Scrip- tures," and thence " proving that this is very CHRIST." So, amid the thunders of judgment, the soft still small voice is heard, bringing to that remnant who would hearken thereto the blessing of peace. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XI. QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER. " For she is earthly, of the mind, But wisdom heavenly, of the soul." Tennyson, Knowledge and Wisdom, Athens had lost all her old greatness, and never revived. She had, indeed, become a sort of university, to which the Roman youth resorted to give the last polish to their education under Greek masters, in the groves associated with great names of old when thought was fresh ; but outwardly the city had never recovered from the cruel pillage it had suffered from Sulla more than a hundred years back ; and though on its beauteous slope stood the most exquisite buildings of ancient art, with the magnificent guardian goddess Athene presiding over them, and the temples and houses were of the most perfect taste, yet all was ruin and decay; and the natives mostly lived in filthy squalid huts, clustering between the fine old houses which were left to totter to their fall, save when repaired by some luxurious literary Roman who loved learned ease, or when they served as a lodging for the young men who contracted friendships as they wandered together in the groves, revelled in the courts with rose-garlanded heads, or, in their more serious hours. Digitized by VjOOQIC I70 QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER. took lessons in poetry, grammar, or rhetoric, listened to the disputations of the philosophers under their porticoes, and made up their mind whether to be Stoics or Epicureans — whether their theory should be to practise virtue for its own sake, or virtue as the chief pleasure of life. For to hold one or other theor}'- had become quite essential to a Roman gentleman, and every one who considered himself to be a gentle- man was also a Roman. The wheat had long gone out of philosophy, but the chaff was left, and at Athens the continual blowing it backwards and forwards was a profitable occupation and very fashionable. So when St Paul came, the wheat of his discourse was soon found too heavy for Athens, and very few were his converts. However, one of these converts was Dionysius the Areopagite, — by which is probably meant a member of the council that met in the open air upon the hill of Ares, or Mars. Once that assembly had held the destinies of Greece in their hands ; they had now little more power than a mere town-council, but still, such as it was, the recollection of grand old times lingered around them, and few honours were more dignified in sound than that of being one of the council of the Areopagos. There might be much that sounded like philosophy when Paul, standing in the midst, declared that the Athenians were too superstitious, and that they lowered their notion of the Godhead by supposing it to be re- presented by images graven by art and man's device. So much clever heathens had made out, and in their Digitized by VjOOQIC QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER. 171 love of change and excitement they were ready to hear of the unknown God whom they had ignorantly worshipped ; but when he came to speak of the re- surrection of the dead, the idea of a renewed life in the worn-out body seemed to them for the most part so preposterous, that the assembly broke up, and would hear no more at that time. They did not persecute; they were merely indif- ferent ; their minds would play with a theory, but their souls would not receive it. Only a woman named Damaris, with this Dionysius and a few others, took the word into their hearts, and found that they had at last the light that alone could guide them out of the darkness where they had groped so long. The Apostle soon went away to the more hopeful city of Corinth, the seat of government and a great mart, where, if people were less intellectual, they were much more in earnest. It is said by ancient writers, that the small number of Christians at Athens were placed under the charge of Dionysius the Areopagite, and the Greek Church counts him as the first Athenian bishop ; but it is exceedingly difficult to distinguish between the many who bore that favourite name of Dionysius, and mis- takes and fable have been busy with him. Greek martyrologies declare him to have been burnt alive ; but this is not likely, as the Athenians were more light-minded than cruel, and the taste for barbarity had not yet set in. The French have tried to believe that their favourite, " Saint Denys," who was beheaded at Montmartre, was the Areopagite, but Digitized by VjOOQIC 172 QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER. this is impossible ; and there are also several writings attributed to him which are evidently forgeries. We can, however, think of him with some certainty as the foremost of those believers who came to Christianity by the road of philosophy, and found it answer the needs of a mind already trained to think. The Church at Athens was, however, small and lan- guishing, while Corinth was the leading Church in Greece until the tihie of Trajan, when a persecution arose, in which the bishop was slain, and many of the Christians fled to Athens. It would seem that this was thought a favourable opportunity for establishing a new bishopric there, and placing there as bishop a scholar who could argue in the heathen schools. Ac- cordingly Quadratus became ruler of the Athenian Christians. It is of the service rendered by Quadratus that we must next speak. Tradition — not very well sup- ported — makes him the Angel of Philadelphia who was so highly blessed; but if so, he was removed from thence before the death of Ignatius, and sent to Athens. There might have been good reason for this change, for Quadratus had been highly educated in all Athenian learning and philosophy before he became a Christian, and thus was fitter to uphold the truth in that learned city than a less instructed person. He awakened so excellent and faithful a spirit, that after half a century the state of the Athenian Church was cited by Origen to show the power of Christianity: so different were the self- restraint, order, and discipline there observed from the Digitized by VjOOQIC QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER. 173 tumultuary noise and fickleness for which the Athe- nians were notorious in all public assemblies. Quadratus put on his philosopher's robe, and went out into the schools and porticoes to argue with the teachers on their own ground. Indeed, Christian purity and morality were working their way, and thoughtful men, who despised and trampled on the doctrine as far as they knew it, were setting up a higher standard of conduct than ever they had known before, and feeling sick at heart when they fell short of it. Some of these were convinced by Quadratus, but not in sufficient numbers to change the character of the place, which continued the last citadel of heathen philosophy long after the conversion of the rest of the empire. Another Christian philosopher, named Aristides, likewise upheld the cause of truth by argument at the same time with Quadratus, and endeavoured to show that they had found that as- surance for which Plato had groped and stretched forth his hands. In the year 125 Athens was visited by the Emperor Hadrian, soon $ifter the first Jewish revolt had been quelled, but before that of Barcocab. He was not new to the place. As a boy he had studied there with such success that he was called by the nick- name of Graeculus, or the Young Greek. The Jews thought him almost a proselyte, and he was con- sidered to have all the accomplishments that were regarded as essentially the ornament of the true Attic born and bred scholar. He was, moreover, an able and active warrior, and well worthy to be Digitized by VjOOQIC 174 QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER, adopted as the successor of his cousin Trajan ; and he showed in bright colours what the old Roman nature could be when tempered, without being weak- ened, by Greek thought and refinement. He was a great traveller, and a great builder ; and Athens was looked upon as the centre of all poetical, historical, or artistic associations. He endeavoured to raise the city out of its ruins; he completed the magnificent temple to Zeus, which had been designed on a scale of such splendour that it had been in course of building ever since Athens had any history, and he placed within it an image of the father of the gods exquisitely worked in ivory and gold. Strange that the temple, begun when Greece was striving for truth, should be- finished just when the mighty form of heathen dominion with the head of gold and feet of iron and clay was already being struck by the stone cut out without hands. Other temples he built, how- ever, which had no image in them ; and whether this omission was merely from delay, or whether it was accidental, the Christians augured from it that the Emperor was beginning to understand that there was a worship purer and higher than that which was paid to the work of men's hands. He was certainly endeavouring to probe to the uttermost all that either heathen mythology or Greek philosophy could teach, and was even admitted to the mysteries of Eleusis, which were sypposed to reveal to the initiated the deepest of all secrets. But persecution was so far carried on, that where a governor was harsh or superstitious, the Christians Digitized by VjOOQIC QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER. 175 were sought out and put to death ; and, even under a mild governor, the laws were such, that if a spiteful neighbour laid an accusation against a Christian for forsaking the gods, there was no choice but that the edicts should take their course. Indeed, some of the Christians themselves had become inflamed with an exaggerated desire of martyrdom, and, forgetting that God was to be served oy their lives as well as their deaths, they courted torment and execution. When Arrius Antoninus, the pro-consul of Asia, opened his tribunal for accusa- tions against them, they came in such numbers of their own accord to denounce themselves, that he had no heart to permit them to be prosecuted, but drove them away with an air of contempt " If you are weary of life," he said, " there is rope enough for you to hang yourselves with." These wilful and pre- sumptuous self-sacrifices were, however, always dis- couraged by the Church, and it was observed that none were so apt to flinch and give way at the first touch of torture, or the immediate prospect of death, as those who had run into the danger without necessity. It is plain that the persecution could not have been hot throughout the greater part of the reign, since there is no martyr of note on record in the lists pre- served by the Churches, which were wont to be read aloud at a part of their Communion Service, the origin of that portion of our own where we thank God for those departed in His faith and fear. It was indeed said that Sophia, or Wisdom, with her three Digitized by VjOOQIC 1 76 QUADRA TCrS, THE PHIL OSOPHER. daughters, Faith, Hope, and Charity, were put to death under Hadrian at Rome; but this was probably an allegorical saying that is but too true of most times and places, but which came in after-times to be supposed to be the account of the martyrdom of four real women. Be this as it may, it is certain, that though the Christians in Hadrian's time were not actively per- secuted, yet they lived only on sufferance, and might at any time be legally put to death ; and in order to obtain toleration Quadratus and Aristides decided on endeavouring to argue out the truth of their religion, so that, even if the Emperor were not convinced, it might at least be established as a philosophy. It was a work well suited to the pupil of the Apostle who had met the Gnostics on their own ground, and shown how the Word, the manifestation, was coeval and integral with God, even like the light with the flame. The wise Greek pupil of the far-wiser Galilean fisherman donned the robe of the philosopher, and sought the Emperor under the shade of the portico, where the noble and beautiful figure of Hadrian might often be seen pacing the marble pavement, not so much resting from the toils of state as trying to slake his thirst for satisfactory truth. Before him then Quadratus stood and set forth his Argument, or Apology as it was called. We know nothing of it, except one sentence quoted by the Church historian, Eusebius, saying that " The deeds of our Saviour were always present, since they were real ; and many of those who were healed, and Digitized by VjOOQIC ^ QUADRATUS, THE PHILOSOPHER, 177 rose from the dead, were living even to his own times." Nor is even one word preserved from the Apology of Aristides : but both were listened to with respect by the Emperor ; and though they did not con- vince him, he may have been struck by their wisdom and learning ; and when the proconsul of Asia shortly- after wrote to tell him of the violence and cruelty with which the Christians were used, he returned in answer a letter commanding that they should only suffer for direct transgressions of the law, and that accusations evidently preferred out of spite and malice should receive no attention- Such was the victory won by Quadratus and Aris- tides; the more marked because Hadrian, a keen- witted, satirical man, shortly after was so disgusted with what he saw of the Alexandrians, as to write to a friend that " They have but one god (/. e. Wealth) : him. Christians, Jews, and Gentiles worship all alike." Had all Christians been like these of Athens, what might not have been the effect on the wise, thoughtful, shrewd, and inquiring Hadrian ? And if it be true that Quadratus was the Angel of Philadelphia, surely he did stand fast and keep the Word, and denied not the Holy Name, holding fast that which he had, and letting no man take his crown. The simple, child-like Ignatius proved his love by practical exhortation, and by victory over death ; the highly-instructed Quadratus used his talents to prove by human reasoning and argument the supreme glory of Truth. One seemed to continue the likeness of St. John in his character of Shepherd giving his N Digitized by VjOOQIC 178 QUADRATUSy THE PHILOSOPHER. life for the sheep ; the other in the character of Divine, setting forth the manifestation of the Godhead by force of argument The later life of Quadratus is not known. There is only an uncertain report that after Hadrian's departure, the Athenians rose upon him, pelted him with stones, and drove him away, fearing lest his true philosophy should destroy all the false ones, as Aaron's rod swallowed those of the magicians, and that their city would no longer be a place of resort He is said then to have gone to Magnesia, in Asia Minor ; but a)l this is utterly uncertain. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XII. KOW POLYCARP PLAYED THE MAN IN THE FIRE. •* I bless Thee, Holiest Father, I thank Thee, blessed Son, Because the golden crown is near, The race is nearly run. God of all things created, Angels and earthly power, I praise Thee for the agony Of this departing hour."— Mrs. Alexander. The last survivors of the disciples of St John were Polycarp of Smyrna, Pothinus of Lyons, and Papias of Hierapolis. Polycarp's name in Greek means " much fruit," and he well fulfilled the promise of that ap- pellation. The old Greek menologies (or histories of saints and martyrs) report, but on what authority is unknown, that he began life as a slave, but was educated at the expense of a pious and charitable lady named Calisto, who, while he was still a youth, made him steward of her household, and afterwards manumitted him. Under Bucolus, the first Bishop of Smyrna, he was made first catechist and then deacon; and at this time he was much with St. John, gathering and trea- N 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC i8o HOW POLYCARP PLAYED THE MAN. suring up his histories of our Blessed Lord and His teaching; and on the death of Bucolus, young as he was, he became Bishop of Smyrna. One author says that it was he who had the charge of the youth who became a robber, and was reclaimed by St. John ; but as this is not mentioned by the first writers v/ho tell the history, there is no reason for believing it. Indeed, how faithful and vigilant an angel he was to his Smyrniotes may be seen from the message and promise to him. And twenty years later, as has been said, it was to him that his old friend Ignatius entmsted the charge of the forlorn Church of Antioch, till a new pastor could be appointed. The care of all the Churches, once borne by St. Paul and then by St. John, was, on the death of Ignatius, bestowed upon Polycarp; and he wrote letters to them, as need served, of which only one is extant, — namely, one written soon after his fellow- disciple Ignatius had taken his last leave of him, and had been at Philippi, but before the full account of his death had arrived. It begins thus : — "Polycarp and the presbyters with him to the Church of God which is at Philippi. Mercy and peace be multiplied upon you, from God Almighty, and from the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour. " I have greatly rejoiced with you in the joy you have had in our Lord, in receiving those ensamples of true charity, and having accompanied, as it well be- came you, those who were bound with holy chains, which are the diadems of the truly elect of God and our Lord, and for that the strong root of your faith, Digitized by VjOOQIC HO IV POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. i8i spoken of in the earliest times, endureth until now, and bringeth forth fruit unto our Lord jESUS CHRIST, who suffered for our sins, but whom God raised from the dead, having loosed the pains of death ; in Whom, though ye see Him not, ye believe, and believing rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory; into which joy many desire to enter." The mention of the faith of the Philippians, "spoken of in the earliest times," is an allusion to St Paul's thanksgiving for " their fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now," in that "epistle of joy" written in the severest part of his first imprisonment " * Wherefore, girding up your loins,' * serve the Lord in fear' and truth, as those who have forsaken the vain, empty talk and error of the multitude, and 'be- lieved in Him who raised up our Lord jESUS CHRIST from the dead, and gave Him glory,' and a throne at His right hand. To Him all things in heaven and on earth are subject Him every spirit serves. He comes as the Judge of the living and the dead. His blood will God require of those who do not believe in Him. But He who raised Him up from the dead will raise up us also, if we do His will, and walk in His commandments, and love what He loved, keeping ourselves from all unrighteousness, covetousness, love of money, evil-speaking, false-witness ; * not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing,' or blow for blow, or cursing for cursing, but being mindful of what the Lord said in His teaching: 'Judge not, that ye be not judged ; forgive, and it shall be forgiven unto you; be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; with Digitized by VjOOQIC i82 HO W POL YCARP PLA YED THE MAN, what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again ; ' and once more, * Blessed are the poor, and those that are persecuted for righteousness* sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God.' " These things, brethren, I write to you concerning righteousness, not because I take anything on myself, but because ye have invited me thereto. For neither I, nor any such as I, can come up to the wisdom of the blessed and glorified Paul He, when among you, accurately and stedfastly taught the word of truth in the presence of those who were then alive ; and when absent from you, he wrote you a letter, which,* if you carefully study, you will find to be the means of building you up in that faith which has been given you, and which, being followed by hope and preceded by love towards God, and Christ, and our neighbour, is 'the Mother of us all/ For if any one be in- wardly possessed of these graces, he hath fulfilled the command of righteousness, since he that hath love is far from all sin. '* But ' the love of money is the root of all evils/ Knowing, therefore, that * as we brought nothing into the world, so we can carry nothing out,' let us arm ourselves with the armour of righteousness ; and let us teach, first of all, ourselves to walk in the com- mandments of the Lord. Next teach your wives to walk in the faith given to them, and in love and purity tenderly loving their own husbands in all truth, and loving all equally in all chastity ; and to train up their children in the knowledge and fear of God. Teach the widows to be discreet as respects Digitized by VjOOQIC HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN, 183 the faith of the Lord, praying continually for all, being far from all slandering, evil-speaking, false- witnessing, love of money, and every kind of evil ; knowing that they are the altar of God, that He clearly perceives all things, and that nothing is hid from Him, neither reasonings, nor reflections, nor any one of the secret things of the heart. "Knowing, then, that 'God is not mocked,* we ought to walk worthy of His commandment and glory. In like manner should the deacons be blame- less before the face of His righteousness, as being the servants of God and Christ, and not of men. They must not be slanderers, double-tongued, or lovers of money, but temperate in all things, compassionate, industrious, walking according to the truth of the Lord, who was the servant of all. If we please Him in this present world, we shall receive also the future world, according as He has promised to us that He will raise us again from the dead, and that if we live worthily of Him, * we shall also reign together with Him,' provided only we believe. In like manner, let the young men also be blameless in all things, being especially careful to preserve purity, and keeping themselves in, as with a bridle, from every kind of evil. For it is well that they should be cut off from the lusts that are in the world, since 'every lust warreth against the spirit ; ' nor shall they who do such things inherit the kingdom of God, nor those who do things inconsistent and unbecoming. Where- fore, it is needful to abstain from all these things, being subject to the presbyters and deacons, as unto Digitized by VjOOQIC i84 HOW POLYCARP PLAYED THE MAN. God and Christ. The virgins also must walk in a blameless and pure conscience. "And let the presbyters be compassionate and merciful to all, bringing back those that wander, visiting all the sick, and not neglecting the widow, the orphan, or the poor, but always 'providing for that which is becoming in the sight of God and men ; * abstaining from all wrath, respect of persons, and unjust judgment ; keeping far off from all covetous- ness, not quickly crediting an evil report against any one, not severe in judgment, as knowing that we are all under a debt of sin. If then we entreat the Lord to forgive us, we ought also ourselves to forgive; for we are before the eyes of our Lord and God, and ' we must all appear at the judgment-seat of Christ, and must every one give an account of himself* Let us then serve Him in fear, and with all reverence, even as He himself has commanded us, and as the apostles who preached the Gospel unto us, and the prophets who proclaimed beforehand the coming of the Lord have alike taught us. Let us be zealous in the pursuit of that which is good, keeping ourselves from causes of offence, from false brethren, and from those who in hypocrisy bear the name of the Lord, and draw away vain men into error. " ' For whosoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is antichrist ; ' and whosoever does not confess the testimony of the cross, is of the devil ; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resur- rection nor a judgment, he is the first-born of Satan. Digitized by VjOOQIC HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. 185 Wherefore, forsaking the vanity of many, and their false doctrines, let us return to the word which has been handed down to us from the beginning ; ' watch- ing unto prayer,' and persevering in fasting ; beseech- ing in our supplications the all-seeing God 'not to lead us into temptation,* as the Lord has said ; * The spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak/ '* Let us then continually persevere in our hope, and the earnest of our righteousness, which is jESUS Christ, 'who bore our sins in His own body on the tree,' 'who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth,' but endured all things for us, that we might live in Him. Let us then be imitators of His patience ; and if we suffer for His name's sake, let us glorify Him. For He hath set us this example in Himself, and we have believed that such is the case. " I exhort you all, therefore, to yield obedience to the word of righteousness, and to exercise all patience, such as ye have seen set before your ty^s^ not only in the case of the blessed Ignatius, and Zosimus, and Rufus, but also in others among yourselves, and in Paul himself, and the rest of the apostles. This do in the assurance that all these have not run in vain, but in faith and righteousness, and that they are [now] in their due place in the presence of the Lord, with whom also they suffered. For they loved not this present world, but Him who died for us, and for our sakes was raised again by God from the dead. " Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchange- Digitized by VjOOQIC l86 HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. able in the faith, loving the brotherhood, and being attached to one another, joined together in the truth, exhibiting the meekness of the Lord in your inter- course with one another, and despising no one. When you can do good, defer it not, because ' alms delivers from death/ Be all of you subject one to another, * having your conduct blameless among the Gentiles,* that ye may both receive praise for your good works, and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed ! Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it also in your own conduct. " I am greatly grieved for Valens, who was once a presbyter among you, because he so little understands the place that was given him in the Church. I exhort you, therefore, that ye abstain from covetous- ness, and that ye be chaste and truthful. 'Abstain from every form of evil.' For if a man cannot govern himself in such matters, how shall he enjoin them on others } If a man does not keep himself from covetousness, he shall be defiled by idolatry, and shall be judged as one of the heathen. But who of us are ignorant of the judgment of the Lord ? * Do we not know that the saints shall judge the world ? ' as Paul teaches. But I have neither seen nor heard of any such thing among you, in the midst of whom the blessed Paul laboured, and who are commended in the beginning of his epistle. For he boasts of you in all tliose Churches which alone then knew the Lord ; but we of Smyrna had not yet known Him. I am deeply grieved therefore, brethren, for hira Digitized by VjOOQIC HOIV POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. 187 (Valens) and his wife ; to whom may the Lord grant true repentance ! And be ye then moderate in regard to this matter, and * do not count such as enemies/ but call them back as suffering and straying members, that ye may save your whole body. For by so acting ye shall edify yourselves. " For I trust that ye are well versed in the sacred Scriptures, and that nothing is hid from you ; but to me this privilege is not yet granted. It is declared then in these Scriptures, * Be ye angry, and sin not,' and * Let not the sun go down upon your v/rath.* Happy is he who remembers this, which I believe to be the case with you. But may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus CHRIST, and Jesus Christ him self, who is the Son of God, and our everlasting High Priest, build you up in faith and truth, and in all meekness, gentleness, patience, long-suffering, forbear- ance, and purity ; and may He bestow on you a lot and portion among His saints, and on us with you, and on all that are under heaven who shall believe in our Lord jESUS Christ, and in His Father, who * raised him from the dead.' Pray for all the saints. Pray also for kings, and potentates, and princes, and for those that persecute and hate you, and for the enemies of the cross, that your fruit may be manifest to all, and that ye may be perfect in Him. " Both you and Ignatius wrote to me, that if any one went from hence into Syria, he should carry your letter with him ; which request I will attend to if I find a fitting opportunity, either personally, or through some other acting for me, that your desire may be Digitized by VjOOQIC lS8 HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. fulfilled. The epistles of Ignatius written by him to us, and all the rest of his epistles which we have by us, we have sent to you, as you requested. They are subjoined to this epistle, and by them ye may be greatly profited : for they treat of faith and patience, and all things that tend to edification in our Lord. Any more certain information you may have obtained respecting both Ignatius himself, and those that were with him, have the goodness to make known to us. " These things I have written to you by Crescens, whom up to the present time I have recommended unto you, and do now recommend. For he has acted blamelessly among us, and I believe also among you. Moreover, ye will hold his sister in esteem^ when she comes to you. Be ye safe in the Lord jESUS CHRIST. Grace be with you all. Amen." Such is the letter of Polycarp to the Philippians, like those of his friend Ignatius, evidently formed on the model of St. Paul's less argumentative Epistles ; full of a calm and tender affection, and no doubt greatly cheering the Christians by the sense of union and fellow-feeling which they so highly valued, as giving them the sense of oneness and fellowship in the midst of the hostile world around. Of Zosimus and Rufus, the martyrs, we have no knowledge, nor of the fallen presbyter, Valens. However, even among orthodox Christians, the germs of a serious difference were at this time beginning to make themselves felt St. John had Digitized by VjOOQIC HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. 189 always followed the Jewish rule in celebrating the Paschal feast. He had always reckoned the day of killing the passover as the fourteenth of the moon after the spring equinox, and kept it in memory of the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God, and the third day after it as the great Day of Resurrection, without heed to what day of the week these might fall upon ; and in this he was followed by all the Churches he had planted in Asia. But the Churches of Rome and of Egypt thought that the original days of the week must be observed, and they kept the day of the Lord's death always on the Friday, the Resurrection feast always on the Lord's day after the first full moon from the equinox of 2 1st of March ; and the Christians, who would fain have united in all mourning, all rejoicing, at the same time, were seriously concerned at this want of uniformity. At this time Hadrian was dead, and the kindly, gentle-hearted emperor, Antoninus Pius, had put forth an edict favourable to the Christians ; and this gave Polycarp an opportunity of journeying to Rome, to consult with Anicetus, the ruling bishop, upon the matter. There he could learn in full freshness all he had desired to know of the constancy of his friend Ignatius ; and there the Roman Christians reverently collected every precious detail that fell from him of the sayings and doings of the holy men he had known in his youth. There were differences in the habits of the two Churches. Not only was the language of the one Digitized by VjOOQIC 190 HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. Greek and of the other Latin, but, while essentials were the same, slightly different formulas prevailed, over which Polycarp and Anicetus had much conver- sation, but most friendly and affectionate; and although Anicetus with ten other bishops decided that their Church could not keep their Resurrection feast on any but the first day of the week, and Polycarp could not give up the practice endeared to him by that Apostle who stood first by the empty tomb, — yet the two good men treated one another with all love and reve- rence; and Anicetus caused Polycarp, as the eldei and greater, to consecrate the Holy Eucharist in the assemblies of the Church while he was at Rome.* The historian does not tell us where these assem- blies took place, but it may well be believed that they were in those wonderful mysterious galleries of tufa, where the Christian slaves, having long been set to perform their daily labour, had found a resting-place for their dead and a refuge for the living. Deep underground, in excavations carefully hollowed out, with the memorials of departed brethren on the sides of the cavern around them, and the little oil lamps contending with the deep darkness of the vaults on every side of them, would Polycarp and Anicetus have together ministered to the adoring assembly, who listened with awe and gladness to he words that fell from him who had been taught by the last and best beloved of the holy Twelve. * Some render the sentence to mean only that Polycarp was present at the celebration ; but this would have been hardly worth recording, as it would have been a matter of course. Digitized by VjOOQIC HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN, 191 Polycarp, speaking with authority so directly de- rived from St John, is said to have settled the minds of many at Rome, who were insecure of the truth. He was much shocked at the various loose doctrines he was told of at Rome, and used to stop his ears, crying, " Good God, to what times hast Thou reserved me, that I should hear such things as these!" He told the story of St. John's fleeing from the bath where Cerinthus was; and when Marcion, a mis- chievous false teacher, met him, and asked if he knew who he was, he answered, " I know thee for the eldest son of Satan." We learn these facts from Irenseus, a very careful writer, who heard them at Rome from those who had conversed with Polycarp. And thus the strong spirit of contending for the purity of the faith had descended from St John upon the great Smymiot bishop. He returned to his round of duties at Smyrna: years passed on, and he became an extremely old man, hale and vigorous indeed, but still that crown of martyrdom, which had seemed to be promised to him through St John, came not, and it appeared as if he would fall asleep peaceably like the great Apostle. At length, however, times began to change. The reigning emperor, Marcus Aurelius, was one of the most excellent of the purple-robed philosophers of the second century; but it was a time of great trouble in the empire, a period of famine, earthquakes, and pestilences, fire and sword. The merciful edicts gained by Quadratus from Hadrian, and continued by Anto- Digitized by VjOOQIC 192 HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. ninus Pius, were allowed to fall into oblivion, and the excitement of the people in their grief and terror was permitted to expend itself upon the Christians. Smyrna, beneath whose fertile soil are those volcanic influences that continually rock it with earthquake, had been especially alarmed, both by these and by a deadly pestilence that had been brought by the legions on their return from Syria. The proconsul of Syria, Statius Quadratus, gave licence to the fury of the multitude, and the worst persecution began that had yet raged. It is evident that so much of the old Greek republican constitution remained, that the decision for life or death partly rested with the citizens ; and of these there seems to have been a large propor- tion of Jews, who, in spite of the general depression of their race, seem to have there retained much prosperity, and were even of weight in public affairs. Some Christians were frightfully scourged to make them reveal the rites of unholiness that the Pagans fancied they practised in their assemblies, and the tribulation foretold in their message from heaven was indeed ful- filled in them, but without shaking their constancy. In especial was observed a young man named Germanicus, who, when brought before the tribunal and entreated by the proconsul to take pity on his own youth and to yield so far as to sacrifice to the gods, made no answer, but was led cheerfully into the amphitheatre, and offered himself to the beasts with visible joy. The sight of his unmoved looks added fresh fuel to the fury of the Smyrniotes, who shouted with one voice, " Away with the atheists ! ' Seek for Digitized by VjOOQIC HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. 193 Polycarp ! " In the general excitement, another young- Christian sprang forward, presented himself to the proconsul, and demanded to be martyred ; but no sooner did he behold the beasts than his nerves failed, and, turning pale with terror, he sacrificed to the gods, and became a warning to the Christians against trans- gressing the wise rule of the Church, that no one should present himself or court the fiery trial of martyrdom. The aged bishop himself had obeyed these orders, and yielded to the entreaties of his friends by retiring from the city into a little village in the country ; but . the foreboding that his crown was almost won was strong upon him, and he dreamt that he saw his bed in flames. Shortly after, two children from the village were seized. One allowed himself to be beaten to death rather than betray his bishop. The other, under torture, revealed his hiding-place; and Herodes, a Smyrniote magistrate, whose office it was to arrest criminals, sent out a party of horsemen to surround his house. He gave himself up to them, only saying, " The will of the Lord be done," and desired that pro- visions should be set before them ; and while they regaled themselves he prayed for two hours. It was the " great Sabbath," no doubt our Easter-eve, when in the morning they mounted him on an ass, and set forth for the city in the coolness of the sunrise. On the way Herodes, in a chariot with his father, met them, and took the prisoner up with them ; where they began to argue with him upon the inexpediency of throwing away his life. " What is the harm," they o Digitized by VjOOQIC 194 I^OIV POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. said, "of calling Caesar Lord, or even of sacrificing, when life is to be saved ? " This title was given to Caesar in an idolatrous sense, such as had led the earlier emperors to refuse it, and Polycarp made no answer at first, until, on being hard pressed, he said, " I shall never do what you ask/' They were so angry as to push the old man out of the chariot, when he fell and severely bruised his leg ; but he made no complaint, and was led on to the city, where the proconsul's tribunal was already set — it would appear as if in the Stadium, or amphitheatre,, — an unusual place for a trial ; but as Polycarp's fatq was virtually decided, the proconsul may have grati- fied the populace by pronouncing the judgment before the greatest possible number of auditors. Among them were many of his own flock, anxious to hear and see the glorious confession he was sure to witness, and these declared that they heard a voice speak to him from heaven, saying, " Be strong, Polycarp, quit thy- self like a man ;" but the whole building was echoing all round with shouts of exultation, more fearful than the roars of beasts of prey, as dissolute Asiatic, luxurious lady, worldly merchant, ruffianly soldier, homeless and embittered Jew, degraded slave, be- held at last upon the sand-strewn arena that old man whose purity, simplicity, and love had been a standing reproach to them through the whole of their lives. The proconsul, new to the place and scene, was struck by the serene majesty of the aged man, and the fortitude which recalled the tales of old Romaa Digitized by VjOOQIC HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. 195 nobleness. He entreated Polycarp to " Regard his great age, say ' Take away the godless/ and swear by the genius of Caesar." Turning his eyes round about upon the faces of the pagan multitude, Polycarp sighed, looked up to heaven and said, " Take away the godless." " Swear by the genius of Caesar," continued Statius, " and I will release thee, when thou hast denounced thy Christ" " Eighty and six years have I served Him," was Polycarp's answer, "nor hath He ever done me wrong. Why then should I denounce my King and Saviour?" " At least," said Statius, " swear by the genius of Caesar." This genius was the being supposed to be at- tached to the fortune of each man, as guardian of his life ; and Polycarp would thus have acknowledged paganism. He answered : " Hear my confession. I am a Christian, and if you would know what that meaneth, appoint me a day, and I will show thee." " Persuade the people," replied the proconsul. " To thee," replied Polycarp, " I am bound to speak, since we are bidden to render their due to the powers that be ; but yonder people are not my judges that I should plead to them." "Knowest thou not," said Statius, vexed at his resolution, " that I have beasts to which I will cast thee if thou yieldest not ? " " Let them come," said Polycarp : " I will not turn O 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 196 HOIV POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. from good to evil ; but from evil to good it is well to pass ! " " If thou despisest the beasts, thou shalt be burnt with fire," said the proconsul. "Thou dost threat me with a flame that is soon burnt out," said Polycarp, " but knowest not the ever- lasting fire that awaits the^vicked. Delay not ; bring whatever thou wilt." His bright face, upright form, and the joy that spread over his countenance, beautiful with a holy old age, struck all the beholders, and he must have been at least a hundred years old, since he must have reckoned his eighty-six years of service from his conversion. He had been bishop at least seventy years, and had been faithful through all of them ! The proconsul fulfilled the ceremony of sending round a herald to announce, " Polycarp has confessed himself a Christian." Out burst Jews and Greeks with many voices: " The teacher of Asia ! the father of Christians ! the foe of the gods ! Away with him ! — ^with him who forbids to worship ! The beasts for Polycarp ! " It was, however, the last day of the games : the beast shows were over ; and to produce the animals was against the rules. " Fire," was then the cry ; and so eager was the populace, that they hurried off — ^the Jews eagerly assisting — to bring in fagots from the shops and the baths. When the pile was ready, Polycarp loosad his girdle, and bent to remove his sandals, an office that his Digitized by VjOOQIC HO IV POLYCARI' PLA YED THE MAN. 197 disciples were wont in their love to perform for him. When the executioners would have fastened him to the stake with nails, as seems to have been the cruel Smyrniot fashion, he said, " It is needless ; leave me alone. He who gives me strength to endure the flame will enable me to stand firm on the pile." They con- tented themselves with tying his hands behind his back; and then, as the fagots were kindled, even as the Three Children sang praises in the fire, Polycarp broke forth with a loud voice in a thanksgiving, with almost tlie same opening that is found as a Eucha- ristic hymn in the oldest records of the worship of the Eastern Church, and in substance as well as ' words much resembling our highest act of praise at the Holy Communion. Those Christians whom their venerable bishop had led to sing it at their holiest moments for so many years, who would naturally have sung it with him on the next day at their Easter Communion, must have been thrilled with rapture as well as grief as they heard his voice uplifted : " Lord God Almighty, Father of our Lord jESUS Christ, Thy blessed and beloved Son, through whom we have received the grace of knowing Thee. God of angels and powers, God of all things created, and of the just who live in Thy presence, I bless Thee for having brought me to this hour that I may be among Thy martyrs and drink of the cup of my Lord Jesus Christ, to rise to eternal life in the incorruption of the Holy Ghost. Receive me this day into Thy presence together with them, being found in Thy light as a fair and acceptable sacrifice prepared for Thyself, Digitized by VjOOQIC 198 . HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN, tliat so Thou mayest accomplish what Thou, O true and faithful God, hast foreshown. Wherefore I praise Thee for all Thy mercies : I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, through the eternal High Priest, Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom to Thyself and the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and for ever. Amen." As that universal Eucharistic hymn sounded in the aged saint's voice, the flame arose from the light fagots, and, caught by the wind, swelled out, like the sail of a ship, into an arch or canopy of glory, in the midst of which the form of Polycarp was seen, still praying but untouched ; and the aromatic woods of the fagots, gathered in haste from baths and shops, gave out a sweet odour that seemed to the awe-struck Christians like the incense of the sacrifice, ** God's elements are merciful, Man only mocks His will; The raging fire had spared the Saint, The sword had power to kill." God's providence working through natural means had mercifully spared His aged servant the agony of the fiery death to which he had willingly offered himself, but without depriving him of his long-pro- mised crown, which, as he said in his thanksgiving, God himself had foreshown. The spectators, dis- appointed at the failure of the flame, called out to one of the confectores, or men whose business it was to despatch the wounded in their savage sports, to kill the old man at once. A short sword was plunged into his left side, and such an effusion of blood took Digitized by VjOOQIC HOW POLYCARP PLA YED THE MAN. 199 place as to quench the smouldering remnant of the fire. The Christians would have watched and kept the body with something of the feeling with which Polycarp's master and the sorrowing women had watched a holier corpse on Easter-eve 133 years before ; but the Jews, divining their intention, repre- sented to the heathen that they would, if they had the body, leave the Crucified to worship it, — " little knowing," as the Christians said, " that we can never leave jESUS Christ, nor adore any other. We do, indeed, honour the martyrs, but only as His disciples and imitators, who have given the greatest marks of love to their King and Master.*' The proconsul bade the centurion bum the body ; but on that Easter-night some Christians crept back and secured a few bones, which they buried on the hill-side, and over which a small Christian church still stands. It was on Easter-eve, the 2Sth of April, 166, that Polycarp suffered with his Lord, at two o'clock in the afternoon, and went to receive his crown, and sing his song of praise, and keep his feast of the Lamb among those whom St. John had seen on the sea of glass mingled with fire. The story of his death is given thus minutely in a letter from the Smymiote Church to the Christians at Philomelium, relating the particulars. One transcriber seems to have mistaken the Greek word meaning the left side, for one that means a dove ; and thus a belief arose that a dove had risen from Polycarp's side when the sword had been thrust into it. But, otherwise, the Digitized by VjOOQIC 200 HOW POLYCARP PLAYED THE MAN. history had nothing of the miraculous, though much of the merciful in it ; and the Churches of Asia might well dwell upon it as a most blessed and hopeful encouragement to be like Polycarp, — ^"faithful imto death," so as to win " a crown of life ** Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XIII. PAPUS AND MELITO, THE CREDULOUS AND THE THOUGHTFUL BELIEVER. •* I could have deem'd one spake from heaven. Of hope and joy, of life and death, And immortality through faith." Archbishop Trench, yustin Martyr, We have already seen how many were the perils which the writings of the early Church underwent, — a sort of sifting process, as it were, which has brought only a few down to our times. This is the case with Papias, apparently another of the pupils of St. John, of whom very little is known, except that he was ruler of the Church of Hierapolis, one of the chief Phrygian cities. Judging by his name, which means " the fatherly," he was probably of Greek extraction, but he must early have become a disciple, and as a youth he obtained much instruction from, St John, and likewise conversed with two of the daughters of Philip the Deacon. It may be remembered that when St. Paul was at Caesarea, he lodge4 in the house of this Philip, the Digitized by VjOOQIC 202 PAPIAS AND MELITO. same who had baptized the Ethiopian eunuch, and who " had four daughters, virgins, who did pro- phesy." One of these four is said to have married, the other two lived on together at Hierapolis, pro- bably as deaconesses, virgins who are called widows, as Ignatius said ; and from these holy women Papias learnt many particulars concerning our Lord and His Apostles. Of him Eusebius, the Church historian of the fourth century, says : — Papias (according to Irenaeus), a disciple of St. John and companion of Polycarp — though himself does nowhere say that he conversed with any of the Apostles, but only with those that had been intimate with them — ^wrote five books, which he entitled " Explications of the Oracles of Christ," where he has inserted a great variety of remarkable particulars, communicated to him by those who had known the Apostles, and lets us understand that he made it his business, as it fell in his way, to inquire after the sayings of Andrew, or Philip, or Peter, or Thomas, or any other of the Apostles. He tells us (what Philip's daughters had imparted to him) of a dead body raised to life again : and how that Justus, surnamed Barsabas, having drunk a draught of poison, received no manner of hurt or indisposition by it ; and that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, leaving it to the reader to interpret for himself. His writings have some passages in them legendary and ground- less, particularly his opinion that, after the Resurrec- tion, Christ should reign visibly a thousand years Digitized by VjOOQIC PAPIAS AND MELITO. 203 Upon earth, which he was led into, being a plain and illiterate man, " by misunderstanding some allegorical and mystic expressions of the Apostles ;" and after- wards, the earliness of his authority drew others into the same error. Thus we learn from Irenaeus that Papias both said and wrote that the disciples reported that they had heard from our Lord that the days should come in which the vines should have ten thousand branches, each branch ten thousand twigs, each twig ten thousand shoots, each shoot ten thousand bunches, each bunch ten thousand grapes, and each grape should give twenty-five measures of wine; and when one of the saints should lay hold of a cluster, another should cry out, " I am a better cluster ; bless the Lord through me ; " — that wheat should in like manner multiply ten thousandfold, all the fruits of the earth be in due proportion, and all the beasts of prey become peaceable. Understood literally, this is of course utterly unlike anything we know of our blessed Lord's unearthly teaching, yet it does sound hke what a literal and narrow mind, listening to mere word-of-mouth nar- rations, might make of the parable of the Vine, and of the Sower, or of the Grain of Mustard-seed ; and we also see how providential and how merciful it was that the real words of our Lord were so early recorded by two eye-witnesses, and by two scholarly men, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, instead of being left to the versions that good but dull-minded believers might make of them. Digitized by Google 204 PAPIAS AND MELITO, As to matters of fact, Papias related that which is generally believed, both on his and on internal autho- rity, — namely, that St. Mark's Gospel was drawn up from the teachings of St Peter, and was not meant to be a full narrative in the exact order in which the events took place. He also said that Judas' death was occasioned by being run over by a carriage, which is certainly inconsistent with St Luke's narrative; and he fur- ther explained the four Maries in the Gospels to have been Mary, the mother of our Lord ; Mary, wife of Cleophas ; Mary Salome, wife of Zebedee ; and Mary Magdalene ; adding that the three first were sisters, and that James, Simon, Thaddeus, and Joseph were sons of Cleophas, and James and John of Zebedee. The custom of giving daughters of a family the same name was not uncommon in those days, and this explanation so far agrees with what we gather from the Gospels that it may be admitted. A man who would confuse parable into material prophecy, would still not be unlikely to thread his way clearly in genealogical details. And in him we find that there can be small clear- ness of intellect even in holy and good men, and that a feeble, simple mind may yet learn the true qualities of a Christian enough to be loved and honoured by saints, and to become worthy of their companion- ship, not by word, but by deed. For all that is further known of Papias is, that he. died a martyr in the same persecution as did his far abler companion, Polycarp ; but even the scene of his death is not cer- Digitized by VjOOQIC PAPIAS AND MEUTO. 205 tain, some saying that he was slafti at Hierapolis, others that he was taken to Rome with Onesimus of Ephesus, and there put to death. However that may be, he has attained to the fruition of those good things of God of which he talked with such literal sim plicity. Of Aristion, who is also spoken of as being able to tell of St. John's teaching, nothing is known. A more able man, who must have been brought up by the immediate pupils of St. John, was governing the Church of Sardis ; which would seem to have for a time improved in faith and love. This was Melito, of whom very little is known, except that he is said to have written numerous books, which were very highly esteemed. One letter of his to his brother Onesimus has been preserved, which is very remarkable, since it relates that, at his brother's desire, he made a journey to Jerusalem in order to obtain accurate knowledge which were the genuine books of the Old Testament, and to make extracts from them. He subjoins a list of all excepting the Books of Esther and Nehemiah, which he probably included under the title of Ezra. He says he "went up to the East, and reached the place where they were preached and done." This probably means that he went among the Judaic Christians, who would still have copies of the Hebrew Scriptures. It would appear by this that the Gentile Christians had not for the most part had access to the Scriptures of the elder covenant ; or it may be that in the Greek trans- lation, called the Septuagint, they could not always Digitized by VjOOQIC 2o6 PAPIAS AND MELITO. distinguish between the apocryphal and the inspired writings. At any rate, Melito's is the earliest direct Christian testimony to the canon of the Old Testa- ment, and the pains and care he took are manifest He wrote many other books, whose titles alone remain to us. One was on the Lord's Day, another on Hospitality, another on Baptism. One was called "The Key," and there was a comment on the Apocalypse, which, coming so soon after the death of St. John, would have been most interesting and edifying. Books of a philosophical cast are also ascribed to Melito, — namely, one "On the Obedience of the Senses to Faith," and " On Soul and Body, or of Mind." These would make it appear that Melito, with the Greek subtlety of mind, had entered on the abstract questions of metaphysics, and tried to think out the mysteries of human nature, as well as of grace ; and thus he was fitted to address an argument or apology in favour of the Christians to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, of which three fragments have been copied by Eusebius into his Church history. Melito writes to complain that by the local decrees of the cities, as we may suppose, " the servants of God are persecuted throughout Asia. The shameless informers, greedy of other men's wealth, avail themselves of the pretext of the decrees to plunder openly day and night, rob- bing the innocent." After mentioning others of the wrongs endured by Christians, he continues : " If this is by your order, be it so, it is well done ; a just prince never commands what is unjust, and we willingly re- ceive the reward of such a death. Our only entreaty is, Digitized by VjOOQIC PAPIAS AND MELITO. 207 that you should know for yourself who they are who are accused of obstinacy, and then judge justly whether they are worthy of death and torment, or of safety and peace. But if it be not from you that have emanated this new counsel and decree, scarcely fit indeed to put forth against barbarous enemies, we entreat you the more instantly not to abandon us to this mob-pillage." After this entreaty to the wise and kindly Emperor to look into the case for himself, Melito begins to defend the faith which its enemies represented as an obstinate superstition. " Our philosophy," he says, "arose first among bar- barians in the great reign of your ancestor Augustus, and brought signal blessings to your empire, for since that time the Roman State has constantly increased in might and glory. You have succeeded happily thereto, and together with your son will preserve it, if you will keep this philosophy, which arose with the empire, and which your forefathers respected together with other religions. And the greatest proof that our faith has flourished for good together with the empire is, that no reverse has befallen you since the time of Augustus, but that all has been prosperity and glory, according to the prayer of all. Nero and Domitian alone, by the persuasion of designing men, would have decried our doctrine, and from their time false- hood and calumny have been allowed to prevail against us by an unreasonable custom. But the piety of your fathers has corrected that blindness, often rebuking by letter those who dared to make fresh Digitized by VjOOQIC 2o8 PAPIAS AND MEUTO. attempts against us. Hadrian, your grandfather, wrote amongst others to Fundanus, pro-consul of Asia; and your father, when you governed jointly with him, wrote to several cities respecting us ; among others to the Larisseans, the Thessalonians, the Athenians, and to all Greeks. You hold the same opinions, and even some still more humane and philo- sophical, and we are assured that you will grant us what we ask." Marcus Aurelius, to whom Melito addressed this appeal, was in fact one of the purest and gentlest characters of ancient history. He was actuated by a strong sense of duty, and was always examining him- self to see whether he came up to the standard which his philosophy was supposed to have thought out, but which had derived more from Christian truth than he understood. There are few sadder things in the world than his meditations, showing his anxious, earnest effort to do right — with no hope, no future, and his eyes blinded to the brightness that was abroad in the world. But the praise granted to his clemency and justice was well merited, and Melito had further ingeniously pleaded his cause by showing that the Christians had chiefly suffered in the reigns of terror of Nero and Domitian, from which they, in common with the whole empire, had been relieved by the upright princes from whom, by adoption, Aurelius derived the purple. Nor was the appeal unsuccessful. The persecution in Asia Minor was checked by a letter, apparently sent in answer to an inquiry from the Asiatic cities. Digitized by VjOOQIC PAPIAS AND MELITO. 209 " The Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, Supreme Pontiff, for the fifteenth time tribune of the people, for the third time consul, to the commonwealth of Asia, greeting : — " I know that the gods themselves take care that these persons should not remain concealed, for it is more their interest than yours to punish such as refuse to adore them. By bringing these men into trouble, you strengthen their opinion of you when they accuse you of impiety. They would rather be apparently accused and die for their God than live. Thus they come off conquerors, lavishing their lives rather than yield what you ask of them. As to earthquakes, past or present, it is well to warn you that you are terrified at them, and yet you compare yourselves to men who only thereby become more confident in their God, instead of which, when nothing warns you, you neglect the gods and the worship of the Immortal, and per- secute to the death the Christians who honour Him. Many governors of provinces wrote to my divine father respecting these people, and he forbade them to molest them, unless they should appear to attempt anything against the Roman empire. Many likewise have written to me, and I answered them according to my father's intention. Should any fresh accusation be brought against a Christian, let the accused be sent away pardoned, even though he be convicted, and let there be an action against the delator." Thus it would appear, if this letter be genuine, that the candid mind of Aurelius had at this time accepted the inoffensive lives of the Christians as arguments P Digitized by VjOOQIC 2IO PAPIAS AND MELITO. in their favour, and there was a period of compara- tive peace, during which Melito probably died, as there is no certain record of his having been a martyr. In contrast with the simple literal-minded Syrian Papias, and the learned philosophical Greek Melito, may be mentioned Theophilus, who was Bishop of Antioch at this same time, and who — while Melito seems to have scarcely known the Old Testament in his earlier days — seems by his own confession to have chiefly learnt faith through the prophecies, and who quotes the older Scriptures far more than the newer. Some have even thought him to have been born a Jew, and brought up a Sadducee, and that when the writings of the prophets first came before him, they taught him to enter into the Christian hope of the Resurrection, which before had been a stumbling- block to him. All that is really known of him is that he was the sixth Bishop of Antioch after St. Peter, and that he wrote three letters to endeavour to convert a heathen friend named Autolycus, a learned and eloquent man, who was wont to study day and night, but who was greatly prejudiced against the Christians. These letters have been preserved until our time, and are valuable for the picture they give of the mind of Theophilus himself, and of the arguments that had convinced him. After disclaiming all attempt at fine writing, where he was so much in earnest, Theophilus confesses himself a Christian, and goes on to argue that the Gentiles' inability to understand and see the Digitized by VjOOQIC PAPIAS AND MEUTO, 211 truths he avowed lay in their own eyes. "If you say, * Show me thy God/ I reply, * Show yourself a man, (i, e. be yourself all that manhood can be) and I will show you my God. A man must have a pure soul before he can see God.' " Then he explains that as the life itself is unseen, but is perceived throughout the body, so God is to be traced in His providence and works. So is the presence of a pilot on a ship, of the sun in the sky, of a king in a kingdom. Having gone through the enumeration of the works of nature, in which he perceives the Divine hand, he proceeds to show the impurity of the false deities that had hitherto satisfied the heathen : " The names of your gods are names of dead men, and those of evil character: Kronos devoured his children," — and so on with the foul fables that had attached them- selves to the rest. From this, returning rather abruptly to the reproach of the Christian name, he derives it from "the Anoint- ing," which did in truth form the name of Christ, and pleads that whereas a ship, a tower, a house were always anointed by way of consecration, so man is anointed with Light and Spirit, and thus "we are called Christians because we are anointed with the oil of God;' His second letter is occupied with exposing the numerous inconsistencies of popular mythology, which utterly destroyed all credibility, since the poets and story-tellers contradicted each other, though " some- times they wakened up in their souls and spake things in harmony with the prophets with regard to the P 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC Z12 PAP/AS AND MEL/TO. monarchy of God, the Judgment, and such like. The prophets were holy men inspired of God, and spoke always in harmony with each other." Well may he contrast the confused legends of Greek literature with the perfect accordance of the many writers of the Old Testament ! And in like manner he proceeds to expound the first chapters of Genesis, first literally and then figuratively, showing the evidences of their truth in the existing order of things, and tracing the fragments of old recollection of these things to be found among the heathen poets themselves. Still, in the third letter, it seems that Autolycus viewed Christian opinions as foolishness, and Theo- philus therefore sets to work to prove their antiquity ; first, however, speaking of the horrid stories that the heathens told of the private life of the Christians, and not merely denying them and quoting Scripture denunciations of such crimes, but carrying the war into the enemy's quarters, by showing that the very horrors they pretended to hate, in Christians were admired and commemorated in their gods. He then shows by much learned historical discussion that Moses and all the prophets taught and wrote long before Homer, the earliest Greek poet, and therefore that the innovation was not the faith of the Scripture, but the Greek imaginations. What effect this treatise had on Autolycus is not known ; but though it contained many blunders in Greek literature, it was on the whole of such force, ability, and weight, as to be valued enough by the Digitized by VjOOQIC PAPIAS AND MELITO. 213 Christians to be preserved in their libraries when many other works of the same kind have perished. The mode of Theophilus' death is not known, but the Church of Antioch reckons him as her bishop for thirteen years. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XIV, THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. ** Thy Martyrs sanctified the guilty host The sons of blessed John rear'd on a Western coast." J. H. Newman. TiJE promise to Smyrna had been that her tribulation should only last ten days, and, accordingly, the per- secution died away after the death of the crowned martyr Polycarp. But the Church of St. John had spread its branches much further than over the Levantine shore. The first civilized colonists of Gaul had been Greek in blood and language, and the cities that had sprung up were as full of Greeks as of Romans, even after the whole country had been subdued by the arms of Caesar. Provincia, or the Province, the country around the curving gulf of the Mediterranean Sea, was filled with cities adorned with all that could minister to amusement or luxury, interspersed with many a fair and costly villa, where the Roman nobles, surrounded with ingenious slaves, lived an easy life of literary retirement, reading and writing verses, taking short Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. 1215 rides or chariot drives, and concerning themselves with their fish-ponds, their gardens, or tlieir fountains ; now and then driving into the city to seat themselves in the amphitheatre, and watch the sports, dramas, races, music, sea-fights, shows, or wild beast battles that were offered to amuse the people by magistrates or candidates for the magistracy. The Gauls, once so brave and fierce, had adopted the Latin customs, dress, and language. Their ancient chiefs had been deprived of their leadership, and sought honour as Roman citizens and magistrates; their youths were numbered in the Roman legions far from home, and their clansmen worked on farms, or became artisans and mechanics in the towns. These cities, whose Latin names and mighty Roman buildings endure to this day, were held by guards of soldiers usually from distant lands, and inhabited by the officials of government, as well as by a mixed people of Greeks, Latins, Jews, and Gauls, who prac- tised the arts of life. Temples had been reared to the gods of the empire, and endeavours had been made to identify the Gaulish deities with them; the Druids and their mysterious rites had been swept out by Roman power, and only lurked in the wild coasts of the far North-west, and Roman uniformity and dis- cipline reigned. But the old Celtic faith, however adulterated by the Druids, had grander and purer notions of the Deity than Roman mythology inspired in these late days, and the Gauls could hardly bend their spirits to endure the gross idolatry that was forced upon Digitized by VjOOQIC 2i6 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. them by their conquerors. So in early times, while apostles were still on earth, the voice of the glad tidings was welcomed in the Province, and Trophimus, the faithful companion of St Paul, is counted as the earliest bishop of the grand old city of Arelate, or Aries. Ephesian as he was, and with a congregation more Greek and Gallo-Greek than Latin, he would naturally turn to his own city for his supplies of fellow-workers, and would receive from thence the hymns and forms of praise and prayer there used, rather than those in Latin which were framed for the Christians of Rome. Trophimus seems to have been gathered to rest in peace, when the Church in Gaul was already planted and other Greek Asiatics had come over from his native home, among whom was Pothinus, an inti- mate friend of Polycarp, and nearly of the same age, so that he had probably been a pupil of St. John. He became Bishop of Lugdunum, or Lyons, and was surrounded by a congregation almost entirely Greek- speaking, and in time he was joined by a young minister named Irenaeus, who was an especial pupil of Polycarp, and who brought to Gaul many tradi- tions both of the doings and sayings of Polycarp and Papias, and likewise of those that they had told him of St. John himself, and of such other Apostles and witnesses of our Lord's miracles as had lived to their own time. It would seem that the Church of Provincia was left unmolested for many years ; and Pothinus had reached a great age in peace before the restless alarm Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. .217 of heathenism in the troublous times of Marcus Aure- lius brought persecution down upon the Gauls, and a sharp trial fell upon the Churches about five years later than the Apology of Melito. The good Bishop of Sardis had appealed to the prosperity of the empire as a token of the divinity of Christianity. It was an unfortunate argument, for already that prosperity was rapidly passing away. Troubles of every kind were crowding upon the Roman dominion ; there were famines, in many quarters, terrific earthquakes, and a pestilence pre- vailed of a deadly form hitherto unknown, sweeping off a whole army at once, and making such havoc that the Roman world is thought never to have re- covered it For the old vigour of the nation had long ago departed ; the ancient families were worn out, and the young men, with little worthy occupation set before them, wasted their health and threw away their lives in disgraceful amusements. The ladies of rank were exceedingly corrupt, worse even than the men. Aurelius* own wife Faustina had been a flagrantly dissolute woman ; and, unfortunately, she had a son of evil promise to the empire, so that Aurelius could not, like the last four emperors, adopt a worthy heir to protect the empire. All round the frontier lay tribes of barbarian nations — ^the Parthian, the Sarma- tian, the German, the Frank, the Celt, like beasts of prey ready to spring into the sheepfold ; and those within had been trained into helplessness, and taught to trust themselves entirely to their watch-dogs the r paid soldiery, who had suffered so heavily from the Digitized by VjOOQIC 2i8 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. pestilence, that it was scarcely possible to fill up their ranks. It was a time of " men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking for those things that were coming on the earth ;" and the failing hearts of the heathen turned back with fervour to the old false gods whom they had abandoned, not from conviction, but from indifference. The worship of all the deities who were thought to have power to aid them in this strait was revived. Bulls, goats, and lambs were offered at their altars ; and in Asia Minor, Asclepios, the mock saviour, the serpent-god on Satan*s seat, was fervently invoked by the sick. Strange fresh experiments were made in healing, savouring of magic ; and, as some think, in the vain hope of rivalling Christian miracles, as the magicians of Egypt withstood Moses. Above all, the cry was : " Perish the Christians ; their defiance of the gods has brought this evil upon us." Marcus Aurelius himself— just, honest, conscientious, merciful, with an idea of good such as no unaided philosophy could have taught him, and ever examining himself to see if he came up to it, and grieving at his own failures — was yet offended that any should pre- sume to fail in respect to the gods of their forefathers. He himself had thought far too deeply to believe the wild coarse tales of his mythology, but the system was there for the public good : he himself conformed to it as a matter of discipline and duty, and who were these men who presumed to refuse that to which he could bend, and who treated the State religion with abhorrence? He viewed their refusal as a Digitized by VjOOQIC . THE WITNESSES IN GA UL, 219 political offence, and no longer restrained their frantic foes. In Gaul fell the stress of this persecution. In the account written by the Church of Lugdunum and Vienne we hear how the danger gradually worked up — ^the Christians found themselves shut out from the baths and the forum, where they had hitherto freel)^ resorted, and even from the houses of friends. Then they were forbidden to be seen anywhere, were hooted, pelted and reviled when they went into the streets, and afterwards entirely confined to their houses. Many were afterwards arrested by soldiers and carried to the forum, where they were examined by the magistrates in presence of all their enemies, and, having confessed their faith, were committed to prison to await the arrival of the governor of Provincia. When he arrived, so savage and unjust was the temper in which he showed himself ready to treat the prisoners, that a young Gaulish noble named Vettius Epigathus, who held the rank of first senator of the Gauls, but was himself a Christian and a man of blameless life, rose up among the magistrates, under- taking to prove that his brethren were free of all crimes against the State. Some of the magistrates cried, " Out upon him ! " and the governor asked if he was a Christian. In the clearest voice he answered, " Yes ; " and the account says, " He also was taken up into the number of the witnesses," or martyrs, but no particulars are given, and his high rank would doubt- less have caused him to be slain with the sword. Evidence against the Christians was wanting, and Digitized by VjOOQIC 220 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. the governor endeavoured to obtain it by putting their slaves to the torture, both Christian and Pagan. About ten of the Christian slaves, among them a woman named Biblis, yielded to the agony, and con- firmed the monstrous assertions of the heathen that the Christians slew infants, devoured human flesh, and practised all sorts of abominations in their assemblies ; and the reports of these confessions excited the popu- lace so that they raged against them like wild beasts. The special objects of their fury were a deacon of Vienne, named Sanctus ; a new convert, called Maturus ; a man of the name of Attalus from the faithful city of Pergamus, and thus heir to the mes- sage to the victorious there ; and Blandina, a slave girl. It seems as if Sanctus was also suspected of being a slave, for these two were examined by the most horrible tortures. Blandina was of slight and delicate frame ; and her lady, a Christian herself, but not detected, fully expected that she would give way ; but such grace was given to her that her constancy wearied out one tormentor after another, and she seemed to feel none of the varied anguish inflicted on her, while she still cried out, ** I am a Christian, and no evil is done among us," without letting any pain draw any other words from her. In like manner the only reply of Sanctus to questions whether he were bond or free, where he was born, and of what nation, was in Latin, " Christianas sum,'' even while such injuries were inflicted that he lay a shrunken, distorted, crushed, burnt, almost shapeless mass of humanity; and in this state, a few days after, the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. 221 torture was again applied, the tormentors thinking, that when reduced in strength, and by his wounds smarting, he must give way ; but he proved to have so recovered his energies that the new wrenching of his limbs seemed to restore their use, and he returned in a better state than when he was carried to the torture. Biblis, who had yielded and denied her faith out of terror, was tortured in order to obtain fresh deposi- tions from her, but the rack seemed to wake her as from a sleep. She thought of the miseries of hell- fire so much more terrible and enduring than those she was undergoing, and thus deriving fortitude from her very fears, she confessed herself a Christian, abstained from uttering a word of accusation, and showed constancy that won back her place amid the glorious army of martyrs. Those who were not examined by torments were cruelly used in prison, placed in the stocks so as to stretch their limbs frightfully, ill-fed, and heaped together in noisome cells, where numbers died. The venerable Bishop Pothinus, ninety years old, and in broken health, with a heavy oppression on his breath, was captured, and dragged by the soldiers to the judgment-seat, followed by a cruel, malicious multi- tude, who beat him with sticks and threw stones at him, but he answered undauntedly. And when he was asked, " Who is the God of the Christians ? " he replied, ** If thou art worthy, thou shalt know." Beaten, with clothes torn and covered with mire, hardly able to breathe, the venerable old man was dragged to the dungeon, where his faithful fellow- Digitized by VjOOQIC 222 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. sufferers received and tended him until, after two days, his life passed from him, in the dark, stifling atmosphere, but in calmness, and amid loving friends. So died the last pupil of St. John ; and the circle of those who sat at his feet on earth had all won their crown, their white robe and palm : the reclaimed robber, the child-like nursling of the Apostle, the acute philosophical Athenian, the undaunted cham- pion of Smyrna, and the gentle, worn-out old shepherd of Lugdunum, had all fought their fight in different ways, and stood before the throne, " each leading many a rescued soul." The train of Pothinus, who were preceded by him to the heavenly shore by only a few days, was specially glorious. The prison was not only filled with the constant-hearted Christians who had braved the worst, but with those persons who had consented to deny their faith, and who were detained as having committed ordinary crimes. These, in the sight of their more courageous brethren, repented bitterly; and while those who had confessed were full of hope, boldness, and joy, they were miserably downcast, fear- ful, ahd unhappy, and were reproached and derided for their cowardice by the heathen themselves. One of the prisoners, whose name was Alcibiades, had always spent a very austere life, thinking it one of the duties of self-denial to confine himself at all times to a bread-and-water diet, and tasting nothing else. When, however, he tried to continue this sys- tem in the prison, Attalus, while lying exhausted after his tortures, felt it borne in on his soul, by, as Digitized by Google THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. 223 he deemed (and none can say that it was untruly), the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that Alcibiades was mistaken in refusing to partake of "the good creatures of God," as Christians loved to call the food created by God for them, and that his example might become a stumbling-block to others. Nor did Alcibiades show himself proudly set upon his own way. He yielded to the representations of Attalus, and for the remainder of his days he did as St. Paul had long ago enjoined, and partook of what- ever was set before him, and "gave God thanks ;" the true way of hallowing his sustenance. There was a festival-day drawing on, one of those that had been instituted in honour of the first Em- peror Augustus, and was celebrated every five years by sacrifices and games. And the outcry of the people was that Maturus, Sanctus, Blandina, and Attalus should be thrown for their amusement to the wild beasts in the amphitheatre, of which there are still some remains. Attalus was a Roman citizen, and the governor could therefore only so far yield him to the fury of the mob as to cause him to be paraded round the amphitheatre, with a tablet before him, bearing the words, "Attalus, the Christian." The faithful Per- gamene must have thought on the New Name, on the White Stone, promised to him that overcometh, as he was thus marched round and beheld Blandina fastened to a stake — almost like a cross, and placed in the midst of the beasts — praying aloud, and thus greatly comforting and supporting the rest. Her Digitized by VjOOQIC 2Z4 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. unnatural position probably deterred the animals from touching her, for they left her alone, while they dragged about and mangled Maturus and Sanctus, but without killing them. Indeed, as a bull is the only creature individually mentioned, it may be con- cluded that here, in the provinces, animals of very deathly powers did not form part of the stock of the amphitheatre. The people continued to shout their demands for every infliction that occurred to their cruel fancies — lashing with rods, and the red-hot iron chain in which the sufferers were roasted alive— but not a word was won from Sanctus save his 3teadfast " I am a Christian." The whole long day, which was generally divided between a variety of sports, was spent by this Lyonnese multitude in baiting these two unflinching men and the one delicate girl, until at night it became their cruel pleasure that Maturus and Sanctus should be released by having their throats cut, and that Blandina should go back to be reserved for their fresh amusement As to Attalus, his fate was left undecided till an answer should be received from the Emperor as to what was to be done with the Roman citizen. Aurelius' reply was, that the law must take its course ; and thus, on the last day of the shows, when a fair was held, to which there came a great concourse from every part of Gaul, before all the new comers each surviving Christian was led up before the tribunal and interrogated. Then, to the surprise and rage of the heathen, almost all who had before apostatized redeemed their momentary weakness by full confession Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. 225 of the faith, and were led away to their deaths. A physician, named Alexander, a native of Phrygia, but who had lived for many years in Gaul, and was known as a Christian, though he had not yet been appre- hended, took his station by the tribunal, and showed in his countenance and gestures such intense anxiety that a bold confession might be made, that the mob broke out against him, and the governor interrogating him, learned that he was a Christian, and condemned him at once. The rule was that a Roman citizen should die by the sword, but Attalus was so eagerly demanded by the mob, that the governor did not refuse to him whatever barbarities their savagery might desire to inflict. One more night was spent in the prison, where Attalus, Blandina, and Ponticus her brother, a boy of fifteen, had certainly spent more than fifteen days, during which they had been daily carried out to watch the tortures of their brethren. To these Alexander was added, but probably they were nearly the last. They were visited at night by their friends who had not been denounced, and who ever remembered the tears and entreaties with which they asked their prayers that they might be borne through their last trial. It was likewise recollected that they could not bear the term martyr or witness to be applied to them. " Only One," they said, " is the faithful and true Witness, the Firstborn from the dead. We are but mean and humble confessors." Q Digitized by VjOOQIC 226 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. The next day they were brought out, and Attalus and Alexander were placed in the burning iron chain. The physician endured to the death in silence, but Attalus, almost as if amused while his flesh was roasting like meat, said, in allusion to the cannibal tales about the Christians, " So, this which ye do is eating men I But as for us we neither eat men nor practise any other wickedness." He, too, went to his reward ; and Blan- dina and Ponticus were then brought out, and tortured by every device that heathen cruelty could inflict. The sister encouraged the brother throughout till his death, and seemed, through the exaltation of her spirit, to be insensible to her own torments, as indeed might well have been permitted by the physical natural working of Providence, since it has become known that, after one terrific shock of anguish, the nerves become blunted and insensible to the further cruelties by which fiendish man would seek to exag- gerate suffering. This noble-hearted girl was at length placed in a net, and tossed by a bull, and as she was still alive afterwards, was killed by the confector, all the heathen owning that never had woman endured so much. A guard was set over the bodies for six days, and neither bribes nor entreaties sufficed to obtain them for burial. At last they were burnt, and the ashes swept into the Rhone; the heathen declaring that this was done to deprive them of the chance of resurrection. In after times, however, a Church, now the cathedral of Lyons, was built over the vault of their captivity. Digitized by VjOOQIC THB WITNESSES IN GAUL. 227 Two of the congregation of Lyons had escaped, one named Marcellus to Chdlons, and Valerian to Tournus, but both were overtaken and put to death. All this is recorded in a letter from the Church of Lyons, written almost in the midst of the martyrdoms, to the mother Church in Asia. A much later writer gives the story of two young friends, named Epipodius and Alexander, who resided in the same city, the former being a Gaul, the latter a Greek, and both of the rank to which the prefix Clarissimtis was given. They had been schoolfellows, and had grown up from childhood in the closest affection. When the alarm came, they were just approaching manhood, and together they resolved to endeavour to escape the danger. They made their way out of the gates in secret, and took refuge at a village, where a Christian widow received and sheltered them in her cottage ; but they had been accused, search was made for them, and they were found, attempting to fly, with all the eagerness of youths whose lives were dear to them. When once they knew it was the will of Heaven that they should thus early suffer, there was no more shrinking; they resolutely marched back to Lyons, and were thrown into prison without interrogation. Three days later, they were led, with their hands tied behind them, to the tribunal, where their avowal that they were Christians was heard with shouts of fury from the bystanders; and the magistrate ex- claimed, " What is the use of all our tortures, if men are still audacious enough to follow the doctrine of Christ?" He perceived that the two young friends Digitized by VjOOQIC 228 THE WITNESSES IN GA UL. were encouraging one another by looks and signs, and therefore he separated them, and leading apart Epipodius, who was the youngest of the two, he tried to allure him by fair promises, such as he thought might tempt a lad, who had certainly not hurried to meet death with the eagerness shown by some. " You must not perish through obstinacy," he said, " We adore the immortal gods, who are honoured by all people and princes ; and who are worshipped by joy, by feasts, by music, games and amusements. You adore a crucified Man, who cannot be pleased by your enjoyment, but rejects joy, loves fasts, and condemns pleasure. What good can you expect from One who could not save Himself from the most miserable of deaths } Quit such austerity, and enjoy the happiness of this world with the delight befitting your age ! " "You know not," replied Epipodius, "that our eternal Lord jESUS CHRIST rose again after His Cruci- fixion, and being, by an ineffable mystery, both God and Man, hath opened the gate of eternal life to His own people. But are you blind enough not to know that we ourselves are of two parts, soul and body.^ Our souls rule our bodies, but the revels you enjoin in honour of your idols please the body, and slay the soul." Such words so enraged the governor that he caused the lad to be struck on the mouth; on which he cried aloud, " I confess that jESUS CHRIST is God with the Father and the Holy Ghost. It is meet that I resign to Him tJie soul He ransomed." Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. 229 Upon this Epipodius was sentenced to be hung on a rack, and his flesh lacerated with iron hooks ; but as he endured in silent patience, the people clamoured for leave to overwhelm him with stones, and the governor caused his head to be cut off. Alexander was sent back to his solitary dungeon for two days, and then again brought before the judge, who told him, by way of inducing him to change, that there were no Christians left Alexander answered that, on the contrary, the faith, if preserved by men's life, was extended by their death. He, too, was cruelly tortured, and finally crucified, with his Saviour's Name on his lips. So says Eucherius, who wrote the Acts of these martyrs when Bishop of Lyons, in the fifth century. It is possible that he may have learnt their answers from documents preserved at Lyons; but it is also possible that the story may have been half remem- bered, half invented. There is nothing unlikely in it, except that noble youths should have been so savagely tortured ; and even this was possible, in the morbid state of barbarous rage to which the populace and governor had worked themselves; but still the evidence is not such as that by which we know of the glorious constancy of Attains, Blandina, and the rest Either the governor really thought he had destroyed Christianity in Lyons and Vienne, or, by the end of the games, the people were sick of horrors, for there were no more accusations there ; but the persecution had extended further, and Provincia had not been the only scene of martyrdom. Digitized by VjOOQIC 230 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. According to the records of Gaul, collected into a history by Bishop Gregory of Tours, the city of Augustodunum, now shortened into Autun, likewise suffered. It was one of the oldest towns in Gaul ; it had been, under the name of Bibracte, a fortress even before the Roman conquest, and had since been adorned with all the Latin splendour, and contained a college where the youths ot Gaul were sent to study Latin and Greek poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric. Hither, according to the belief of the place, came a disciple of Polycarp, named Benignus, whose teaching collected together the first Church of Burgundy. Among his converts was the family of a Gallo-Roman noble, named Faustus, whose son Symphorian was distinguished for his learning and scholarship, nor does his Christianity seem to have led him to relax in the cultivation of his mind. Since the Romans had held Autun, they had dedi- cated the city to their gods. In fact they always mixed up the gods of the people whom they con- quered with their own, and the people of Autun had been taught to adore Cybele, the mother of the gods, together with Apollo and Diana as their tutelary deities. Every year the car of Cybele made a state progress through the city, bearing the image of the Mother Goddess, with a crown of towers on her head, a veil over her face, and a lion by her side ; while her votaries, with drums, and cymbals, and horns, danced wildly in full armour round her chariot. Such at least was the manner of her festival in the Eastern lands, in which she had first been adored as an emblem of the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. 231 veiled, tower-crowned, teeming mother earth, and no doubt such were the main features of the ceremonies decreed, when the hollow show of worship to her was transplanted into the Western land, where it was un- congenial and unmeaning, though the excitable Gaul might work himself up to shriek and dance, and revel in the foul excesses that formed a regular part of the orgies of the goddess. These feasts, hateful to Christians for their idolatry, and doubly so for their impurity, were often regarded as tests of their loyalty to the State. And when the car of Cybele had made its progress, the mob be- thought them that the scholar Symphorian had made no obeisance to the image. They seized upon him, and dragged him to the tribunal of Heraclius, the governor, shouting that he was a seditious wretch who refused worship to the Roman gods. Heraclius, after hearing that he was a Christian, asked whether he were a citizen of the place ; and being answered that he was so, and of a noble family, said, "No doubt you reckon on your rank, and perhap3 you know not the Emperor's decree. Let it be read." It was read, and as Symphorian continued un- moved, he was beaten by the lictors with their rods, and sent to prison, whence he was brought two days later before Heraclius, who promised him that he should receive a reward from the public treasury, and an honourable post in the army, if he would cast in- cense upon the altar of the goddess, which was about to be decked with flowers for the purpose. The Digitized by VjOOQIC 232 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL Christian's reply expressed his scorn both of the offers of the governor, and of the impure worship of Cybele, with the absurd superstitions connected therewith ; and Heraclius pronounced his sentence of decapitation. As usual, he was led outside the walls to suffer execution. On the way, as he walked in the midst of the soldiers, guarded on either side by the lictors, with their bundles of rods and the fatal axe, there was a cry from the walls, " My son." The procession paused, and those who looked up saw the face of the mother of Symphorian gazing from the walls. But it was not in weak, wailing despair, that she called aloud, " My son ! my son Symphorian, remember the living God, and stand fast even to the end. Lift up thy heart and look to Him who reigneth in the heavens. Fear not. They will not take thy life this day ; they will but change it for the better." Those were the last words that the martyr son heard from his brave mother. The spot was reached, and, kneeling, he received the sword-blow that bore him to his " better life." His body was buried near a fountain close to the field set apart for public exer- cises, — and in the fifth century a church was built over it. His teacher, St. Benignus, was slain in the same persecution. With the games, the fury of the heathen seemed to have exhausted itself, and Marcus Aurelius himself slackened the persecution, struck perhaps by con- stancy exceeding all that he had heard of, and perhaps Digitized by VjOOQIC THE WITNESSES IN GAUL. 233 feeling that he was destroying the greatest valour left to the empire. It was also thought by the Christians, that he was further moved to clemency by an ad- venture in his campaign on the Danube, when his whole army was reduced to terrible suffering by thirst, and in the utmost extremity. While his Christian soldiers were praying, a thunderstorm, with plentiful rain, relieved them. The column with which Aurelius commemorated his exploits testifies to the event, for in one compartment the rain is seen falling, and the soldiers eagerly catching it ; but the mercy is there ascribed to the Roman god, Jupiter Pluvius ; and those who believed in Egyptian magic said it was the work of their sorcerers. Moreover, the name of the Thundering Legion, which was often adduced as a proof that the Christian division of the army was believed to have invoked the storm, has been shown to have been a much older title. Yet, still we know that the Christians alone had the power of rightly addressing Him who granted the rain, and some lurking impression on the part of Aurelius may have caused him to relax his severity. The life of this Emperor was fast waning. He was a man of fair ability, but not of the extraordinary power that would have been needed to cope with the decayed state of the empire, and the strength of the enemies who closed him in. No one nation was a match for the Romans ; but while he was quelling one foe, another broke in whenever his back was turned, and the worn-out state of Rome afforded him no able generals or counsellors to supply his place. Digitized by VjOOQIC 234 THE WITNESSES IN GAUL, Fatigue and disappointment broke his strength of body, and scrupulous conscientiousness was wearing out his mind. All was dark around him, and on the future rested the vaguest, saddest uncertainty. Un- consciously, in morals and in his longing for perfec- tion, Aurelius had been a pupil of St John and of the other Appstles, but from their truths, their hopes, he turned aside ; his mind darkened by habit, by old Roman pride, and by the doubting spirit engendered by philosophy. One of his last compositions wa$ a sad little poem, asking his soul whither it would go when it fluttered forth into the night; and, when hardly arrived at middle age, he fell sick of a fever, which, coming upon health already failing, speedily closed his life in the year i8o. Weary and sick of this world, he closed his eyes on it with contented re- signation, but oh ! how different from the gladness that shone through the lives, and brightened the most agonising deaths of those whom he " counted as mad- men, and their end to be witliout honour." Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XV. IRENiBUS, THE CHAMPION OF THE FAITIL " From new-boiB Lyons oft thy memory tum'd Unto the earlier East, and fondly yeamVl For Polycarp and Smyrna, and the youth 'Of grave Religion fair.** Rev. J. Williams. Still there remained one who, if he had not him- self sat at the feet of St John, had at least eagerly gathered up all that could be told of the great Evan- gelist by his immediate pupils, Polycarp and Papias ; and thus may be reckoned as almost one of his direct disciples. Irenaeus was no doubt of Greek extraction, and a native of one of the cities of Asia Minor, most pro- bably Smyrna. His name, meaning '* Peaceful," was, it may be supposed, chosen for him by Christian parents at his baptism ; and he was instructed from his early youth by St Polycarp, under whose advice he seems to have studied, not only Christian truths such as are needful for the salvation of all believers, but also to have inquired into the numerous varieties of heresy, the different systems of philosophy, and the varieties of mythology, so as to be filled for argument and Digitized by VjOOQIC 236 IRENjEUSy THE CHAMPION OF THE FAITH, refutation of error. He was said to be one of the most learned of men in all kinds of doctrine. He was still young when he was sent by the Eastern Church to strengthen their mission in Western Gaul, which, as already said, was under the charge of the aged Pothinus. It appears, from what Irenaeus says of himself later, that his mission was not con- fined to the Greek and Latin-speaking, cultivated society of Lyons, but that he applied himself to conquer the many difficulties of the harsh, uncouth Celtic, with its strange inflections and complicated grammar — probably resembling Gaelic, for the Gauls of Provincia are believed to have more resembled the Scottish than the Welsh Celts. In time he came to use this "barbarous tongue" more frequently than his soft, native Greek ; and such pains on his part must have told much upon the warm-hearted Celtic people, who were accustomed to hear their language treated with contempt, and to transact their affairs in half- understood Latin. It may have been from having heard Irenaeus speak " in their own tongue the won- derful works of God," that not merely the priest, the senator, the physician, were so firm in the dreadful conflict that ensued, but the slave girl and boy and the lowest of the people were equally resolute. Irenaeus seems to have worked as a priest until the year 177, when he was chosen by the Church of Lyons to go on a mission to Rome. The old discus- sion about the time of observing the feast of Easter had broken out again, and the contention had become so hot that it was feared that the Roman Church Digitized by VjOOQIC IRENjEUS, the champion of the faith 237 would refuse to communicate with the Greek, which still continued to keep the great Resurrection-day on the fourteenth day of the Paschal moon, instead of making it always fall on a Sunday. The Churches of Provincia, living in the West, yet with Eastern sympathies, were very fit to mediate between the two parties, and to entreat them, since they were of the same faith, not to break the unity of the Church for what could not be regarded as essen- tial. Irenaeus was therefore to be despatched to plead with Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome, on behalf of the Churches of Asia Minor, and likewise to protest against the errors of a certain Montanus, a Greek, who was promulgating mischievous follies under the pre- tended authority of two women whom he had set up as prophetesses. And a letter was also to be written to the Churches of Asia. It seems to have been just as this was determined on that the terrible games described in the last chapter took place, and the Christians of note were hunted out and thrown into their dungeons. Irenaeus was not, however, found by the persecutors, and re- mained probably hidden or disguised, and not without communication with his friends in the prison. The letters were carried on through all — the sufferings and triumphs of the first to pass away were recorded by those who survived them, and, though finished by other hands, the protests and the arguments were those of the martyrs themselves. The entire letters have been lost ; all that remains is the narrative part which Eusebius copied into his Digitized by VjOOQIC 238 IRENjEUS, the CHAMPION OF THE FAITH, history, from the epistle to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia. Some think they were composed by Irenseus himself. At any rate, so soon as the fury of the heathen relaxed, he went upon his journey to Rome, and succeeded in his mission, for the Pope Eleutherius agreed to bear with the Greek customs ; and some years later the follies of Montanus were condemned. At Rome, however, Irenaeus had the pain of meeting Florinus, an old friend and fellow- pupil of Polycarp, who had become a priest at Rome, but had fallen into the error, to which many Eastern minds were prone, of imagining that the author of evil was of equal power with the God of Beneficence. On being deposed from his office for false teaching, Florinus had collected a set of followers around him and formed a sect ; while another priest, named Blastus, was trying to bring his own admirers back to the old bondage of the Judaical law. Grieved at these errors, and at the rents they made in that unity of the Church, which the early Christians prized so highly and loved to liken to the seamless coat of Christ, Irenaeus returned home, revolving, over Alpine pass, or on Mediterranean waves, how to reply to and refute these errors, and perchance bring back to the fold the old companion over whom his heart yearned. On his return, he found that the surviving Chris- tians of Lyons, lifting up their heads again, had decided on electing him as their bishop in the place of the martyred Pothinus — the post, above all others, of championship and of danger. Digitized by Google IRENjEUS, the champion of the faith 239 When he was settled in his new office, he wrote the two letters he had resolved on ; one to Blastus, entitled ** Schism," and one to Florinus, upon " The Monarchy or Unity of God, and that God is not the Author of Sin." Both have been lost, but Euse- bius has quoted a passage from the latter, in which Irenaeus reminds Florinus how both had received the instructions of Polycarp, when boys at Smyrna ; adding, that he himself remembered the things that then took place better than the more recent ones. "The lessons we receive in childhood," he says, " grow up with the soul, and become one with it, so that I could tell you the place where the blessed Polycarp used to sit when he taught, his going out and coming in, his manner of life, his face and figure, his discourse to the people, how he told us of his living with John, and with others who had seen the Lord ; how he repeated their words, and what he had learnt from them concerning the Lord, His mighty works, and His doctrine. For Polycarp, having received all from eye-witnesses of the Word of Life, uttered everything in harmony with Holy Scripture. These things, by the grace of God, I diligently listened to, noting them down not on paper, but in my heart ; and ever, by the grace of God, I feed upon them again and again. And I bear witness before God. that had the blessed and apostolical old man heard such doc- trine as you have put forth, he would have cried out and stopped his ears, and, uttering the familiar phrase, * O God, to what hast Thou reserved me, that I should hear such things/ he would have fled the place," Digitized by VjOOQIC 240 irenjEUs, the champion of the faith. It IS said that Florinus was touched by this letter, and the appeal to his younger days, but that, being a vain and unstable man, he soon after was attracted by the teaching of one Valentinus. This person was learned and eloquent, and had preached in Eg^pt, where it appears he had become attached to the subtle old teaching that had first been censured in Simon Magus, and then blossomed out into Gnos- ticism. People said that Valentinus was affronted by not being elected to a bishopric in Eg^pt ; at any rate, he began to teach a newer and more elaborate form of Gnosticism, which became known by his name as the Valentinian heresy. The Gospel of St. John, the opening of which had been written partly for the con- futation of the earlier Gnostics, was adopted by these later ones, and from the first chapter they pretended to prove that Creation was due to an Ogdoad, or Octave of Principles, respecting whom they diverged into " endless genealogies and questions of names," like their predecessors. Marcion, who led one of the many sects of the Valentinians, travelled in the cities of the Rhone, performed lying miracles, and many were in danger of being deluded. An old catalogue of Synods of the Church mentions one held at Lyons, in which Irenaeus and the other Gallican bishops met to pronounce sentence upon the false doctrines of Valentinus and Marcion. At any rate, Irenaeus, to whom it would seem had descended that peculiar leadership that had been held by Igna- tius, Polycarp, and perhaps Melito, by inheritance of the traditions of St John, stood forth as the champion Digitized by VjOOQIC IREN^US, THE CHAMPION OF THE FAITH 241 of St John's Gospel, and, in a treatise known as the " Book of the Ogdoad," argued with those parties. The chief part of this book is lost, we only know that it concluded with the following address to whom- soever should copy the manuscript : — "Thou who shalt transcribe this book, I conjure thee, by our Lord jESUS Christ, by His glorious Advent, when He shall judge the quick and dead, that thou shouldest carefully compare thy writing by this very copy, and correct it by the original, and that thou shouldest also transcribe this adjuration and set it in thy copy." From this we gather that the carelessness, and per- haps the presumptuous alterations, made by scribes, must have been a sore inconvenience to these ancient authors, who no doubt often found their meaning mischievously misrepresented. Probably the Ogdoad was embodied in the larger treatise against heresy, which Irenaeus put forth shortly after in the form of a letter, evidently to some bishop, to whom he wrote in Greek, though only a Latin translation now exists. " Look not," he says, " from us who dwell among the Celts and chiefly use their barbarous tongue, for the art of speech, which we have not studied, neither force of style and ornamental words ; but receive with charity what I write to you in charity, simplicity, and truth, and to which ye will be well able to add, being more learned than we are." He then in his first book explained the system of the Valentinian Gnostics, and showed that the true Universal Church extended throughout the world, R Digitized by VjOOQIC 242 irenjEUS, the champion of the faith. mentioning by name the Churches of Germany, Spain, Gaul, the East, Egypt, and Lybia, and declaring that all are enlightened by the same faith, even as they are by the same sun ; and he sets in contrast with this oneness the number of' heretics who had appeared, naming them all, from Simon Magus downwards. His next book is occupied with arguing with them. They were not for the most part deniers of the Scrip- ture, but they took a parable, or obscure passage, and interpreted it by another equally difficult; whereas Irenaeus argued that the plain direct verses ought to be taken first, and that they would serve to explain the more abstruse parts. And he refuted with clear, strong argument their extraordinary perversion of the first chapter of St. John, He then disposes of the false miracles and pro- phecies of the Gnostics, by which it appears that they made people think they saw phantoms — ^a very com- mon trick of impostors — and shows the difference between these and the true miracles of healing, which he treats as being still frequent in the Church in his own time. In the third book he shows how continuous has been the doctrine of the Church that since St Ignatius* time had begun to be called Catholic, that is, of and for all true believers. "The Apostles," he says, "only preached after having received per- fect knowledge;" and he adds, "Matthew gave the Hebrews the Gospel written in their tongue, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and found- ing the Church there. After their departure, Mark, Digitized by VjOOQIC IRENjEUS, the champion of the faith. 243 the disciple and interpreter of Peter, gave us in writing that which Peter had spoken; and Luke, who had followed Paul, wrote in a book the Gospel that Paul had taught. Afterwards John, the Lord's own disciple, who had leaned on His breast, also gave his Gospel while dwelling at Ephesus, in Asia." He explains that St John's Gospel was partly called forth in refutation of the errors of Cerinthus, the Gnostics, and Nicolaitanes ; and then says that there was a great significance in there being four Gospels, and applies to thern the Vision of St. John of the Living Forms around the Mercy-seat in Heaven. For had not David said, when asking for the coming of the Christ, " Show Thyself also. Thou that sittest between the Cherubim, for the four-shaped Cherubim and their countenances are images of the dispensa- tion of the Son of God." ..." The Word, Who is the worker of all things. Who sitteth above the Cherubim and containeth all things, in being manifested in men, hath given us the Gospel in the form fourfold, but combined by one Spirit'* Here, then, we first find the Eagle connected with the height and the depth of St John's Gospel. Irenaeus goes on to show how heretics sometimes argued that they had tradition on their side, and then, when refuted on that score, had recourse to Scripture ; or, when silenced by Scripture, went back to tradition, whereas the Church fearlessly appealed to both. " We can reckon," he says, " those whom the Apostles established as bishops in their Churches, and their successors, even down to ourselves, who R2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 244 IRENjEUS, the CHAMPION OF THE FAITH. have taught nothing but what is like these honoured ones." He then counts the bishops at Rome, from Linus till his own day, adding, " And Polycarp, who not only had been taught by the Apostles, and had conversed with those who had seen jESUS Christ, but had been placed by the Apostles in Asia as Bishop of the Church of Smyrna, whom I myself saw in my early youth ; for he lived long, and was extremely aged when he departed this life by a most glorious and renowned martyrdom. He alwtiys taught what he had from the Apostles, what the Church teaches, and which is the sole truth. All the Churches of Asia, and those who have succeeded to the seat of Polycarp, testify that he is a witness of the truth, far more worthy of credit and more certain than Valentinus and Marcion, and all other wanderers. He came to Rome in the time of Anicetus, and brought back to the Church many of the schismatics of these heretics, setting forth that the truth he had heard from the Apostles is that which the Church teaches. Shortly after he adds, "If there were a dispute on any question, should we not recur to the oldest Churches where the Apostles have lived ? Or, how if the Apostles had left no writings.^ Should we not then follow the tradition they left to those to whom they entrusted the Churches } This is shown in sundry barbarous nations who believe in jESUS Christ without paper or ink, having the doctrine of salvation written in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, and faithfully keeping the ancient tradition respecting One God the Creator and His Son jESUS Digitized by Google IRENjEUS, the champion of the faith 245 Christ. Those who have received this faith un- written are barbarians in language with regard to us ; but as to their opinions and their conduct, they are both discreet and acceptable to God, observing uprightness and chastity." Irenaeus must here be speaking of his own Gallic flock, for whose sake he had learnt the language so hard for any full-grown person to acquire, and who all persevered so bravely to the end with him. The doctrine he had proved to be so unanimously held he then set forth in his fourth book, following apparently the words of what we call the Apostles* Creed, though we have no absolute copy of it till a century later. He proves these Articles of Faith step by step by the words of our Lord, and then coming to the Holy Kucharist, he says of our Lord, "Having taught His disciples to offer to God the first-fruits of His creatures, not as though He had need of any, but that they might have the blessing of thankfulness. He took bread, which is the work of the Creator, and having given thanks, said, * This is My Body ; ' ami thus also, having taken the cup, also the work of the Creator, He pronounced that this is His Blood, and taught the new oblation of the New Testament which the Church, having received through the Apostles, offers to God through- out the world, as it is written in Malachi, * From the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same. My name shall be great among the Gentiles, and in every place incense shall be offered unto My Name and a pure offering.' . . . There are oblations Digitized by VjOOQIC 246 IRENJEUS, THE CHAMPION OF THE FAITH. here as there were there ; there were sacrifices among the people of old, there are sacrifices in the Church ; the only sort of change is because we are not ser- vants, but freemen, who offer." From these declarations of the faith Irenaeus pro- ceeds to show the peril of breaking up the unity of the Church. "The preaching of the Church is true and stedfast, showing to all the world the one true way of salvation ; it is the Seven-branched Candle- stick, which bears the Light of jESUS CHRIST,*' he says, and earnest were his endeavours to set forth that Light, to keep it clear, and to hinder the sever- ance of any true branch. For again the Paschal controversy was waxing hot. The inconvenience of two differing Easter-days was really vexatious, when Asiatic and Italian Christians lived in close contact ; and at Laodicea the visitors from Rome seem to have been scandalized by finding it was the practice to eat a paschal lamb in the same manner as did the Jews. Victor, who had become Bishop of Rome, took the matter up warmly, and tried to enforce uniformity, declaring that "the Church should have nothing in common with the Jews" — a bold assertion, consi- dering that all the past, up to scarce two centuries back, must of necessity be in common. In consequence, many Synods were held in the different Churches ; and at Jerusalem, in Pontus, Gaul, and many other places, it was decided that the festival must always fall on the first day of the week ; but Ephesus still refused, and Polycrates, the bishop — Digitized by VjOOQIC irenjEus, the champion of the faith. 247 who is described as grey-headed, of a slender frame, but of a mighty spirit — ^headed the declaration that nothing should induce his Church to depart from her ancient custom. Victor would have carried out his threat of sepa- rating the Ephesians from the general communion, but the other bishops would not join with him ; and Irenaeus wrote a remonstrance, proving how, while the main articles of faith were accepted by universal consent, local differences of practice showed the extent and largeness of the Church, — ^and thus again the breach between the East and West was averted. From the Christians having leisure for so much of argument among themselves, it may easily be perceived they were not molested from without. The reigning Emperor, Commodus, though a most degenerate son of Aurelius, and given up to de- bauchery and cruelty, never troubled himself to molest the Christians during his twelve years* reign, from 180 to 192. In fact, a woman named Marcia, who had much influence over him, protected the Christians. When at last Marcia found her own name in a list of those whom Commodus intended for death, she poisoned him, and the empire fell into terrible confusion, while the generals of the army struggled with one another for the mastery. The province of Gaul had either chosen or been seized by a man named Clodius Albinus, and in 197 a terrible battle was fought at the very gates of Lyons between this man and Septimius Severus, a fierce, iron, old Roman, once governor of Lyons, and who Digitized by VjOOQIC 248 IRENjEUS, the CHAMPION OF THE FAITH. had already won the victory in Italy. The Christians took no share in political changes, but deemed it their duty to obey the Emperor, however he might have become such, and whether he brought them peace or persecution. Both the competitors had shown themselves hard and violent men, but Severus was the most likely to be felt as a powerful and able emperor, and the friends to the public good must have rejoiced when his troops were seen advancing, and Albinus' men fled. There was a terrible slaughter : Albinus was killed, and the Rhone ran red with blood. Severus insulted his enemy's corpse, and took a sharp revenge on his partisans, but without concerning himself about the Christians, indeed, he was forced to hurry to the ends of his empire to repel the barbarians, and the Christians had also' the hope that he would favour them for the sake of Proculus, the steward of his freed man Euodias, and who was said to have cured his master of a dan- gerous illness. But Severus was one of the fierce, stem characters, who require that all should bend to their will, and when, after a few years, accusations were brought to him of Christians who refused him the honours of divinity, or neglected to appear at the heathen fes- tivals, he bade that the law should take its course. This was letting loose the wicked, and they availed themselves of the licence. Some Christians — some whole Churches — thought it no wrong to purchase from the magistrates false testimonials that they had burnt incense to idols; but to Irenaeus and his Digitized by VjOOQIC irenjEus, the champion of the faith, ij^^ Lyonnese such falsehood was the next thing to apostasy. No faithful pen has told how the storm broke on the Smymiot-Greek bishop and that flock which he had gathered in Gaul by speaking their own tongue. What is known is, that almost all Lyons was Christian; and that in the tenth year of Severus a mighty celebration of games in his honour was pro- claimed. Pagans from every part of the country came in. Whether a chance offence lighted up their fury, we cannot tell, or whether there were a deliberate scheme of their enemies ; but we do know that the Celtic nature, when once set on fire, can be ruthless in its frenzy. Nor have any told us whether the Christians trembled or triumphed, whether they were taken by surprise or were prepared, when the raging multitude came roaring on them and the massacre began. Alas ! that unhappy land has seen too many of such massacres for the fact to be improbable. No one seems to have written of the faith and constancy of the martyred multitude, but it was told long after how the streets of Lyons had been rivers of blood, and the Greeks of Smyrna, Irenaeus' home, kept it on record that he died \>y the sword in the year 202. An old mosaic pavement in the church of St. Irenaeus, at Lyons, has an inscription in Latin verses, which makes the number of his fellow-martyrs nineteen thousand, but this is scarcely credible. At any rate, this true shepherd must have stood before his God, bringing with him almost unbroken the flock that had come with him through the Red Sea of Martyrdom. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XVI. TRIBULATION AT SMYRNA. " And the secret of their conquest Let Thy kingdom's records tell ; Twas the old Faith once delivered, Scom'd so oft, and proved so well. They adored Thee, God Incarnate ; They believed in Heaven and Hell." Rev. W. Bright. Those Eastern Churches, to Which the letters from Lyons had been written, had a trial coming on them that needed that their faith should be strengthened by every example that could nerve them to en- durance. After the time of Severus, indeed, the very weakness of the emperors gave the Christians an interval of rest for fifty years, since the men who were raised to supreme power, and then pulled down again, by their own guards, were far too short-lived and insecure to attempt to exercise any authority as governors. One of these, Alexander Severus, so far tolerated Christianity that he tried to rank our Blessed Lord with philosophers and teachers, and placed a statue of Him in his private temple. Another, named Philip, an Idumean by birth, is said to have been a Christian, so far as his belief went, Digitized by VjOOQIC TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. 25 1 though he waived his profession fof the sake of the splendours of the purple ; and, indeed, had been hitherto restrained from no crime. He poisoned his master, Gordian, in order to obtain the empire, while on a march from the Persian frontier; and he also put to death a poor young prince, who had been en- trusted to him as a hostage. Easter Eve had come, and the Christians of Antioch were gathered in the building which they had of late ventured openly to devote to the worship of their God. There, watching, as did St John and the Maries of old, they knelt in the dark Church, and blessed Him who had lain in the g^ve for their sakes, and prayed that they might in time come to a joyful resurrection, all in waiting for midnight, when, with a shout that " Christ is risen ! " each man should light his lamp, and rejoice with Easter blessedness. Even was drawing on, when steps and sounds came near, and a whisper ran through the congregation that the Emperor was coming — the Emperor arriving as a worshipper; and for the first time would the purple robes and laurelled head enter within a Chris- tian Church. Was not this the time so much longed and prayed for, when edicts of peace would be obtained, and when the "sons of them that had afflicted the Church would come bending unto her?" Granting that Philip was a blood-stained murderer, was not the gain for the Church so infinite, that it might be possible tc wink at the errors of a convert who held the lives of thousands of Christians in his hand? Digitized by VjOOQIC 253 TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. Hitherto the assembly of the faithful had never fully received persons living in open sin. There was a spot set apart for them, where, if repentant, they might join in prayer and listen to exhortation ; but like the still unbaptized who were under instruction, they were placed behind the full members of the Church, and were bidden to depart before the cele- bration of the Holy Communion. There would have been the place of one who had denied his faith in torture or terror, of a man who had slain another, or of any person grieving over a deep-dyed sin. And as the proud head of the soldierly Emperor appeared within the door of the Church, he was there met by Babylas, the Bishop of Antioch, and no respecter of persons in the house of his God. Point- ing to the space set apart for penitents, he stood before Philip, and told him that the Church closed her doors against ^one who desired pardon and forgive- ness, but that if he entered, it must be only in the place of the penitent, and that he could not be re- ceived to Communion till he had gone through the discipline appointed for those who had lapsed from the faith.* * This is the story as told by Eusebius. That which ensues is on the authority of St. John Chrysostom, himself a native of Antioch. It may be thought another version of the same stoiy, but on the whole there is no reason that both should not have taken place, since where Philip had penetrated, his successor would think it incumbent on his honour to enter, as a mere assertion of his right, as Pompey had entered the Holy of Holies ; and Chrysostom makes the bishop's refusal the cause of his death. The Decian persecution was not till after the expedition to the East Digitized by VjOOQIC TRIDULA TION A T SMYRNA. 253 Philip obeyed the bishop, and submitted to accept the penitent's position. But it may be feared that he still halted between two opinions, fearing to offend the Romans ; for on his arrival at Rome, the secular games by which each century of the State was in- augurated were celebrated with extraordinary splen- dour. It was the i,oooth year of Rome — the augury of Romulus* twelve vultures was almost fulfilled ; but the very sense that the commonwealth was tottering inspired the more enthusiasm in her old ceremonies, and Philip took his share, afraid no doubt to betray any shrinking that might offend -those on whom his throne and life depended. But before the end of the year, the army in Mcesia revolted, and on his way home from subduing it, another rebellion broke out under his rival Decius, and Philip was defeated and slain at Verona in 249. His wife and his son, a grave, thoughtful lad, who was slain at the same time with him, are said to have been Christians. Before long, Decius was again on the frontier, called thither to repel the Persians. He, like Philip, returned to Antioch, and like Philip is said to have presented himself at the door of the Church and demanded entrance, perhaps to spy out their pro- ceedings. But Decius was soiled with crimes of as deep a dye as those of Philip, and he was not, as Philip may have been, a Christian. Therefore B;i- bylas, fearless as evei in his resolution to maintain the virgin purity of his Church, withstood Decius at the door, and even on his persistence told him that nothing should induce him, the shepherd, to admit a Digitized by VjOOQIC 2S4 TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. wolf into the sheepfold. The result was not what it had been with Philip. Decius caused the bishop to be seized and thrown into prison, while three young boys, whom he had been bringing up in his house, were placed under a heathen tutor, and every threat and promise employed to turn them from the faith he had taught them. Babylas was brought before the Emperor, and told that he could only purchase his life by sacrificing to the gods of Rome. He answered, that, as a shepherd, he could only do what was good for his flock, and therefore to sacrifice to false gods was impossible. After being again imprisoned, he was brought out to hear his sentence of execution, and, to his great joy, the three young brothers, all constant to their faith, were brought out to share his fate. " Return again then unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath rewarded thee," he began to chant aloud ; and then the bishop and the three boys went along those colonnaded streets of Antioch singing their psalm of joy, till they came to the place of execution. •'Behold, O Lord, I and the children Thou hast given me," said Babylas, putting the children first, lest the sight of his death should shake them, and begging the friends who had followed to let his chains be buried with him. Decius found his empire in a miserable, disorganised plight ; and, like some of his predecessors, seems to have thought he could bring back the old Roman temper by exterminating the new doctrine that he could so little understand. The resistance of Babylas Digitized by VjOOQIC TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. 255 might have made him more bitter ; and certain it is that the Decian persecution was far more deadly and systematic than any that had gone before. But among the many who then endured this fiery trial of their faith, only those especially belonging to the Churches, of St John can be spoken of. Alex- ander, Bishop of Jerusalem, was one of the first He was tortured, and died in prison ; and Maximus, Bishop of Ephesus, was stoned. But it is of the tribulation of Smyrna that we have the fullest ac- count ; and as that city was specially marked out for such an ordeal by the epistle in the Apocalypse, and as the account is very curious and characteristic, we give it in full. The present bishop, Eudaemon, though in the seat of Polycarp, had not been faithful unto death, but had yielded to fear, and sacrificed to the idol ; and his example had been fatal to many more of his flock. A priest named Pionius thus became the chief of those who still remained faithful. He was a pale, thin ascetic, who had converted many idolaters, was much esteemed by all his fellow-citizens, and had a great influence over his disciples. He seems to have felt that his constancy might be the turning-point with the other Christians, and prepared himself ac- cordingly. On the eve of the 23d February, 250, which was kept at Smyrna in memory of St. Poly- carp, Pionius dreamt that he with two of his flock, Asclepiades and Sabina — the last a woman who had been a sla^je and had suffered much from a heathen mistress — ^would be taken the next day ; and when he Digitized by VjOOQIC 256 TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. told them of it, they all, in token of their readiness, put chains upon their own necks, in order, as Pionius afterwards explained, that they might not be con- founded with those who were on their way to apostasy ; and then proceeded to keep the feast of their martyr Saint. They had just partaken of the holy bread, when they were summoned by Polemo — who is called the Guardian of the Temple, and was probably that chief priest of Dionysos to whom, as we have seen, the crown was given at the end of the year, — arrived with a guard from the magistrates. Polemo really seems to have been desirous of saving the life of Pionius, and the populace were in the utmost excitement and curiosity, since Pionius was a man of much note, and, as is evident from his speech, of ready wit and eloquence, and as well instructed in classic as in Christian learning. At sight of the chains round his neck and those of his companions, the crowd became immense, throng- ing densely into the forum ; and it is recorded that, in consequence of the day being Saturday, there was an unusual multitude of women, because the Sabbath had set all the Jewesses at leisure. The roofs of the houses around the forum were filled with gazers, and many stood on benches or chests to see over the heads of the others. The mass of the people, however, seem to have been much less virulent against Pionius than in old times against Polycarp, and evidently wished him to act so as to be spared. Indeed, it appears that the Smyrniote Jews were dis- posed, even though they derided and despised their Digitized by VjOOQIC TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. 257 weakness, to console the unhappy Christians who had lapsed, by offering them a refuge from idol worship in their synagogues — ^an alternative that must have stung these miserable men with the sense of standing before the terrible and Just One who gave the Law, without the Atoning Sacrifice of the Redeemer they had denied. As the three prisoners were set in the midst of the market-place, Polemo said to Pionius, **You had better do as others have done, and avoid punish- ment;" and he pointed to the images which stood on high, at the top of the steps, under the portico of the temple. Then Pionius turned round to the people, with a cheerful and resolute countenance, and availing himself of the pride the Smyrniotes felt in their city being one of those which laid claim to be tlie birth- place of Homer, he spoke thus, in a tone that niust have taken them by suiprise, as showing that he re- garded the apostasy of his fellow-Christians less with anger than with pity, as an absolute fall and death — " Ye men of Smyrna," he said, " who rejoice in the beauty of your walls and of your city, and who exult in the poet Homer ; and ye Jews, if any among you be present, hear my speech unto you : — " I hear that ye deride those who come of them- selves to sacrifice, or who refuse not when thereto constrained ; whereas ye ought to remember the say- ing of your poet Homer, • Unseemly 'tis in death of man to joy. And you, ye Jews, should remember how that Moses said unto you, 'If thou seest the ass of him that Digitized by VjOOQIC 2«;8 TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. hateth thee lying under his burthen, thou shalt not forbear to help him.' And Solomon saith, * Rejoice not when thine enemy stumbleth.* For my own part, I had rather die and suffer all kinds of torments than contradict that which I have learnt and which I teach/' His eloquence won him eager attention, and he was allowed to speak for a long time ; but when he came to the words, " We worship not your gods of silver or gold," the idols were brought down from the portico, and carried into the midst of the forum, as to a face-to-face encounter; and the people, led by Polemo, shouted, " Hear us, Pionius, your justice and wisdom induce us to adjudge you worthy of life. It is good to breathe and see the light" " So say I," replied Pionius. " I say, it is good to live and see the light, but that light is what we long to come unto. We do not part with these gifts of God out of scorn, but what we prefer to them is far better. I thank you for your affection, but I doubt your intention. Open hatred injures less than deceitful flattery." A man named Alexander began with, " Listen — " " Listen to me," said Pionius. " I know what thou dost and also what thou dost not know." "What mean these chains ?" said Alexander. " That none may think we are going to the temple," said Pionius. The people continued to entreat him to yield ; and as his answers still continued to strike and almost fascinate them, they demanded that he should be Digitized by VjOOQIC TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. 259 brought into the theatre, that his voice might be better heard ; but some persons represented to Polemo that this would be sure to end in a riot, and he therefore said, " If you will not sacrifice, at least come into tlie temple." "That would not be good for the idols," said Pionius. "Then," said Polemo, "is it impossible to persuade thee?" " Would to God that instead I could maKe you all Christians." " The gods forefend," cried the bystanders ; " then we should be burnt alive !" " Better so, than to burn after death," said Pionius. The exclamation of these persons made Sabina smile, and there was a shout at her, "Dost thou laugh.?" " Ay," she said ; " I laugh, if God wills it, for we are Christian." " Dost thou know how they treat women who will not sacrifice ? " " God will provide," she said. Polemo then again commanded Pionius to sacrifice. " I will not," he said "Why not?" " I am a Christian." "Who is thy God?" " God Almighty, who made heaven and earth, and all that is therein ; who giveth us richly all things to enjoy, and Whom we know by His Word, jESUS Christ." S 2 Digitized by Google 26o TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. "Then at least sacrifice to the Emperor," said Polemo, for this act of homage sometimes served as a sort of subterfuge to appease the consciences of yielding Christians. But Pionius answered, " I sacrifice to no man." The judicial examination began on this distinct refusal, and the answers were engraved on waxen tablets by a notary. *•' What dost thou call thyself?" "A Christian." " Of what Church V For, as we have seen, there were already various bodies who, under the per- suasion of false teachers, had separated from the Church. ^ The Catholic," answered Pionius, using the word for the one universal Church, which had J^een first applied to it by St. Ignatius. He then turned to Sabina and Asclepiades, who made the same answers, except that the latter, when asked who was his God, said, " jESUS CHRIST." " What, another } " said Polemo. " No ; He is the same whom the others have con- fessed. ** They were then ordered off to prison, and were greatly jostled by the throng, so that Sabina was forced to cling to the priest's garment that she might not be trampled down ; and shouts of contempt were heard : " See the man who was so pale ! He is red enough now ! " "That little man," pointing to Asclepiades, "is going to sacrifice." Digitized by VjOOQIC TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. 261 "How — thou wise man, how can you so obsti- nately run upon death ! " "Nay," said Pionius, "have there not been famine and disease among you ?" "You/* they said, "are as much exposed to these things, and to prison and death besides." "Yes; but with hope in God." The crowd was so great that they could hardly be squeezed into prison, where they found one woman and two men, one a fellow-priest named Lemnus. They were visited there by both heathens and Jews ; and Pionius held many arguments with both, espe- cially asking the Jews if they thought faith in a mere man, put to a cruel death, could inspire courage and joy in suffering. His cheerfulness only failed when he thought of those who had yielded, especially of some who had hitherto led a blameless life. " I feel," he said, with tears, "as if I were torn in pieces, when I hear of the pearls of the Church being trodden under foot by swine, and the stars of heaven swept down by the tail of the great dragon. Alas, our sins are the cause i '' Grievous must it have been to him when it was decided to set before him visibly the example of hi? own fallen bishop. Polemo came with Theophilus, the commander of the cavalry, saying, " Eudaemon has sacrificed. Obey likewise. Eudaemon and Lepidus await you in the temple." " The trial cannot come on till the arrival of the proconsul," answered Pionius. However, Theophilus summoned some soldiers, Digitized by VjOOQIC 262 TRIBULA TION AT SMYRNA. who put a rope round Pionius' neck, and almost strangled him, as they dragged him and the other prisoners to the temple; but at the door they all threw themselves flat on the ground, crying out aloud that they were Christians; and Pionius was absolutely carried in by six men, and was laid down before the altar, before which Eudaemon stood offering incense. Never had that renowned temple seen such a sight — the ivy-crowned statue of Dionysos over his altar beneath the stately portico, the animals gar- landed led to execution, the incense wreathing its sweet cloud, the populace thronging the steps, four men and two women lying before the altar in mute, passive resistance, and the god defied ; while one miserable, trembling man, crowned with a wreath, stood casting grains of incense on the smoking tripod. Lepidus, who was a magistrate, began to inter- rogate Pionius ; but as he continued to confess the faith, some of these men, who evidently wished to grasp at any pretext for dismissing him before the proconsul should arrive and seal his fate, said to one another, " We must make him say what we wish ! " Pionius overhearing this, cried, *' Blush for your- selves, ye worshippers of the skies! Execute your justice! Obey your laws, which bid you not to compel obedience to them, but put those who refuse to death!" "Cease, Pionius, to seek for vain-glory," said an orator named Rufus. " Is this thine eloquence ? " said Pionius ; " is this what thy books teach thee ? Was not Socrates thus Digitized by VjOOQIC TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. 263 treated by the Athenians ? Are men to be imperfect, indolent, feeble, and cowardly? Then Socrates, Aristides, Anaxarchus, were seekers of vain-glory, because they sought wisdom and virtue ! " Rufus was silenced, but the garlands always worn at a heathen sacrifice were placed on Pionius' head, and as quickly lay torn to pieces by his hands on the marble pavement ; and a man who had been sacrificing came in carrying choice morsels of the victims upon small spits ; but when he saw the firm countenance of Pionius, he durst not even offer them, but ate them himself. The wretched Eudaemon seems not to have spoken a word, but all the other voices were up- lifted. The master of the sports told Asclepiades that he would have him for the beasts, but without shaking his resolution ; and the Christians were taken back to the prison, to await the arrival of the pro- consul, Quintilian. There must have been something very striking about Pionius, for Quintilian likewise strove to save him, but finding all persuasion fruitless, condemned him to be burnt alive, like St. Polycarp. He un- dressed himself, and was fastened to the stake with nails. He then said, "I hasten. Lord, that I may rise with thee." A man named Metrodorus, of the sect of the Marcionites, shared his martyrdom, and the pile was heaped with wood and set on fire. His eyes were closed, and the people thought him dead ; but he opened them again, gazed at the fire, said "Amen, Lord receive my spirit," and so died. There is no record of the fate of Sabina and Digitized by VjOOQIC 264 TRIBULA TION A T SMYRNA. Asclepiades, and we forbear to dwell on the rest of the noble army of martyrs whose life around the Throne dated from the Decian persecution. Great names were there, but it is enough for us to show that Smyrna, though some wavered and fell in the deadly trial, still had some who " overcame," and by faithfulness unto death won the crown of life. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XVIL ST. SIMEON OF SELEUCIA AND THE PARTHIANS. " Armies Thou hast in Heaven which fight And follow Thee, all clothed in white ; But here on Earth, though Thou hadst need, Thou wouldst no legions^ but wouldst bleed. The Sword with which Thou wouldst command Is in Thy Mouth, not m Thy Hand ; And all Thy Saints do overcome By Thy Blood, and their Martyrdom." Henry Vaughan, The Mm of War. The Church of the far East in the cities and meadows of Mesopotamia and the mountains of Persia had apparently continued in peace from the first All through the time when the wild Parthian horsemen held the chief power on the banks of the Euphrates and Tigris, no external power interfered with them, and they lived and throve by the side of the Jews, and probably had their share in the cultivation of science, which for many years was better studied in the old river cities than in any other part of the civilized Digitized by VjOOQIC 266 .S-T: SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. world. But about the time of the martyrdoms of Lyons, a cloud b^an to rise which was in time to burst in thunder on the heads of the Christians of the East. Readers of ancient history will remember that the grand old Medo-Persian dynasty, the Ram of Daniel's fourfold vision, the house of Cyrus, and of Darius, had been utterly destroyed and swept away by the he-goat of the dream, the great Macedonian Alex- ander. In the partition of his empire the more accessible portions of the old Persian domains had fallen to the family of Seleucus, as part of the king- dom of Syria, and when the Seleucidae waned, and their western provinces fell under the Roman power, the eastern mountains sent forth hordes of Parthians, a mixed race, partly Scythian, partly Persian, who established a sort of wild free and easy dominion over the countries beyond the desert barrier which had always made the Roman eagle droop his wing. A mixture of populations would inhabit the great cities and plains, and yet keep distinct — Greeks, whose wonderful self-governing organization would still serve them ; Jews, under their Prince of the Captivity ; Arabs, under their several Sheikhs ; old Persians of the pure stock of ancient times, would pay their tribute to the Parthian master without otherwise feeling his authority. In such a state of things, there would be no one to conduct a persecution, and the Church became numerous and apparently secure. But somewhere about the year 220 a revival of the old Persian stock took place. A man named Digitized by VjOOQIC ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. 267 Ardisheer, the same as Artaxerxes, and claiming to be descended from Xerxes — or Sassan, as the modern Persians called him — came forward at Istakhar, or Persepolis, and rallying the genuine Persians round him, overthrew the Parthian power, and called him- self Shah-in-Shah, or king of kings. With the old dynasty the old religion recovered influence. The Parthians seem, like all such wild wanderers, to have held their faith very loosely ; but the Persians, who had a system full of germs of truth, and with sublime conceptions of Ormuzd, as they called the deity whose tokens were the glorious sun and the devouring flame, were keen in their religious feelings ; and with all their reviving vigour as a nation, re-asserted the dominion of the faith of Zoroaster and the Magians, their priestly caste. They were a people of much fire and spirit, of much acuteness and elegance of taste, and being descended from the same great stock as the Greeks, Romans, and our own forefathers, had much in common with them, though all coloured by the peculiar influence of the gorgeous East ; but the heroic and poetical traditions that hung round the outer sur- face of their faith, had the same origin as the classical myths and northern tales, and much of their poetry was very beautiful. They had, however, from very ancient times, held that there was a double principle — of good and of evil of equal power — Ormuzd and Ahriman, the same idea that Simon Magus had been infected with in Egypt, and which likewise became current among some of the Christians of Persia. A man named Manes was the first to mix this fatal error Digitized by VjOOQIC 268 ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. with their faith, and from him the heresy that thus arose was called the Manichaean. The heavy trial of the Persian Church came to pass in the time of Sapor, or Shahpoor II. (who began to reign in the year 301), as soon as, or indeed before, he was born. He does not seem to have begun life with any prejudice against the Christians ; indeed, he was tended in his infancy by Usthazanes, one of the eunuchs of the palace, who was a Christian, and whom the Shah loved and trusted so much as to make, him first lord of Persia and his chief chamberlain. He was also as great a friend as a despotic Shah could be of Simeon Barsaboes {ue. the fuller's son), the Bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, the Greek and Parthian cities on the opposite sides of the Tigris— a man of such beautiful counteniance and stately pre- sence that he impressed all persons, even against their will. In fact, the Christians were living much in the same state as Daniel and his companions had lived in the same country, liable at any moment to per- secution, but perforce employed and respected on account of their superior trustworthiness. But at the very time that the last and worst per- secution in the Roman empire was quenched by the victory of Constantine, and the Cross was set up in- stead of the Eagle at the head of the Roman legions, the heart of Sapor became turned against his Chris- tian subjects. It is possible that he considered them as traitors, because they kept up an intercourse with their brethren of the Roman empire, whose prince was now acknowledged as a believer, instead of being Digitized by VJ-OOQIC Sr: SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS, 269 a persecutor. Indeed, at the great council of Nicaea, in 325, which had been convoked by Constantine for the purpose of declaring the faith of the Church in the Eternal Godhead of our Blessed Lord, Simeon was represented by his priest, Sciadhustes, and there his see was appointed by the council to become a patri- archate, and carry with it a certain authority over the bishoprics within its bounds. Maruthas, one of the contemporary priests of Seleucia, wrote in Chaldaic an account of the trials of the Church in these days, part of which was copied by the Church historian, Sozomen, into his narrative, and the whole, with other Chaldean authorities, were in more recent times brought to light and translated by the learned Syrians, Elias and Stephen Assemani, who have already been mentioned as collecting manuscripts at Nitria for the Vatican. There is, therefore, no doubt of the facts, and to bring the scene before us we must cease to think of the classical Greek and Roman scenes — the forum, the tribunal, the amphitheatre, the purple-robed Emperor, the soldier with his horsehair crest, the people in tunic or toga ; but rather call before us the vast half-buried splendours of the Mesopotamian cities — Nineveh quite gone ; Babylon, since the Sas- sanid dynasty had come in, entirely deserted, save that its mighty walls served for an inclosure to the Shah's hunting-park, so that every wild howl or roar that rang from within brought to the minds of the Christians and Jews remembrances of Isaiah's pro- phecy. Seleucia was already falling into partial Digitized by VjOOQIC 270 ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. neglect, and indeed nothing is now left to show the place of this once splendid city ; and of Ctesiphon, then in its glory, only one enormous arch remains. Among the mountains of Persia proper, Istakhar, or Persepolis, was a mixture of poor modem dwellings with the magnificent, elegantly-formed, and richly- carved remnants of the palaces of Darius ; and Susa, or *' Shusan the palace," still possessed in ruins the marble pavements, where, among the many-coloured veils and curtains between the pillars of Ahasuerus' palace, Esther's intercession had saved her people. Straight featured, rather small, but slender and well propor- tioned, were the Persian race in general, wearing long straight garments, brightly coloured, and belted in at the waist, with a tall conical cap on the head — a cap that in the case of the Shah was completely incrusted with pearls and other jewels, and had the peak set upright, while inferior persons wore it turned back. The Sassanid princes had taken up all the traditions of their supposed ancestry, the old kings, and like Darius of old, the Shah-in-Shah, or king of kings, the Great King, was thought, next after the sun and fire, to represent Ormuzd, and was adored by prostra- tions on the rich and brilliant carpets that lay before the cushions of his throne. As yet free from the torpor that falls on the be- lievers in the Koran, the Shahs were full of activity, — great soldiers and huntsmen, busy judges and states- men, and in their leisure hours amused with poetry and musia Sapor was constantly at war with the Roman empire, and his first persecution seems to Digitized by VjOOQIC ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. 271 have begun when he was irritated by want of success, and the Magi represented to him that the sun received no adoration, since the Christians taught every one to despise it They especially complained of the number of Churches built by two bishops named Sapor and Isaac These, with three others, were brought before him, and the kmg is represented as arguing thus with them : — " Am I not of divine birth ? — yet I sacrifice to the sun, and pay divine honour to fire. Who are ye, that ye should disobey my laws, and despise the sun and the flame ? " "We know but one God, and Him only do we serve," cried the martyrs. " Is your God better than Ormuzd, or stronger than Ahriman ? " demanded the Shah ; and as they con- tinued to confess their faith, he caused them to be beaten, till Bishop Sapor*s bones were broken, so that he died in prison. Isaac was stoned by some of his own flock, who had apostatized from terror, and their companions were also killed. Fear or affection for his master also led the chamberlain Usthazanes to offer the required homage to the sun. For a time there was peace for the Christians, whilst Sapor was endeavouring to make fresh conquests on the border ; but he failed in his attack on the city of Nisibis, and, returning full of wrath, listened to the further accusations of the Magi, who accused the Christians of being traitors. In 340, therefore, an edict came forth, making death the penalty of Digitized by VjOOQIC 272 ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. embracing Christianity, and laying heavy imposts on all who already professed it This was followed up by the confiscation of the Churches, and the seizure of their furniture and vessels, with terrible threats to the clergy. Upon this the Patriarch Simeon wrote a. letter to the king, speaking thus : — " Jesus Christ offered Himself of His own free will for the whole world, and ransomed it by the shed- ding of His Blood. Can I then fear to give my life for a people for whose salvation I am bound to work t If I cannot live without a crime, I would not prolong my days. God forbids me to purchase my life at the expense of the souls for whom His Son gave His life. I am not base enough to fear to walk in my Saviour's footsteps. By His grace I feel strength to share in His sacrifice. As to my people, they will be able to die for a religion that secures their salvation." The king was greatly enraged on hearing this letter, and instantly sent orders that all the priests and deacons should be put to death. " As to Simeon," he added — " Simeon, the chief of the accursed race, who despises my majesty, who only worships Caesar's God, and scorns mine — let him be brought and set before me. On this a Jew counsellor added the suggestion, " Great king, your wrath is just If you write to Caesar, he will pay no honour to your letter ; but let Simeon write him a few lines, and he will rise to receive them, kiss them respectfully, and command that whatever is requested in them should be fulfilled." Simeon was arrested at Seleucia, with two of the Digitized by VjOOQIC ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. 273 twelve priests of his Church, named AbdhaYcla and Hananias, and was put in chains to be conducted to the king, who was then in Persia Proper. He was taken through his native city of Susa, but he begged that he might not have the grief of passing through a street where a Christian church had lately been turned into a Jewish synagogue. It was at a place near the banks of the Oxus that he was brought before Sapor. He did not prostrate himself, as had been his wont, and Sapor demanded why he omitted this homage or adoration. " Because," said Simeon, " I never appeared in irons before you till now, nor in order that I might be forced to den}'' the true God." It would seem that there was an accusation of dis affection to the State, and when Simeon had cleared himself from this, the king became less severe in his manner, and said, " Believe me, Simeon, I wish you well. Adore the sun, and this act of obedience will be good for you and your people." "How should I adore the sun," said Simeon, "when I cannot even adore you, O king, though you are of a more excellent nature than the sun.? We own one Lord alone, even jESUS, who was crucified." " I could endure your folly," said the king, " if you worshipped a living God ; but no, you adore as God a man who died on the wood of infamy. Be wiser, and adore the sun, to whose divinity all nature does homage. If you obey, you shall have riches, honours, and dignities." T Digitized by VjOOQIC 274 -^T. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. To which Simeon answered, "You know not Jesus Christ. He is the Creator of men, and Lord of the sun itself, who even became dark to mourn for His death. Then He rose glorious from the grave, and rose up to heaven by His own power. The honours you promise me tempt me not. My God is preparing for me things you know not, which are far more precious than yours." " You had better save your life," said the king, " as well as that of multitudes, who will perish with you if you persist in your obstinacy." *'If you commit such a crime you will feel its enormity, and endure the punishment when you stand before the Judge of all the earth. I willingly abandon to you the remnant of this wretched life/' said Simeon. " Then," returned Sapor, " you must run upon your ruin ; but I pity your followers, and will try to cure them of their folly by the severity of your punish- ment." Undaunted by the threat, Simeon answered, " You will soon find out that Christians do not sacrifice their eternal life for this corruptible life ; and that they would not exchange the immortal name they take from Christ for your diadem." ^* If you refuse to honour me in the presence of my grandees, and to adore me or the sun, the divinity of all the East, to-morrow that handsome face and form shall be torn and mauled," said Sapor, who saw that his court were much impressed by the great beauty and dignity of Simeon's appearance. His reply was, Digitized by VjOOQIC ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. 275 " You equal yourself to the sun, and make it your God, though you are greatly the superior. If you disfigure the beauty of my body, which I look upon as contemptible, He who gave it to me will one day restore it with usury." So from the carpets spread before the throne of Sapor, Simeon was led away, but at the door waited Usthazanes ; * and now, as he saw the bishop pass, he threw himself on his knees, overawed by his pre- sence; but Simeon turned his head aside, and would not even look at him. Cut to the heart, Usthazanes cried with tears " Alas ! if to see Simeon's face turned from me is so dreadful, how can I bear the wrath of the God I have denied ! " He went home, clothed himself in black, and again returned to his post, where he was at once interrogated by the king, and confessed himself a Christian without further wavering. Sapor would have had him tor- tured, probably in hopes of making him yield and save his life, but the nobles insisted that he should die at once. He only begged that it might be proclaimed that he did not die for any crime, but for his return to the Christian profession ; and this the Shah granted, thinking it would terrify the Christians. To Simeon, in his dungeon, the tidings were full of joy, and he gave thanks with uplifted hands ; and then, as the Paschal feast was near, he prayed for himself that he might drink the cup of his Lord on the very day and at the hour of the Passion. * In the Chaldee of Maruthas he is Guh Sciata Zades, which is said to mean a man of rank. T2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 276 ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS, The next day was Good Friday, and he was again led to the Shah; and refusing once more to adore either him or the sun, was at once sentenced to be beheaded. A hundred more clergy were led out to die at the same time, five of them bishops, and the rest of all the other grades. They were offered life if they would adore the sun, but they all refused, and all were put to death before the eyes of Simeon, whom the king hoped thus to terrify, but who only exhorted them all the time to persevere in the hope of the Resurrection. He and his two priests were the last ; and as Hananias was taking off his garment, a shudder passed over him, on which Phusikes, the sur- veyor of the king's works, said, " Be firm, Hananias, shut your eyes, and in a moment you will see the divine Light of Christ." This was reported to the king, and Phusikes being led before him, declared that he asked no favour but to share the death of these men ; and so he did, but with far greater torture. Nor did the constant slaughter of the Christians cease from the sixth hour on Good Friday until the second Sunday after Easter. Sozomen says that 16,000 of all ages and sexes perished in an indiscriminate massacre, in which at last was included one Azades, a favourite eunuch of the king, who was so grieved at his death as to con- fine the persecution for the future to the clergy and the virgin deaconesses. Sapor's queen had fallen sick, and the Jew physician who attended her persuaded her that her illness was the effect of the revengeful Digitized by VjOOQIC ^T: SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS, 277 magic of Tharba, the sister of Simeon, and remark- able for the same unusual personal beauty. She and her maid were arrested on this accusation. She protested that magic was equally forbidden with idolatry; and besides she said, "Why should we revenge my brother, since he only passed from perish- able life to a heavenly kingdom ? Besides, vengeance is also unlawful for us." So beautiful was she, that each of her three judges separately offered to save her if she would enter their harems, but she refused them all ; and when told that she might yet be pardoned if she would only adore the sun, she answered, " Never will I worship the creature instead of the Creator." She was then sen- tenced, and both she and her maid were actually hewn each into six parts, which were placed in baskets, and hung upon twelve stakes disposed in two rows, along which the queen was to walk to destroy the effect 01 the supposed enchantment ! At Adiabene, a hundred and eleven clergy and nine deaconesses were in a horrible dungeon together, where they were daily fed for six months by one rich and virtuous woman, named Yazdundocta, who, on the night before their execution, spread for them a feast in their prison, brought them each a white garment for their martyrdom, and waited on them herself ; and when they were on the way to their death, she met them, throwing herself at their feet, and kissing their hands. After all had been beheaded, she caused them to be buried, five and five together, in graves at some distance from the city. After this the persecution Digitized by VjOOQIC 278 ST. SIMEON AND THE PARTHIANS. slackened, though not till Sadoth, the nephew and successor of Simeon, had shared his fate, at the end of nine months. Sapor turned his attention to his foreign wars, and spent sixty-three days with all his army in a vain attempt to take Nisibis : so valiant and patient were the citizens under the exhortations of St. James, their hero bishop, who constantly encouraged them, and prayed for their safety and deliverance ; though, when he was entreated to pray for the destruction of the enemy, he said he would entreat for the perishing of no man, but would only ask that God would make the weak things of the world to confound the strong. At that moment, James* own figure, as he fearlessly passed along the walls, in his full episcopal robes, was taken by the Persians for that of the Emperor. They fancied a reinforcement had come, and a panic spread among them ; and soon after, swarms of stinging jflies and gnats, bred by the summer rain and heat acting upon the refuse of the camp, rendered the situation intolerable, and forced the Shah to raise the siege. Such is the account given by Christian writers ; and it is quite certain that the Christian stedfastness of Nisibis and Edessa were for at least a century the protection of the Greek and Roman world. James of Nisibis was the great infuser of this spirit. He was a man as meek and charitable as he was resolute and brave, and was specially noted for his loving care of the poor, the widow, and the fatherless. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XVIII. THE VICTORY. •* The Oracles are dumb, No voice or hideous hum Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving ; Apollo from his shrine Can no more divine, With hollow shriek the steep of Ddphos leaving." Milton. While the Church in Persia was struggling and suffering, triumph and peace had come to the Churches of the Roman empire. We pass over the horrors of the long persecution begun by Diocletian, and carried on by Maximin ; and Constantine, though he assumed the purple in Gaul, does not especially belong to the Churches of St. John, save that as Emperor his power told upon their condition, and they reaped the full benefit of his proclamation of peace to the Christians, and the example of his profession of faith. The faith was not merely tolerated, it was owned as the dominant power ; the doors of the heathen temples were not closed by authority, but were left Digitized by VjOOQIC 28o THE VICTORY, shut by mere neglect ; churches were openly built and frequented, and the questions of doctrine that former emperors had never known to exist anxiously occupied the mind of Constantine. On this account it was that Councils of the Church were convoked. Aries was the scene of the first great Synod, in 314. Scarcely a hundred years after the martyrdoms at Lyons, the Emperor himself was sending forth letters to the Western bishops, inviting them to meet him at Arelate, attended each by two priests and three servants, and undertaking for all the expenses of their journey, to confer upon matters concerning the teaching and discipline of the Church. Such another meeting, but truly universal, took place eleven years later (in 325), at Nicaea, and is the first of the General Councils whose decrees form the laws of the whole Church. Now, without any weak compliance on the part of the Christians, without one intrigue, without even solicitation, the Cross had been exalted, the name of Christ was openly proclaimed, and the Roman armies went forth to fight beneath the cypher of the Holy Name and the motto, " In hoc signo vinces " (In this sign thou shalt conquer). And Jerusalem, so long trodden down of the Gen- tiles and dishonoured by the name that Hadrian had imposed on it, was visited by Constantine's mother, the Empress Helena, who traced out with reverent eagerness every spot which tradition connected with the footprints of the Saviour, — the home at Nazareth, the cave of the Nativity at Bethlehem, the Mount ol Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY. 281 Olives, and the Hill of Calvary. The Temple of Venus was overthrown, and in the earth thrown up to form its foundation was discovered what the Chris- tians of Jerusalem declared to be the Holy Sepulchre, and near it three crosses, one of which was reverenced by the whole Christian world as the veritable Tree on which the Redeemer had hung. The church which Helena built, covering both the site of the crucifixion and the sepulchre, became at once the most venerated spot in the whole world; choice marbles, gold and silver, gems and incense, were lavished on it, and the memory of the spot where the Son of Man had died the most despised of all deaths had become the glory of all lands. Thenceforth men of all nations gathered themselves to Jerusalem, to worship, to weep, and to rejoice ; to trace the Saviour's footsteps from shrine to shrine, and bless Him for His humiliation, while they entreated Him to let His Passion not have been to them in vain. Yet the Victory of the Faith was to be even more marked, when the great-nephew of Constantine, Julian, endeavoured to lift up and reanimate the fallen corpse of Paganism. There had been an unfortunate reign immediately after Constantine's. His son Constantius was a feeble, selfish man, enervated by the wealth, luxury, and splendour of his position ; and, though calling himselt a Christian, holding those low views of the Divinity of the Lord Christ which had been censured at Nicaea, and misusing the persons who maintained the Catholic faith, especially the g^eat St Athanasius, Digitized by VjOOQIC 282 THE VICTORY, who, though a true disciple of St. John, in the valiant defence of Truth, belongs rather to the history of St. Mark's Church of Alexandria than to that of St. John's foundation. Constantius was a weak tyrant, cowardly, violent, and false, and betraying in his whole conduct the Christian name he bore. And thus it was that as Julian, his next heir, grew up under a weight of jealous suspicion, he hated and despised religion as he saw it in his oppressive kinsman, and went back to the old times when the Romans were the stedfast, hardy, proud conquerors of. the world, and their country's glory was their sole thought. Athens, still the place of study for the youth of the Empire, was the scene of many a dream and aspiration of the young man towards the old days of Roman hardihood and Greek truth-seeking. When he saw the Emperor, no longer the victorious general surrounded by his captains — the great simple-mannered magistrate, in whom were gathered all the most important offices of the State, the citizen of most power only because he toiled the hardest — instead of this a mere purple-robed, crowned monarch, surrounded by flatterers and slaves, waited upon like an image, putting off his cares upon his favourites, reposing in his palace instead of heading his armies, and those armies falling back defeated in Germany on the one hand and Persia on the other, while even Rome itself was deserted for the new- built eastern Constantinople, — ^his spirit burnt within him ; and as he read of the stern virtue of Cato, the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY. 283 brilliancy of Caesar, the grave earnestness of Aurelius, he fancied it was the renunciation of the old deities of their forefathers that had destroyed the temper of Rome ; and through the very sins and weakness of the Christians he, in his earnest but vain impatient temper, was turned in heart from the faith. Like the women of Judah, who said that all had gone well with them when they made cakes for the Queen of Heaven, Julian, spurning the religion of Constantius, went back in heart to the solemn Jupiter of the Capitol, the stern Father Mars, the pure Vesta of his Roman forefathers, and mourned over their closed, forsaken shrines ; and while .wandering at Athens, he looked up wistfully at the splendour of the creamy columns of the Parthenon, the battles sculptured on their friezes, and the ivory and gold statue of Pallas Athene, the masterpiece of Phidias, shining in her almost forsaken temple, with her out- stretched spear, and a majesty of beauty that had in it a trace of the Divine inspiration that came to the great men of old who were feeling for the truth. He dwelt on the deep thoughts and speculations of Socrates and Plato, which had almost consecrated those porticoes and groves ; and he revelled in the magnificent poems, the like of which had never yet flowed from a Christian lyre. He knew not that what gave their glory and beauty to these thoughts and these forms was, that they were "the strong yearnings for a blest new birth " of the old ignorant world ; they were the tokens of how God's Spirit spoke of old to the hearts of men longing and Digitized by VjOOQIC 284 THE VICTORY. struggling for the knowledge that was denied to them. He, born in open day, a baptized Christian, saw the light so obscured by the evil lives of those who professed it, that he went back into the dark night that he might have the tapers of these great men of old for his guides. Of the deadly depth of corruption and vile practices of that ancient world he knew little or nothing. Unwittingly his standard of morals was formed, not on his heroes of old, but on the perfect rule that the Christians had set abroad through the world. He called himself a Stoic, ready to endure the utmost hardness, that he might practise the utmost virtue without reward; but in his ideas and practice of virtue and iself-sacrifice he was no Stoic, but rather what he was called by the com- panion of his studies, St. Basil, the ape of Chris- tianity. It was an Ephesian philosopher who finally overturned his belief in Christianity ; and thus for once Artemis had prevailed over the doctrine of St John. While within reach of Constantius he was forced to dissemble his sentiments during his course of study at Athens, but while commanding the Roman troops in Gaul, he ceased entirely to share in Christian ordinances. He was even said to have tried to wash away his baptism in a bath of the blood of sacrifices; and when, in 361, he became Emperor in his cousin*s stead, the last struggle for supremacy between the heathen and the Christian world began. The gods of Greece and Rome were again pro- claimed as divinities, their temples were cleansed, Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY. 285 their images reinstated, herds were collected to serve as sacrifices, their oracles were consulted, and Julian, though professing not to persecute, made it evident that he was resolved that his subjects should follow his example, and found every excuse for dealing severely by the orthodox Christians, and for acting in direct defiance of the predictions of prophecy. Here, then, was the crisis of the fight, led by the young Emperor, bearded, wiry, hardy, and active, with merely the plainest purple toga and buskins to mark his station, living on the hardest fare, sleeping on a lion's skin, pure and regular in life as the strictest monk, just, upright and merciful, save when his mind was warped by his hostility to the new religion, and challenging the Christians to show equal virtue — nay, consciously challenging the Galilean Carpenter, as he was wont to call our Blessed Lord, to prove Himself greater and truer than the Jupiter of the Romans. He was bent on a grand expedition to Persia, which should give him the glories of another Alexander. He would fain have been accompanied by a pagan army, but his soldiers were almost all believers, and, as it was fifty years since the last persecution, had almost forgotten the tests of heathenism. So when the Emperor was giving an advance of pay to a large body of his men, as they passed his throne and took his gift, each received a handful of spices and a com- mand to cast it into a little fire burning before him. Their instinct of discipline made them obey without question, or thinking of the meaning of the rite. Digitized by VjOOQIC 286 THE VICTORY. Shortly after, as one invoked the name of CHRIST ere he drank, he was told that he was a Christian no longer ; and then he understood that the fire had been burning on no other than the Altar of Jupiter, and that they had done the deed that their fathers had refused at the cost of their Uvea They all rushed before the Emperor, tearing their hair, and demanding to be put to death in expiation of their unknowing fall, and the Emperor in his anger con- demned them all to die for their breach of discipline. At the place of execution the eldest requested that the youngest might be the first to die, and the sword was just lifted over the head of the youth, whose name was Romanus, when orders from the Emperor came to spare their lives ; whereupon this truly brave soldier rose up, saying only, "Then it seems that Romanus is not worthy of a martyr's crown." The Emperor deprived the officers of their rank and dis- persed them into different provinces, but he did not try the experiment on any more legions, or his army would have been too much thinned. Antioch, where the Emperor halted on his way to the East, was the centre of the battle of the Christian faith with the heathen oracles. Near Antioch lay a village called Daphne, and a fountain named Castalia, said by the Syriac Greeks to be the spot where the river-nymph Daphne, fleeing in terror from the pur- suit of Apollo, had sunk into the earth, whence the sacred laurel (or more truly, the bay) had instantly risen — a fable, of course, of the dawn vanishing before the sun, and of the heat causing trees to rise from Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY, 287 the ground, but really believed as a story by the Greeks. The metamorphosis of Daphne was commemorated by a splendid temple to Apollo and Artemis, sur- rounded by a wood of cypresses, myrtles, and bays, in whose cool dark shades were alleys impenetrable to the sun, and adorned with statues ; there was a beauteous garden full of flowers and fountains within, and the temple had an inmost shrine, whence an oracular voice had been wont to respond to the ques- tions of the worshippers. It was even said that here Hadrian had been promised the empire. Since the decline of paganism, though the lands of the temple still provided for its maintenance, the oracle had been little frequented, save by low, superstitious persons such as would now believe in fortune-telling. And to put a stop to this, Gallus, Julian's elder brother, had eleven years before caused the bodies of St. Babylas and his three young pupils to be in- terred in a church which he built in the grove, because it was believed that the presence of the remains of a saint would put to silence the demon voices that the Christians imagined to speak in an oracle. Since that time, the oracle had been dumb; and when Julian arrived, though he offered a whole heca- tomb of cattle, and poured forth rivers of wine before the altars, entreating that the god would speak and reply to his questions, " there was no voice, neither any to answer," until at last a muffled sound was caught, and was understood to be, " The dead ! the dead!" Digitized by VjOOQIC 288 THE VICTORY. Julian absolutely accepted the belief that it was the neighbourhood of Babylas' remains that silenced the oracle, and he therefore bade the Antiochians bear away the bones. The Christians regarded the order as the token of the power of the very corpse of a holy man to strike dumb the demons. They took the chest from beneath the altar, where they loved to place the remains of the martyrs in memory of the souls whom St. John had seen waiting beneath the Altar before the licavenly Mercy-seat, and placed it on a car, round which they wound such a solemn dance as David had once danced before the Ark of God, while they sang the Psalms by which Israel of old had triumphed in the downfall of Dagon before, ever ending their verses with the antiphon — " Confounded be all they that worship graven images, And that delight in vain gods 1 " All the city of Antioch was there, old and young, men and women, rejoicing in what they regarded as the false god's confession that he could not speak before the remains of the holy martyr. Julian was extremely angered, and bade Sallust, the prefect of the East, punish this demonstration severely ; but Sallust represented to him that the fer- vour of the people would only grow by persecution. Julian was too much offended not to insist, and accordingly several Christians were imprisoned, and one, a youth named Theodore, was for a whole day hung to the rack called the Little Horse, with two Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY, 289 torturers, one on each side ; but throughout he con- tinued to sing, — *' Confounded be all they that worship carved images, And that delight in vain gods I " Nor could one frown of pain be seen on his face. When at length he was taken down, he declared that he had indeed felt the torture at first, but that soon a young man had come to stand by him, bathing him with cool water, and wiping his limbs with a pure white cloth, and that his comfort and peace were such that he was only sorry to be taken down from the rack. In one of the chief streets was the house of a widow named Publia, who kept around her a number of young deaconesses, and every day as the Emperor passed her window he heard the song issue forth, — *' As for all the gods of the heathen, They are but silver and gold, the work of men's hands ; They that make them are like unto them, And so are all they that put their trust in them." Julian had magnanimity enough not to molest the women ; but when he heard that the Antiochians were satirizing his bearded figure, he wrote a satire on their effeminacy, calling it "The Beardhater." He also wrote other books, some of which are lost, and poems, none of which had much merit as compositions. At the same time, he ardently took up the cause of the Jews, to whom he wrote the following letter : — " The heavy taxes that have been unwarrantably laid upon you, and those vast sums of gold you have U Digitized by VjOOQIC 290 THE VICTORY. been forced to bring into the treasury, have far ex- ceeded those other oppressions and slaveries which in the times foregoing you have undergone : a great part of which I have seen with mine own eyes, and have discovered more from the writs that have been directed and issued against you. And at this time another assessment is prepared for you, which I have stopped and prohibited ; and out of detestation of so unjust an act, have burnt the warrants that lay ready among my records to be sent out against you, so that none may henceforth be able so much as to affright you with the report of such a piece of injustice. The cause of these injuries is not so much to be attributed to my brother Constantius of worthy memory, as to some men of barbarous principles and. atheistical tempers that stood about him and were fed at his table, whom I took with mine own hands and flung them headlong into a deep pit, where they irrecover- ably perished, that so the least monument might not remain of them. For my part, being resolved to show you all the favour and kindness I can, I have advised your brother Julus, the venerable patriarch, to stop the tribute that is imposed upon you, and that no man henceforth shall misuse your nation with such intolerable exactions, but that you may to all intents live peaceably and securely under my reign, and being free from further trouble, may recommend the pro- sperity of my empire in your more vigorous and hearty prayers to God, the great Creator, and best of Beings, who has been pleased with His most holy Right Hand to place the crown upon my head. I Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY. 291 could not otherwise expect this service from you ; for they that are oppressed with solicitude and cares are wont to be persons of narrow and contracted minds, and cannot with freedom lift up their hands to God in prayer, while those who are wholly freed from anxious cares, and enjoy a calm and composed state of mind, are fittest to intercede for the happiness of the Empire, and to offer up their devotions to the great God, who alone is able to order and dispose my reign to the best advantage and to the most excellent purposes, which I hope and pray He will do. This is that to which you ought principally to attend, that so having successfully managed my Persian expedition, and the holy city of Jerusalem (which you have so long and so earnestly desired to see re-inhabited), being rebuilt by my endeavours, I may dwell in it, and together with you there offer up our joint prayers to the Supreme Being of the world." This letter has been preserved among other works of Julian, and the genuineness can hardly be doubted. Here is all his generosity, and indignation at injustice and cruelty, together with the endeavour at largeness of mind which makes him try to blend his own wor- ship with that of the God of the Jews ; as a pious philosopher acknowledging a Supreme Being, but merely a creation of his own. By the atheistical men about Constantius, he means Christians, and his account of their destruction is figurative. The Jews* principles were, of course, as entirely opposed as those of the Christians to making their U 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 292 THE VICTORY, Living God into a mere Supreme Being, to be honoured by Julian's worshipping Him alternately with Jupiter or Apollo ; but the ray of hope might well make them tolerant, and when he sent for their chiefs, they eagerly came to his presence. He asked them why, since the Law of Moses enjoined sacrifice, they had ceased to offer any ; and on their reply that sacrifice could only be offered in the temple, which was now in ruins, he bade them return and rebuild it, and renew their ancient form of worship, promising them full assistance. It seems as though he had been moved by a certain real pity and generosity, of a human kind, and at the same time by a headstrong wish to prove our Lord a false prophet, while the bleeding victims of the old ritual seemed to him a point of similarity with the pagan rites. Soon multitudes of Jews arrived, eager and zealous for the rebuilding of the Temple. Their savings were poured forth to advance the work, the women sold their ornaments to raise the needful sum ; there was a grant from the treasury, and Alypius of Antioch, a friend of Julian, was appointed to oversee the work. Here at last, as it seemed to the Jews, was another Cyrus, another edict of restoration, a calling forth of Sion from her stones and dust. Unlike the time when the few and scanty lovers of the old home crept back in poverty from Babylon, and were encouraged not to despise the day of small things, the Jews thronged in numbers, and are even said to have brought silver spades, mattocks, and baskets to do honour to the work, the women toiled at bearing Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY. 293 away the rubbish, the best workmen and choicest materials were amply supplied, and the hill-side that had lain so long in desolation swarmed with an eager and rejoicing multitude. The Bishop of Jerusalem at that time was Cyril, a rustic-looking old man, hale, spare, rugged, the white hair of his forked beard growing high up on his cheeks. He and his Christians were not dispossessed of their churches, and they looked on patiently, enduring the triumph of their enemies, not doubting, but won- dering how God would show His truth, since did not these words stand in the prophecy that Daniel had heard from the mouth of an angel } " Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the com- mandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks : the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself : and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary ; and the end thereof shall be with a flood ; and ... he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it de- solate, even until the consummation, and that deter- mined shall be poured upon the desolate." Had not Messiah the Prince come at the end of the weeks of years from the troublous times, when Nehemiah's armed workmen rebuilt the wall } Had He not been cut off, but not for Himself.? and had He not previously confirmed the prophecy, even with Digitized by VjOOQIC a94 THE VICTORY. tears of sorrow for the city and the gorgeous temple, where not one stone should be left on another? " And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations, and Jeru- salem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." And had not that terrible destruction come to pass? Were the times of the Gentiles fulfilled ? And yet St, Paul had spoken as though the restoration of the Jews were contingent on their accepting the faith. Cyril was undoubting, and, in spite of the Jews being now in full favour and prosperity, told them fearlessly that they could not shake off the Saviour's doom. The foundation was cleared, the great table-land of rock, that threshing-floor so mightily prepared and enlarged by Solomon, was cleared of rubbish, and stone and lime were ready, when a terrible storm came on, and whirled the piles of stone and heaps of lime into the valley beneath. Then followed an earthquake, and appearances like globes of fire darted from the ground, producing extreme terror. So tell the early Christian histories, and so preached St Chrysostom; and a heretic writer named Philo- storgius, who was born about five years later, adds the following incident, — namely, that while the work- men were busy on the foundations, they took up a stone which covered the mouth of a deep cave, cut out four square in the rock, and a man being let down found water in the lower part ; but on a shelf or pillar lay a book wrapped in a clean fine linen cloth, uninjured. On opening the book, it was found to be Digitized by VjOOQIC THE VICTORY. 295 the Gospel of St John, the first sentence being in especially large letters, so as at once to fix the atten- tion, and as it were make proclamation. " In the beginning was the Word, and THE Word was with God, and the Word was God." And thus to the Christians it seemed as if the endeavour of Julian to refute prophecy had only resulted in his own discomfiture, the manifestation of God's power, and the proclamation of His Son. Honeycombed with caves as Mount Moriah is, serving some for drains, some for hiding-places, nothing could be more probable than that this book of the Gospel should have been placed there for safety in some persecution. The wonderful earth- quake and the outbreak of flames have been much disputed ; but the evidence respecting them is almost as full as it can be, and even the fragments of the temple show traces of the attempt, for there is one portion evidently built by a classical architect, but later than the time of the foundation of ^Elia, since it contains an inscription of Hadrian's, upside down. Julian was much enraged, and as he marched on to Persia, sent commands that an amphitheatre should be built at Jerusalem, wherein, it was reported, he intended to have the principal Christian clergy thrown to the wild beasts. How far this was his purpose cannot be known. He was certainly becoming exasperated, as he felt at every turn the real strength of the religion he was trying to crush, and the hopeless weakness of the Digitized by VjOOQIC 2q6 the victory. paganism he was striving to bolster up. He was still a young man, and must soon have lost the glamour which now invested heathen philosophy in his eyes, and either have opened them to its vanity, or closed them in the utter blindness of guilt and sensuality. Meantime, it was glory that he sought. Active, hardy, resolute, he led his host through the desert, obtained a fleet of i,ioo ships on the Euphrates, passed Baby- lon without accepting its desolation as another proof of God's unerring truth, took and burnt several cities, dug out one of the old choked canals, and conveyed his fleet from the Euphrates to the Tigris, defeated the Persians, and laid siege to Ctesiphon. He might almost deem himself another Alexander, but those willow-shaded banks had seen Alexander's fate. Sapor the Long-lived, the persecutor of Simeon and besieger of Nisibis, took the field, and sent a treach- erous nobleman to pretend to be a deserter and to inveigle Julian into pursuing his march into the depths of Persia, first burning his ships. June weather, in a parching desert destitute of food or water, produced exceeding misery ; but Julian's bravery kept up his army : he shared all their sufferings, and gained the victory in many skirmishes, until in an attack to the repulse of which he had rushed defenceless, since the heat rendered armour intolerable, he was pierced in the side by a javelin, and sank forward on his horse's neck. It is said that he took up a handful of his blood, and casting it in the air, cried, " Galilaean, thou hast conquered ! " And indeed, bred up a Christian, his soul could not but have retained the sense of the Digitized by VjOOQIC FHE VICTORY, 297 reality that his intellect struggled to shake off. They laid him on his shield, carried him to his tent, and dressed his wound ; he tried to rise and return to the battle, but found he could not move, and resolved to die with the grave, proud firmness of a philosopher. He talked to his friends of the nature of the soul until midnight, June 26, 363, when he died in his thirty-second year, after having reigned three years. Jovian, a brave soldier and Christian, led home the army from its perilous position ; and with Julian paganism perished — or rather, his endeavour to revive it had shown how absolutely dead it was. And as *' the vain false gods of Hellas" became utterly forgotten, and Artemis and Apollo were dethroned, the hymns of the Christians rang out in praise, "Thine is the victory, and the glory, and the majesty!" for the three hundred years of battle had ended at length in the full and complete triumph of the Cross of Christ. The faith first preached on the blue waves of the Lake of Tiberias was ringing from the Grampian hills to the deserts of Sahara, from the shores of the Atlantic to the banks of the Indus, and St. John's whole nature and influence had assuredly had no small part in this great triumph. Patient to wait, resolute to act, intense in love, strong and clear in faith, he had formed and trained the champions who followed him, some to contend for the truth in words, some to witness it in their death, and all by their lives. We have heard them, now arguing with the heathen, now with the Jew, now with the heretic ; we have watched them in their tender care of the flock, Digitized by VjOOQIC 298 THE VICTORY. their ready forgiveness, their fearless resistance of wrong, whether in high or low, in emperor or foreign foe ; their love of unity and concord, and their joyous acceptance of suffering and death. We sing the same praises, we pray the same prayers, we hold the same belief; we have, with them, "One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." May we be as true in heart as they, and, with them, experience indeed that " This is the Victory that overcometh the world, even our Faith 1 " Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XIX. THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. " Ever, as earth's wild war-cries heighten, The Cross upon the brow will brighten.*' Keble. The victory over heathenism was gained ; the temples were closed, and left to fall into decay ; the halls of justice were turned into churches ; the idols were demolished, or buried in the ruins of their temples ; and the rich marbles were carried away to be the decoration of churches decked with all the splendour that Imperial power could lavish. We can hardly part with the history of the Beloved Apostle and his pupils without following up the out- line of the Churches where his influence chiefly prevailed, or which were planted by himself or by his disciples. The outer conflict was over, but conflicts from within raged the more, as error flourished in times of peace. Restless Greek minds questioned and defined every doctrine, until the mind was confused by conflicting statements of the mysteries that were Digitized by VjOOQIC 300 THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. never meant to be curiously pryed into. The age of councils began, when bishops collected from all parts of the Church to consult on the theories that were adulterating the faith handed down from the Apostles. Ephesus and Laodicea were among the scenes of these gatherings of the Church, and the former was evidently held in high honour at the time, as the burial-place of the great St. John. Little did she fear that her candlestick would ever be removed, when she was crowded with churches and worshippers, and received the praise of St. Cyril of Alexandria in his sermon to the assembly of bishops. But the canker was eating deep into the Eastern Churches. In some it was curious, irreverent meddling with matters of faith ; in some, it was the old worship of wealth ; in others, the gay, careless love of amuse- ment which made the races and shows of the amphi- theatre the sole thought of the people. At Antioch, in especial, the citizens were full of frivolity, thought- lessness, and fickleness. There it was that they overturned and insulted the statues of the Emperor Theodosius in an access of fury at a new tax, and then waited in fasting, prayer, and trembling, listening to the stringent sermons of St. John Chrysostom, or Golden-mouth, till the Emperor had granted pardon to their humble intercession. Fewer internal agitations moved the soberer Churches of the West: Lyons, Nimes, Aries, and the others of Provincia and of the rest of Gaul. Their bishops lived in quiet, learned calm, and held numerous synods for the regulation of their Churches, Digitized by VjOOQIC THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. io\ and their influence and that of Spain spread far out to the North and West, among their Celtic brethren. Their mixed Greek origin was by no means for- gotten ; for though the Liturgy of Gaul, Spain, and Britain was in Latin, it closely resembled that in use at Ephesus and the ^ other Asiatic cities, and which both the East and West believed to have been handed down to them from St John himself. At Aries, up to the sixth century, hymns in the Greek tongue were still sung in public worship ; but some of the most notable hymns the Church possesses were first known to have been used in Gaul. The glorious Te Deum is traced to have been first sung at Aries and its adjacent cities, on the ground whence so many of the " Noble Army of Martyrs " had gone to praise God in heaven. The Veni Creator is also thought to be Gallican ; and the Litanies — those fervent supplica- tions where the whole congregation constantly uplift their voice — are likewise of a Gaulish origin. Moreover, the Celtic Churches in Britain and Ireland, though not in Gaul, preserved the Eastern custom of counting Easter by the fourteenth day of the moon, appealing to St. John and St. Poly- carp as having so taught them. In one remark- able point, Ireland, that farthest of Western isles» showed her love and reverence for the holy Divine of Patmos, for she loved to build her churches in sevens : Pleiad clusters of tiny churches, in her green vales set between wild hills, or on the very shore of that broad Atlantic that seemed the boundary of the world. There, at the very farthest point of Europe, Digitized by Google 302 THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. unheard of by the exile of Patmos, save as among the isles of the Gentiles, was the revelation of the seven stars and seven lamps commemorated by barbarian Celts, with uncouth names, who prayed by turns at each rude stone-built altar, for the Universal Church throughout the world, figured in those seven. Need, indeed, tnere was of prayer, for the trials of the Church were becoming terrible. The Empire had broken in two, and the fierce German nations were overrunning the Western continent. It was the Roman cities of the Province in Gaul that stood firm, and gradually won the Frank victors to Christianity and civilization. As their Latin tongue still attests, they never were conquered and peopled by their enemies, like Northern France, but remained witnesses of the blessings of truth and peace, till the whole country round had yielded to the education they impressed on it. Britain, after being almost entirely heathenized by the Angles and Saxons, all save the few Celts of the West, had the Gospel brought back to her by the Frank Queen Bertha and the Roman missionary Augustine, but without losing the ancient liturgy, that had no doubt come with Pothinus from the East, which contained Polycarp's dying Eucharistic hymn, and which probably had, in part at least, been moulded by St. John's remembrance of the worship he had seen around the Throne. The great Pope Gregory counselled Augustine to interfere as little as possible with the devotional offices to which the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. 303 scattered British Christians were accustomed ; and thus it was that the old form, so dear, among other reasons, for St John's sake, has never been super- seded here. And moreover, our first really great Archbishop of Canterbury, Theodore, was a Greek, from St. Paul's own city of Tarsus in Cilicia ; and much of the framework and arrangements of dioceses and parishes that have already existed more than twelve hundred years, was organized by him on the model of the Churches of Asia. Meantime, as the faults of the East had been deeper, so the judgment on her was heavier. In 614 a Persian Cyrus, or Khoosroo, really came to Jeru- salem ; but it was to pillage, enslave, burn, and destroy. He made a dreadful devastation, and even advanced as far as the shores of Asia Minor ; and though the Emperor Heraclius was roused, and gallantly re- deemed the cause of the Christian Empire, yet there was a more terrible scourge at hand. Out of the depths of Arabia came that terrible race whom St. John's vision of the crowned locusts is believed to have prefigured, the Saracen Arabs, whom their prophet, Mahomet, had taught to spread his doctrine by the sword. That sword avenged the blood of the Parthian Church upon the Persians, whose last Sassanid King, Yezdigerd, perished miserably, a fugitive in the mountains, like Darius before him, and visited on the Christians their many sins by snatching from them their beloved holy city of Jerusalem. Antioch, already much damaged by earthquakes, fell into their hands, and they even Digitized by VjOOQIC 304 THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. 9 advanced to the very shores of the Bosphorus ; and another stream flowed along the north of Africa, through Spain, into France. But there, Charles Martel, one of the Franks whom the true-hearted Gallic Christians had rendered the foremost champions of the Church, overthrew their armies at Tours, and saved the West from their dominion. Unhappy Asia Minor was meanwhile to become a battle-field for full six hundred years. The Maho- metan powers of the East, and the Christian emperors of Constantinople, there fought out their long and weary battle, and those splendid cities of old, con- quered and reconquered, sacked and resacked, saw their commerce pass away, their buildings decay, while the inhabitants withered into hopeless apathy, ignorance, deceit, and love of petty gain, all the natural faults of the Eastern character. The long smouldering rivalries between the Latin and Greek Churches became fiercer as love waxed cold ; and after a thousand years of union, in 1054 the dis- sension grew so hot, that they parted asunder, and lost that oneness so prized by saints of old. Then, when the vigorous Western nations would fain have attacked Mahometanism at its own home, and con- centrated their forces on the rescue of Jerusalem, led on by Godfrey of Lorraine, a descendant of Charles Martel, and Raymond of Toulouse, a Provengal prince, the dislike and misunderstanding of Eastern and V/estern Christians were so strong as to overcome even their enmity to the Mahometans. Antioch was gained, but unfairly kept from its lawful Greek owner Digitized by VjOOQIC THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. 305 by the cunning Norman-Italian Boemond, and on his death it was lost again to Christendom. Jerusalem was delivered from the Mahometans for a brief space, but the Western Church insulted the Eastern, and the Crusaders showed themselves unworthy to be en- trusted with the sacred treasure they had been allowed to gain. For nearly a hundred years Jerusalem was held by Latin Christians, who struggled hard to retain it, but who were too often men of sinful lives, succumbing to the temptations to luxury to which the warm climate disposed them, and their strength was only kept up by successive crusades from Europe. In 1186 they lost Jerusalem, and after another hundred years the last remnant of the crusading possessions in Pales- tine was wrenched from them, and the Mahometan power grasped all the spots that Christianity holds most sacred, though still not desecrating all the churches, and permitting the approach of pilgrims to worship at these hallowed shrines. And meantime, in the West, in Provence, though the cities and churches had once served as the instructors of the Northern Franks, after a time there crept over them the intellectual sensuality and the sentimental luxury and self-indulgence that had been the tempta- tion of the Asiatic Greeks in their late heathen days. It was the corruption of worn-out civilization, when the salt had lost its savour, and the shameful im- morality and fickle excitability of the Proven5als, only feebly disguised by the chivalry they had learnt of their Northern neighbours, reflected back the gross X Digitized by VjOOQIC jo6 THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. licence, seditious fierceness, and idle speculations of Antioch and Ephesus. No wonder, then, that the country was ripe for confusing itself with one of the worn-out. heresies that had arisen in the metaphysical minds of the Greeks of old. The Persian Manes had, as we have seen^ in very early times taught a strange mixture of doc- trine, partly Christian, but with the Magian doctrine of two equal powers of good and evil brought pro- minently forward, and giving a sanction to much looseness of life. This Manichean doctrine had done much harm to the Persian Christians before their persecution, and it had since appeared in Bulgaria ; in fact, it had smouldered on among the inhabitants of the valleys of the mountain-belt of Europe, and was at length detected in the Pyrenean valleys, and among the inhabitants of Provence. The Roman Church, with her constant habit of assimilating all customs to her own, and supplanting all that was distinctive in national Churches, had no doubt, in some degree, alienated the hearts of the Provengals ; and their Greek clever- ness, as well as their voluptuous habits, were both preparations to them to accept the teaching which was called Albigensian, from Alby, the place where a synod was held for its condemnation. Probably the heretical doctrine of old was presented in a modified form ; the amount to which it prevailed may have been much exaggerated, and in some cases the apparent adherence to the heresy arose in great measure from the difficulties and offences that Rome was throwing before reflecting minds. Digitized by VjOOQIC THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. 30; And times were changed since the censure of the Church was the only punishment that fell upon heresy. Now, men had persuaded themselves that the scandal must be purged away by fire and sword. Crusades were set on foot against the Albigenses ; those who * would have defended them for the sake of justice and mercy were treated as equally guilty with the offenders, and for a century there prevailed all the horrors of war and rapine, until nearly all the dis- tinctive grace, cultivation, and prosperity of Provence had been swept away ; the fields, once beautiful with care and cultivation, became mere wastes of stone, and the almost Latin tongue, once beloved by poets, sunk into a mere dialect. But the state of these Churches was happier than that of their mother Churches in Asia, the original seven. The Saracen power had indeed ebbed, but a more fatal wave had advanced, — namely, the Othman Turks, from the centre of Asia. Fierce and steady warriors, they had none of the grace, the mercifulness, the sensitiveness of the Saracen Arab ; they were unconquerably rude, apathetic, proud, and indifferent, and whatever was conquered by them fell under a doom of decay. It was about the year 1300 that the sons of Othman portioned out Asia Minor between them, and proceeded to the conquest. Ephesus, then still a city, was taken in 1306; Smyrna, important as a seaport, soon followed; Pergamus fell in 133S ; but Philadelphia, small, far from the sea, unimportant and neglected by the Greek emperor, was held out by her brave and constant inhabitants for full eighty X 2 Digitized by VjOOQIC 3o8 THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. years ; and when at length they were forced to sur- render to the Turks, it was with honour, without suffering insult, and with terms that preserved it a Christian city still. Surely Philadelphia realized the promise, "Because thou hast kept the word of My patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temp- tation, which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth." Under the Turkish power, the Christian faith has languished, and prosperity declined. Careless of all save present ease, the Turkish governors uniformly exercised such exactions as to paralyse all industry, and make the only safety for their unfortunate subjects lie in abject poverty. Inhabitants have retired from the cities, and the walls have crumbled, or their stones have been removed to furnish materials for wretched huts. The only ones of the cities that have not thus perished are high-spirited and divinely- blest Philadelphia, and Smyrna, the place that was almost equally marked for commendation, and which is so convenient a port as to have continued ever since a thickly-peopled place, a resort and mart for all nations, but no thanks to the Turks, since those who have kept the city alive have been Greek, Italian, Armenian, and latterly English — all Christians. The threat of the removed candlestick of Ephesus has been most surely though slowly performed. And who can look on the ruins of that once favoured Church without fear and dread? Twelve centuries passed ; yet the vision was for the appointed time ! Digitized by VjOOQIC THE CHURCHES OF ST, JOHN. 309 Those daughters of Ephesus, Nlmes and Aries, and the other Proven5al Churches, still showed that thoughtfulness and inquiry inherited from the Greeks, for when, in the sixteenth century, men began to inquire into the authority by which the Roman Church issued her mandates, it was Southern France that most eagerly and most permanently accepted the Reformation. There the recoil from doctrines and practices that could scarcely be traced to Scripture was so strong that even the strongest foes of the Reformation were forced to consent to the Calvinistic worship being held in Ntmes. There is no need to dwell on those unhappy times, when virtue and candour were so utterly wanting on the part of those whose station rendered them the champions of the Church, that earnest-minded men lost patience, and made the divisions that have never yet been healed. All that remains to be re- marked is, that where the blood of early Christians was shed in Gallic amphitheatres, there again did men with hearts as resolute to bear witness to the truth perish in the flames, and women wear out a whole lifetime in captivity. There too, Paul Rabaut, a man of apostolical piety, fervour, and resolution, spent a long life of wanderings and perils in preaching the Gospel ; and in the old Greek city of Marseilles, the good Bishop Belzunce showed himself a true and holy Christian, by the love that is ready to give up life, when he fearlessly ministered to his plague- stricken flock. Never has the voice of prayer become silent in Digitized by VjOOQIC 3IO THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN. these Churches, for at least sixteen centuries, save during those miserable years at the end of the last century, when France had disowned her God in her madness, and when every sacred building was closed, all voice of prayer forbidden. Yet, even then, in many a secret chamber, many a dark vault, many a woodland valley, did faithful hearts gather round the proscribed and hunted clergy, and dare every- thing, like their forefathers of old, rather than not seek the God of their strength. Lyons, already a great manufacturing city, suffered most terribly in the convulsions of the Revolution, and was at one time laid almost desolate ; the inha- bitants were mowed down by discharges of grape-shot in the squares, the walls were overthrown, and it was declared to be no longer a city. However, Lyons revived again, and with calmer times came the re- establishment of the Catholic Church, and likewise freedom of conscience for those who differed from her. Ntmes was the last place where a Huguenot was slain for his faith, and Nimes was the first where a Huguenot place of worship was publicly opened ; and the venerable Paul Rabaut, after the sufferings and persecutions of four generations, after having lost his eldest son in the storms of the Revolution, offered up the opening prayer, with his face streaming with tears of thankfulness. Since those days when religion was again owned in France, the battle between evil and good has con- tinued to rage, even as it was shown to St. John that it must do unto the last day. The Church and the Digitized by VjOOQIC THE CHURCHES OF ST. JOHN, 311 world, truth and deceit, good and bad, must struggle on together, while eternal worship goes on around the Throne in heaven, and every holy death on earth bears a Christian across the boundary to join in the songs he has tried to echo on earth. And though "evil men and seducers wax worse and worse," and the " love of many has grown cold," yet in some of St. John's own Eastern Churches the same simple quiet constant faith and practice have gone on unquenched by Mahometan oppression for all these ages ; and in the West, the strife with the godlessness and faithless- ness of the present world is being maintained by bold resolute faith, and by works of love and charity, such as may still befit the disciples of St John, the Apostle of faith and love. Digitized by VjOOQIC CHAPTER XX. PRESENT ASPECT OF ST. JOHN's CHURCHES. " What though winds and waves assail thee, What though foes in scorn bewail thee, Heaven-bound Ark of Liberty: Mid the sheeted lightning's glare. Mid the thunder's cloudy lair, Where dark waves meet lurid air, Shalt thou breast the stonny sea." Isaac Williams. One glance shall be cast round at the present aspect of the spots that derive their faith from St John the Divine and his followers. Of Ephesus, in her desolate state among the salt marches of the Cayster, and the thickets of her quarried hill, we have spoken already, and shown how the few poverty-stricken Mahometans still cluster in the village that bears the name of the Holy Divine. With Smyrna it is far otherwise. The traveller approaching from the Archipelago enters a gulf, crowded with shipping, and guarded by high moun- tains on either side, and one immediately above the city, with a castle on the summit, and the slope adorned with the dark cypresses which the Turks plant in their burial-grounds. Below glitters the city, adorned with towers, domes and minarets, and divided Digitized by VjOOQIC PRESENT ASPECT OF THE CHURCHES. 313 into four quarters, for Turks, Franks, Jews, and Ar- menians. It possesses many churches, though that which is believed to have been the first has become a mosque ; nor has the line of bishops, nor the Christian worship, ever ceased there since St Polycarp received his promise. Pass on, and the hill, or berg that gave name to Pergamus, rises high as ever, and beneath it stand the tall minarets and taller cypresses of the modern city of Bergamah — a place of narrow, crooked streets of modern houses, squalid and dirty, with remains of fine old stone churches among them, showing " like vast fortresses among mean barracks of wood." Outside the city, a single graceful arch, and a few fallen ruins, enable scholars to trace the site of the temple of Asclepios ; but the stones have been mostly ground into mortar by the Turks, and heaps of broken ruins alone show by the rich ornaments of each fragment how lavish was the splendour of the temples in the grove of Pergamus. But Christianity is by no means extinguished there : for out of the 4,000 inhabitants, no less than 3,300 hold the faith, and have held it patiently through their five hundred years of adversity and oppression. Thyatira, nestling under a background of hills, may be found by the name of Ak-hissar, or the White Castle. There the dyeing of scarlet is still carried on, and large bales are weekly sent from thence to Smyrna, so that the place is still inhabited, and there are Christians enough to have one church. Far better off is Thyatira than her neighbour Sardis, where the city has dwindled to a miserable little village called Digitized by VjOOQIC 314 PRESENT ASPECT OF Sart, standing in the midst of splendid ruins, the most noted of which are two enormous columns that are thought to have belonged to the temple of the mother of the gods, and to have stood from the time of Croesus to the present day, through all the splendour and all the decay of Sardis. A great empty amphitheatre left desolate, shows how the Sardians amused them- selves when living, and vast burial-mounds mark out this true city of the dead, where once indeed there w^as a name for life ; but the spiritual has been fol- lowed by temporal death. Those who visit Philadelphia, or, as the Turks call it, Attah Shehi, the city of God, are struck by the sight of a tall column, which stands on high, as if to keep in memory the promise to the victorious Philadelphia!! of being a pillar in the house of God. It is a Christian column, for it bears the figures of saints engraven on it The city still has many Christian inhabitants and a bishop, five churches, and twenty more disused ; but that which is believed to have been the original building where St John's message was read, has been taken from them, and is now a mosque. The streets of the city are as wretched and disgusting as those of all Turkish places, and Philadelphia must have greatly- declined since the time of her gallant resistance, but nevertheless she remains a witness to the minute truth of prophecy. No less so does Laodicea, the lukewarm city so sternly warned. How the judgment came we know- not The effects are visible enough in the utter deso- lation in which lie the vast ruins extending over seven Digitized by VjOOQIC S7. JOHN'S CHURCHES. 315 hills. A racecourse, three theatres, and numerous fragments of temples and other buildings, lie in their loneliness under the hot Eastern sun, and undergo no change save when rocked by the earthquakes which have aided in the ruin. Thus has it been with the Seven Churches whom the Lord in heaven deigned to address with words that time has so exactly verified. But they were only the first shoots of the great Christian tree : their boughs grew forth, and spread into other lands, and there, it may be hoped, are still green, and not without fruit. Athens, the wise and the learned, did indeed fall for a time under the Turkish blight, but it was for a com- paratively brief space. She is again a free and a Christian city, where the much-enduring Greek Church is lifting her head again, and a brave, eager nation are being trained to use the freedom they have won. The Church of Quadratus has been faithful through many varied sufferings ; and though learning and intelligence have been lost under oppression, and shiftiness and deceit have been fostered by terror, yet it may be hoped that the good will prevail, if only the old peril of the Greek mind — love of science, falsely so called — does not lead her able men to forget their faith. Still Athens is, to those who see her without, one of the loveliest of cities, even despoiled as she has been. The gold-coloured marble of her graceful Parthenon still towers on her hill, and the city lies in the lap of the mountain gleaming in the brilliant sun, and recalling many a thought of the wise and brave men who struggled after the truth of old, and of Digitized by VjOOQIC 3i6 PRESENT ASPECT OF him who at length, heard and understood by few, proclaimed the Unknown God, whom they had ignorantly worshipped. Let us pass from viewing Athens to the city where Trophinus ruled of old. It is a quiet old sleepy city, l)dng on the bank of the broad Rhone, just before the river divides into the many streams that stagnate to the sea, through marshes that exhale ague and fever. It is surrounded with quaint old walls, and the streets are of mean houses, nor does it look as if it had ever been a capital giving name to a kingdom. But there the Romans have set their mark. There is an immense amphitheatre, an arch of triumph, two temples, and many a relic of those days when Roman power made her roads, erected her buildings, provided her sports, and guessed not that the despised and down-trodden Christian should turn her courts of justice into churches, which should echo with an unending voice of praise of One God and of the Crucified, for a length of years far beyond that which any temple at Rome could count ; and that her amphitheatres would obtain their chief interest from being the scenes of the death of the martyrs who served for her sport and derision. It would be well if this could be said of every amphitheatre ; but that of Ntmes is still used for the remnants of those cruel exhibitions that were the shame of heathen Rome, and that the Church de- nounced from the first. Bull-baiting is still carried on at Ntmes in the magnificent amphitheatre that the in- habitants thus render their disgrace. It is one of the Digitized by VjOOQIC ST. JOHN'S CHURCHES. 317 best preserved among all the Roman remains, and shows still the seats, tier behind tier, where the spectators sat to watch the sports in the arena beneath. It is, as a modem French writer well calls it, a giant's skeleton, and for miles on miles away, joining two mountains together, lies the wonderful Pont de Gard, the three tiers of arches one above the other, raised as an aque- duct to feed Nimes with water, by Agrippa, the son- in-law of Augustus. It was in course of building when the Divine Founder of Christianity was a babe at Nazareth, and now both this and the other marvel- lous buildings at Ntmes are but like fossil remains testifying to the huge strength and skill of the terrible Fourth Beast with teeth of iron of Daniel's vision. That power has vanished; but how living, how eternally full of life, is that spirit which it strove to trample out, is witnessed not only by the ancient cathedral and the numerous churches of Nlmes, but by the great and wise statesman who was there born among the persecuted Huguenots, grew up amid the perils of the Revolu- tion, and who ever since, through evil report and good report, in power and in retirement, has never ceased to set forth both by word and deed the lessons of the Gospel ; and even now, in the calm of old age, has sent forth an earnest call to us of these latter days to fight resolutely the good fight of faith and truth that was so long ago shadowed forth to the Apostles. To say that M. Guizot was bom at Nimes is to say that the living power of the faith is as strong in our day as when it nerved men to be the prey of beasts within those arcades of the oval theatre. Digitized by VjOOQIC 3iS PRESENT ASPECT OF Lyons, the city of Pothinus and Irenaeus^ has less to tell of its cmcient memories than the other homes of the martyrs ; far less than Vienne, with the pyra- midal monument of Severus to tell of the death oi the persecutor, and the beautiful cathedral of St. Maurice to testify to the victory of the faith. Lyons has indeed the foundations of the amphitheatre where Blandina and Attalus were a spectacle to men and angels, and in the times of superstition, their remains, the ugh well known to have been swept away by the Rhone, were said to be recovered, and were enshrined in the Cathedral of St. John ; but Lyons has been too often desolated, and has since become too thriving and populous, to preserve much remnant of the past It is the great centre of the silk manufactures of France. " It is the place where fourteen roads and two rivers meet, bringing with them orders, and taking away goods. The divinity of the town is trade. . . . Yes, Lyons is actually a lively and animated town, but it is the liveliness and animation of a machine ; and the tic-tac of its frame is the only pulsation its heart is acquainted with. And when the beatings of its heart cease from want of work, the town is like a paralysed body to which no activity can be restored. Thirty thousand frames stop, nearly sixty thousand persons are without bread ; and Hunger, the mother of Insurrection, is soon howling through the tortuous streets of the second city in France." Howling — for these are the children of the men who tore Irenaeus to pieces in the streets. But even in the busy marts and narrow streets where love of Digitized by VjOOQIC ST. JOHN'S CHURCHES. 319 gain might seem to stifle all deeper and higher thoughts, the hardworking cur^, and the unwearied sister of mercy, the toiling mother and the dutiful children, are no doubt still keeping alive the memory of the good old lesson, "Little children, love one another." Again ; on the green banks of the twin lakes of Glendalough, shut in by the circle of mountains, lie tinted with golden lichen, the fragments of the Seven Churches around their tall stone cross and mysterious round tower. Or, again, close to the mighty Atlantic, in the midst of the rocks of Connemara, lies another of these groups in their grand loneliness. A third cluster lies in the wild vale of Clonmacnoise. They were raised at a time when devotion was more valued than edification, and the idea of the worship at the Seven Altars in memory of the Seven Churches was more in esteem than that of accommodating a congregation of worshippers, and hermits would devote themselves to maintaining the voice of prayer within them, or keeping their lights burning to shine out at night like the seven stars ; and on certain festival-days the whole population would collect around the buildings in the open air, to take their share in the devotions offered, and to look for a blessing. Even now, though change and separation, poverty and neglect, have ruined most of the buildings, and left the others hoary and forlorn, yet the yearly festival is still held by the peasantry and their priests at the remaining altar of Glendalough, and the families who have the right of burial around have made the solitary valley a strange Digitized by VjOOQIC 320 PRESENT ASPECT OF THE CHURCHES. city of the dead. Few who haunt the spot, whether travellers or peasant devotees, think of those frag- ments in connexion with the Seven of the Apocalypse, and yet they are a witness how far the thought of St John had extended. But among all these the Western form of the liturgy of Ephesus has passed away. Rome insisted on uniformity, and superseded it in France, in Spain, and in those Irish Churches that own her dominion. The Reformers of France dispensed with all forms of prayer, but the English have only translated, not disused, their ancient devotions ; and thus it is that, while other places may show closer connexion with St John and his pupils, it is the English communion at home, in her colonies, and in America, that tunes her prayer and praise to the echoes from Polycarp's canopy of flame, and, it may be, from St. John's vision at Patmos. However this may be, the undoubted immediate words of St John himself are in the hands of all. And may each one who prizes the blessed "spiritual* Gospel, the stern warnings yet tender exhortations of the three Epistles, and the awful and mysterious fore- shadowings of the Apocalypse, so show his faith, hope, and love, as to prove himself indeed a pupil of St. John, the Evangelist and the Beloved. " Stand thereiore, girt about with faith, Your burning lamps in hand ; And standing, listen for your Lord, And till His coming, stand. *\ LONDON : R. 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