The History of Christianity - John S. C. Abbott (bookstand for reading .txt) 📗

far in the spirit of eccentricity, fanaticism, and superstition, as to renounce the decencies of dress and the laws of cleanliness. He deemed it an act of piety to be filthy in person, and to allow vermin to devour him. In one of his letters, boasting of his superior piety, he descants with pride upon the length of his finger-nails, the dirtiness of his unwashed hands, and the shagginess and populousness of his beard.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But all the artifice and imperial power of Julian could not restore a religion which had no elevated doctrines of