And now the end was fast approaching. About Midsummer 362, Julian took up his residence at Antioch, where he spent nine months preparing for his Persian campaign. This sojourn aggravated his disappointment. The people of Antioch did not take kindly to their sovereign. Before long he had succeeded in making himself equally unpopular with both the great sections of the community. At Antioch, where Christianity had first obtained its name, the Christians formed an exceptionally large fraction of the whole population. They would not be predisposed favourably towards an apostate, and his injustice only served to confirm their hatred. A fire broke out in the temple of Apollo of Daphne, and it was burnt to the ground. Without any adequate reason his suspicions fell on the Christians; he put the suspected persons to cruel tortures, but elicited no confession. Thus foiled, he ordered the principal church of Antioch to be closed and razed to the ground. The attitude of the Christians was one of stern defiance. Under the walls of the palace, along the streets of the city, wherever the Emperor would be likely to hear, were chanted the words of the Psalmist—"Confounded be all they that worship carved images, and that delight in vain gods. The idols of the heathen are silver and gold, even the work of men's hands. Eyes have they and see not. They that make them are like unto them, and so are all they that put their trust in them." Nor was he more fortunate with the heathen population. He and they were co-religionists, but his Paganism was not their Paganism. The theatrical exhibitions, the festive orgies, the dancing and the revelry, these were the very soul of religious worship to them. He despised all such things. They ridiculed the officious devotion with which he hurried from temple to temple and from altar to altar, present at every festival, and participating in every rite. He took his revenge by satirising their ungodliness. He told them at the great festival of their patron god, the Daphnian Apollo, he had expected to see costly victims smoking on the altar, but found there only one miserable goose, the solitary offering of a poor priest. Indeed, he was doomed to disappointment on all sides. One great project which he entertained at this time was the rebuilding of the temple of Jerusalem. It was not that he loved the Jews, but that he hated the Christians. So he entered into communication with the Jewish patriarch, and the work was commenced. The ruined walls were demolished, the foundations of the new building begun; but as the workmen penetrated underground, great globes of fire burst out from the earth and drove them back. Again and again they renewed the attempt; again and again they were repulsed. The project was relinquished and the temple remains unbuilt to this day.
Thus irritated and disappointed, Julian left Antioch and commenced his march. At his departure he vented his anger against the offending people by declaring that he would not enter the city again, but on his return he would go to Tarsus instead. He was as good as his word. He did return to Tarsus; but he returned there a corpse. Disastrous omens, we are told, thronged upon him. During his march on Hierapolis, as he entered the city, a portico suddenly gave way, and crushed fifty soldiers under its ruins. At Davana a huge stack of straw fell, and smothered to death as many more. At Carrhæ, the fatal scene of the defeat of Crassus, he was troubled with sinister dreams. At Circesium he received letters from Sallust, the Prefect of Gaul, entreating him to suspend the ill-omened expedition. Here, too, was an apparition of sinister augury. The corpse of an executed criminal was found lying across the path. At another place an enormous lion confronted the soldiers across their path. He was shot by them, and presented to Julian. It portended the death of a king, but on the question what king was meant there was a division of opinion. The Etruscan soothsayers considered it a disastrous sign; the philosophers interpreted it favourably. The next day a soldier named Julianus was struck down by lightning. This omen again was differently explained. The soothsayers and the philosophers took opposite sides.
Arrived at the scene of conflict, the Emperor, after obtaining some successes, offered a magnificent sacrifice—ten fine bulls—to Mars the Avenger. The omens were unmistakably sinister. Julian was disgusted with the ingratitude of the god, and called Jupiter to witness that he would not sacrifice to Mars again; "nor," adds the historian, "did he belie his oath, being carried off prematurely by a speedy death." These prodigies, with others, are related by a Pagan who accompanied the army. Christian writers add an incident of which I see no reason to question the proof, and which certainly deserves to be true. Julian's common taunt against the Christians was their worship of a dead man. While preparing for his expedition at Antioch, he fell into dispute, after his manner, with a Christian whom he met accidentally, and said mockingly, "What is the Son of the carpenter doing now?" "He is making a coffin," was the prompt reply. The Son of the carpenter was making a coffin—a coffin not for Julian only, but for the Paganism of which Julian was the champion.
It is not necessary for me to follow out this expedition to its disastrous issue. It is sufficient to say that Julian was inveigled, surrounded, pierced by a spear from some unknown Persian or Saracen hand. He perceived at once that he was mortally wounded. His words at this moment are differently reported. According to one account, he cried out, "Oh, Galilean, thou hast conquered!" Another story relates that he took the blood welling from the wound in his hand, and flung it up towards the sun, his patron god, with an imprecation—"There, take thy fill." Neither saying, perhaps, is reported on sufficiently good authority, but either would accord well with the disappointment and irritation which marked the closing scenes of his life. He inquired what was the name of the place. It was a small village called Parthia. He had been forewarned long ago that in Parthia he should die. He had supposed that the famous country of that name was meant. We are reminded by this incident of an English sovereign lying on his death-bed in the famous chamber at Westminster, which still bears the name of Jerusalem. "It hath been prophesied to me many years I should not die but at Jerusalem, which vainly I supposed the Holy Land." Within a few hours Julian had breathed his last. He died on the 26th June, 363, being not yet quite thirty-two years old, and with him perished the last and best hope of Paganism. Less than twenty years after, the Emperor Gratian refused the title of Supreme Pontiff. This was the first overt act of disestablishment. Then blow followed blow in rapid succession. Paganism was first disestablished, then disendowed, then prohibited; yet it still continued to linger on till at length it was buried in the grave of the empire. St. Augustine's City of God was the pæan of victory over the enemy slain. Julian's work had been found like a child's castle elaborately piled up of sand on the brink of the ocean. The rising tide advanced steadily, inexorably, relentlessly, and no traces of the structure remain.
[WOMAN AND THE GOSPEL.][11]
"And He took the damsel by the hand."—Mark v. 41.
In selecting this text I have no intention of saying many words on the actual scene itself. The raising of Jairus's daughter attracts our attention by its vivid narrative, and by its intense human pathos, while the two foreign words, summing up the interest of the story, linger strangely in our ears, impressing it effectually on our memories. Nor, again, do I purpose speaking of its direct theological import, whether as an answer to human faith, or as a manifestation of the Divine power. In this latter aspect this is one of three signal miracles, the anticipations of Christ's own resurrection. It claims, and it has received, the most earnest study, both in itself and in relation to other incidents of the same class.
These more obvious aspects of the text are beside my present purpose. I wish to-day to treat it from a wholly different point of view. Christ's miracles have always the highest spiritual significance. They are not miracles only, but parables also. The Messiah's kingdom would have achieved comparatively little for mankind if it had brought deliverance to the captive in a literal sense only. A far heavier and more galling bondage would still remain—the bondage of sin. Physical blindness is only a type of moral blindness; Christ's healing power in the one case is the pledge of His healing power in the other. The palsy of the body symbolises the palsy of the soul. If the paralytic is bidden to take up his bed and walk, this is before all things an assurance to us that Christ is able and willing to heal the paralysis of the soul. From this point of view the words of the text are full of meaning to all who are met together to-day. "He took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Damsel, I say unto thee, Arise. And straightway the damsel arose, and walked; and they were astonished with a great astonishment."
Need I remind you that this is the earliest miracle of raising the dead recounted in the Gospels? Two others follow. The widow of Nain and the sisters of Bethany receive back their dead. But the one was a growing youth, the other was a man of mature age. The young woman was Christ's first miracle of resurrection. On her was wrought first this stupendous miracle. For her was won this earliest triumph over death and hell. Is not this a significant fact in itself, but especially significant for you, for it proclaims the fundamental principle of the Gospel charter? It announces that the weak and the helpless in years, in sex, in social status, are especially Christ's care. It declares emphatically that in Him is neither male nor female. It is a call to you, you women-workers, to do a sister's part to these your sisters. Christ's action in this miracle is a foreshadowing of His action in the Church. The Master found woman deposed from her proper social position. The man had suffered not less than the woman by this her humiliation. Jew and Gentile had conspired together in an unconscious conspiracy to bring about this disastrous result. The Hebrew Rabbi and the Greek philosopher alike had gone astray. It is the recorded saying of a famous Jewish doctor that the words of the law were better burned than committed to woman. It is an opinion ascribed to the most famous Athenian statesman, that woman had then achieved her highest glory when her name was heard amongst men least, either for virtue or for reproach. A moral resurrection was needed for womanhood. It might seem to the looker-on like a social death, from which there was no awakening, but it was only the suspension of her proper faculties and opportunities, a long sleep from which a revival must come sooner or later. It was for Him, and Him alone, who was the Vanquisher of death, who has the keys of Hades—for Him alone to open the door of her sepulchral prison and resuscitate her dormant life and restore her to her ordinary place in society. When all hope was gone, He took her by the hand and bid her arise; and at the sound of His voice and the touch of His hand she arose and walked, and the world was astonished with a great astonishment. We ourselves are so familiar with the results, the position of woman is so fully recognised by us, it is bearing so abundant fruit every day and everywhere, that we overlook the magnitude of the change itself. Only, then, when we turn to the harem and the zenana do we learn to estimate what the Gospel has achieved, and has still to achieve, in the emancipation of woman, and her restitution to her lawful place in the social order. To ourselves the large place which woman occupies in the Gospel and in the early apostolic history seems only natural. To contemporaries it must have appeared in the light of a social revolution. The very opening of the Gospel is charged with Divine messages communicated to us through woman—Mary, Elizabeth, Anna; women attend our Lord everywhere during His earthly ministry. The sisters, Martha and Mary, are set before us as embodying the two contrasted types of character, the practical and the contemplative. To a woman, and to a woman alone, is given the promise of an undying hope beyond the glory of the mightiest earthly princes. Of her it is said: "Wheresoever this Gospel is preached in the whole world, there shall this which this woman has done be told as a memorial of her." To a woman were spoken those gracious words of pardon most tender and compassionate, the consolation and the stay and the hope of the penitent to all time: "Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loveth much." Women are the chief attendants at the crucifixion, and the chief ministrants at the tomb. Woman is the first witness of the resurrection; and as it was in Christ's personal ministry, so it is in all the Apostolic Church. In the first gathering of the little band after the Ascension, women are found assembled with the apostles. This is a foreshadowing of the part which they are destined to play in the subsequent narrative of the history of the Church. Cast your eyes down the salutations in the Epistle to the Romans. There is Phœbe, a deaconess of the Church of Cenchrea, commended as having been the succourer of many, among others of the Apostle himself. There is Priscilla, who with her husband had laid down her neck for his life, to whom he himself not only gave thanks, but all the Churches of the Gentiles. There is Mary, who bestowed much labour upon him and others; Tryphena and Tryphosa, who laboured much in the Lord. There is Persis, to whom the same testimony is borne. There is the mother of Rufus, who had also been like a mother to himself. There is Julia, and there is the sister of Nereus. A long catalogue to appear in the salutations of a single epistle!