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 insultand 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.