and often overwhelming fears, lest the sinner should be cut off from hope and the soul made a victim of misery before its time.

It may tend, then, to throw light on this subject, if we consider a few cases of clear and decided apostasy. In an age when profession is rife, and men are prone to substitute some transient emotions, felt at some period of their lives, for true and spiritual religion, it would be well to define distinctly the limits between the genuine and the spurious-between the religion which originates in earth, and must of necessity end there, and the religion which comes from heaven, and will infallibly conduct us thither-between the condition which Christ describes when he says, "None is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand," and that which he describes where these are his words, "When persecution or tribulation ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended."

The first case, then, of apostasy to which we ask attention, is that of the Roman emperor Julian, called by excellence, The Apostate. He was the nephew of Constantine the Great, the first emperor called Christian, and narrowly escaped being massacred in the sixth year of his age, when nearly all his kindred perished. When Constantine died, his empire was divided among his sons, and atrocities were soon perpetrated by them such as rarely disgraced the reigns even of the Pagan emperors. Julian was rescued from one of the massacres which were then so common, and kept for about six years as a kind of state prisoner, by his cousin the emperor Constantius. He pursued his studies at Constantinople; but his eminence and popularity are said to have excited the imperial jealousy, and Julian withdrew from the scene of peril to find safety and retirement at Athens. He was at last made the colleague of his cousin, who had inherited a third part of the empire; and, even as the Cæsar, Julian was devoted to study, to a degree that made him an object of mockery in a sphere and an age when martial glory was the passion of all, and when the science of murder had often supplanted the science of benefiting man. He continued in comparative obscurity till the gods, by their omens, compelled him to become a prince; and at last, after various battles and victories, the soldiers proclaimed him the emperor of Rome. Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, and Minerva, had become his favourite gods; and he entered Constantinople, under their guardianship, on the 11th of December 361.

But previous to that event, Julian publicly renounced the Christian religion in which he had been trained, and surrendered himself to the care of "the immortal gods." Soon after his accession to the throne, he composed an elaborate work against the Christian religion, and yet he had formerly taken part in the festivals and functions of the Church. His education was intrusted to Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, and till his twentieth year the youth was constantly under the tutelage of Christian instruction. He even appeared so zealous a Christian, that he performed some of the duties of the inferior clergy, and publicly read the Holy Scriptures in the church of Nicomedia; while he and others of his family, following the customs of his age, often fasted, prayed,

gave alms, and performed other ceremonies at the tombs of the martyrs. Nay more, he erected a splendid monument to one of the saints at Cæsarea; he often solicited the blessing of monks and hermits; and Gibbon says, though with a sneer," He escaped very narrowly from being a bishop, and perhaps a saint." According to his own information, the emperor was a Christian till his twentieth year.

When Julian rose to prominence and power, the Arian heresy was at its height, and the controversy greatly scandalized him. It soon appeared that under his religion he cherished an invincible aversion to the doctrines of Christianity; it had no control over his heart and mind, and the gods of Homer had more attractions for Julian than the God of Scripture. They did not repress the natural mind; on the contrary, they fostered all its tendencies; and the prince embraced what he felt left him free, not what would have made him holy. What he withheld from the Gospel he freely conceded to Jupiter and Apollothe imperial philosopher believed the fable regarding the Ancilia which fell from heaven, but deplored the stupidity of Christians in caring for the cross of Christ!

By degrees the apostate emperor developed a tolerably perfect Pagan system; and the order in which the imperial infidel mustered his numerous gods was this spirits, gods, demons, heroes, men. The favour of his divinities was to be solicited and their wrath deprecated by sacrifice, ceremonies, and prayers. Inferior deities, according to Julian, might sometimes dwell in statues and temples. Philosophy he reckoned their handmaiden, and philosophers their priests. He was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries about his twentieth year, and mingled in all the abhorrent and revolting practices of the men called sages, Pious fraud and hypocrisy might sometimes lead him, even after that event, externally to conform to the religion which he hated; but his heart was stedfast to the fanaticism of those who were initiated in the mysteries. To recommend his new creed, Julian fasted like a hermit in honour of Pan and Mercury, Hecate and Isis, and his eulogist Libanius declares that the emperor held perpetual intercourse with gods and goddesses, who "gently touched his hand while he slumbered to awake him, that they might enjoy his society." They were his constant con panions, and so adroit was the princely fanatic, or impostor, that he pretended he could distinguish be tween the voices of Jupiter, Apollo, and Hercules, while they conversed with him. Gibbon might have left out the qualifying term when he said that such pretensions "almost degraded the emperor to the level of an Egyptian monk.”

It was supposed, that had the apostasy of Julian been generally known at its commencement, his life would have been the forfeit. But the flexible creed of Paganism allowed him to conceal it for a time; and thus a polytheist mingled among the worshippers of Jehovah. His hypocrisy has been defended by his Pagan encomiast, who says, " Very different from the ass of sop, which disguised himself in a lion's hide, our lion concealed himself under that of an ass." In that disguise, then, Julian is said to have acted as

JULIAN THE APOSTATE.

a hypocrite for ten years, till the proper time arrived for openly declaring that he was "the implacable enemy of Christ." Though he granted toleration for some time to all, he ordered the Pagan temples to be re-opened. To favour his own views, he recalled heretics who had been banished, restored them to their churches, and then employed the hostile sects to debate and wrangle in the imperial presence. He thus sought to gratify his enmity against the truth, to foment divisions, and consolidate Paganism, by weakening Christianity.

These notices of Julian might suffice to show the extent of his superstition as a professed Christian, and his fanaticism as a Pagan. But to exhibit his character at length, we notice that he had a temple to the Sun, in the precincts of his palace, where he daily offered sacrifice to that god, at sunrise and sunset. He solicited the meanest offices in the service of the Pagan deities, as he had formerly done in Christian Churches. Crowds of priests, and dancing women, the attendants on the temples, were his companions. Gibbon says, that the imperial hands carried the wood for the burnt-offerings, blew the fire that should consume them, wielded the sacrificial knife, and drew forth the quivering heart and liver of the victims, there to read the secrets of the future. A large portion of his revenue was expended on victims and festivals; scarce and beautiful birds were bought for sacrifices; and the voracious veneration of Julian frequently caused the slaughter of a hundred oxen in a single day. No wonder that, under such patronage, Paganism rose from its degradation. "Every part of the world displayed the triumph of religion; and the grateful prospect of flaming altars, bleeding victims, the smoke of incense, and a solemn train of priests and prophets, without fear and without danger. The sound of prayer and of music was heard on the tops of the highest mountains, and the same ox afforded a sacrifice for the gods and a supper for their joyous votaries."*

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from Christianity a portion of its truth and light, thereby the better to resist it; but after all, he was baffled and borne down by Him that is mighty.

In order the more effectually to proselytize, the emperor divided his favour between the old Pagans and those who turned from Christianity when it ceased to be the emperor's religion. The resources of the Roman Empire were frequently thus employed. The army speedily became Pagan, and assisted, Gibbon says, "with fervent devotion and voracious appetite at the hecatombs of fat oxen," offered in the camp. A device of the Apostate to corrupt and degrade Christians was this:. The soldiers passed in review from time to time before the emperor-cach received a donation; but he must first cast some grains of incense upon the altar fire. Many, allured by the bribe or awed by the sovereign presence, contracted the pollution; and such devices, continued till conscience became seared, crowded the camps with apostates like him who occupied the throne. The flexibility of an unconverted man's conscience will easily allow him to adopt the creed of a majority, or of the powerful; and though some did resist the temptation and die, many abandoned their profession of religion rather than their pay and their prince's favour.

One strange episode in Julian's life we cannot but describe-we refer to his attempt to rebuild the temple of Jerusalem. To weaken Christianity by strengthening its enemies, the emperor bestowed many favours on the Jews, and in the hope of destroying the Christian argument from prophecy connected with the overthrow of Jerusalem, the apostate resolved to rebuild the temple. The ploughshare had passed over it; but still the Jews cherished hope; and Julian seemed likely to turn that hope into fruition. He called the Jewish Divinity Mayas Geos and was willing to enrol him among the other gods; and encouraged by his patronage, after some interruptions, the Jews flocked from every land to see the temple rise again in its beauty. "The men forgot their avarice, and the women their delicacy; spades and pick-axes of silver were provided by the vanity of the rich; and the rubbish was transported in mantles of silk and purple. Every purse was opened in liberal contributions; every hand claimed a share in the pious labour; and the commands of a great monarch were executed by the enthusiasm of a whole people."

But Julian further attempted to reform the Pagan priesthood. He addressed pastoral letters to them, for he was the high priest as well as the emperor. He tried to weed out all that was scandalous-he urged utmost punctuality in regard to the ceremonial; and aimed at what has been called “immaculate parity of mind and body," by worshipping Jupiter, and Apollo, and Hecate, and Isis! His priests durst not resort to theatres or taverns, or consort with any who walked disorderly. Their libraries were to be select -their company decorous; in a word, the resuscitated Paganism was to be fostered by the sobriety, hospitality, faith, and devoutness of its priesthood; and yet all this was avowedly done by Julian in a spirit of rivalry to Christians. He signalized by his favour those who had continued Pagans while the emperor's uncle, Constantine, occupied the throne of the world; but though Julian did all that he could to restore the effœte and exhausted system-though he pursued his object with that pertinacity and single-workmen; and the victorious element, continuing in ness of aim which sometimes marks the conduct of a maniac, all was in vain-the crumbling system could not be propped up even by an emperor. He stole Libanius, the Orator, quoted by Gibbon.

Such, according to Gibbon, were Julian's preparations or efforts with what result? "An earthquake, a whirlwind, and a fiery eruption, which overturned and scattered the new foundations of the temple, are attested with some variations by contemporary and respectable evidence." "Whilst Alypius, assisted by the governor of the province, urged with vigour 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

this manner, obstinately and resolutely bent, as it were, to drive them to a distance, the undertaking was abandoned." Such are the words of a contemporary historian (Ammianus Marcellinus), as quoted

by Gibbon. Even the Infidel historian is staggered. He gives a possible explanation; but he does not deny the fact. Without supposing a miracle, yet coupling together the reported events and the certain interruption of the attempt, we cannot but regard the whole as marvellous.*

Gibbon is compelled by historical truth reluctantly to record that "their mangled bodies were dragge. through the streets; they were pierced by the spits: of cooks and the distaffs of women, and the entrais of Christian priests and virgins, after they had been tasted by these bloody fanatics, were mixed with Besides this notable effort to falsify predictions, barley, and contemptuously thrown to the unclear refute Christianity, and strengthen its enemies, animals of the city." Opportunities were embraced Julian adopted other methods to effect the object on for confiscating all Church property. Insult wa which his heart was set. He enjoined the Christians added to injury. Christianity says, Blessed are the to adopt the name of Galilæans, as one that tended poor in spirit; and Julian impiously boasted that be to degrade them. In one of his edicts he hinted at would reduce all the Galilæans to that condition, persecution, and avowed that a frantic patient might telling them, with all the ferocity of a godless tyrant, be treated with salutary violence. He prohibited that they might "dread not merely confiscation an the Christians from teaching schools, and in effect exile, but fire and the sword." A city had murder. from learning aught but Paganism; and in defence of its bishop in an outbreak of Pagan fanaticism. The his tyranny, he contemptuously said, that "if men emperor should have punished the murderers; b would refuse to adore the gods of Homer, they ought "the virtuous prince," in consideration of the found to content themselves with expounding Luke and of the city (Alexander), and of Serapis, the tutel Matthew in the temples of the Galilæans.” He deity, granted a free and gracious pardon." took power to corrupt or to punish the more constant Athanasius, the stanch friend of truth, was in Christians; and when they were removed, he found object of utmost hatred to the apostate, whose enmity the minds of the young ready to receive the impres- against the truth appears on every side. He was besion of Pagan literature and idolatry. In a word, nished from his see as "the enemy of the gods;" an Heathenism-"the gods of Homer"-on the one the impious Heathen thus announces his mind to his hand, and utter ignorance on the other, were the al- minions: "I swear by the great Serapis, that unless ternatives presented to Christians by one who has on the calends of December, Athanasius has de been eulogized as "a hero and a sage," and who parted from Alexandria, nay, from Egypt, the officers himself became one of the gods at last. Christians of your government shall pay a fine of one hundred were obliged to restore the Pagan temples, while their pounds (weight) of gold." With a meanness which churches, because often built on the ruins of former betokens that degradation which false religion inflicts, edifices, were thrown to the ground. Accounts for an emperor stoops to call the archbishop" an abomidamages and debt were summed up against the Gali-nable wretch;" and with a malignity indicative of læans; and when they could not meet the demands, they were seized and imprisoned. An aged prelate I was thus maltreated. He was equally poor and stedfast; and to punish him "they inhumanly scourged him, and tore his beard; while his naked body, anointed with honey, was suspended in a net between heaven and earth, exposed to the stings of insects, and the rays of a Syrian sun." Another proof this of Pagan clemency-another reason, perhaps, why Gibbon called Julian "a hero and a sage,' a virtuous prince," "a prince who felt for the honour of the gods."

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But the apostasy of Julian is not yet all described. The Temple of Daphne, near Antioch, had once been among the most magnificent in the world; but under Christianity it fell into decay. Julian visited the shrine, and instead of finding hecatombs of oxen slaughtered to the goddess, he "complained that he found only a single goose, provided at the expense of a priest, the pale and solitary inhabitant of the temple. Christians were, moreover, buried near it, and their polluting remains must be removed! But the temple was set on fire during the succeeding night, and left a blackened pile to horrify the emperor; and vengeance was inflicted on the Galilæans. Several were tortured. Theodoret, a presbyter, was beheaded. The burial-places of Christians throughout Syria were removed, and the living were not spared.

This most curious topic is worthy of full elucidation. B. Warburton, in his "Julian," has largely considered the subject.

the lowest style of mind, he expresses the wish that "all the venom of the Galilæan school were contained in the single person of Athanasius.”

We do not trace the apostate's history farther. He was soon withdrawn by war from persecuting the Christians, and fell, after many hardships and disa ters, fighting against the Persians, in the thirty-second year of his age. Some of his last words are instructive: "I have learned from religion that an early death has often been the reward of piety, and I accept as a favour from the gods the mortal stroke that secures me from the danger of disgracing a character hitherto supported by virtue and fortitude . . . . . I die without remorse, as I have lived without guilt. I am pleased to reflect on the innocence of my private life. The eternal Being has given me, in the midst of an honourable career, a splendid and glorious departure from this world; an! I hold it equally absurd, equally base, to solicit or t decline the stroke of fate."-"We hope in a few moments to be united to heaven, and with the stars." Such are the great swelling words of a poor dying sinner, a hypocrite, an apostate, a persecutor. When wounded on the field of battle, he is said to have taken a portion of his blood from his wound and thrown it into the air, exclaiming, “THE GAL)LEAN HAS CONQUERED;" and the Christian will adopt the testimony as true.

And such is an example of apostasy! Julian was trained in the Christian religion. He had a bishop for his preceptor, and other ministers of religion to

ALEXANDER PEDEN.

inform his opening mind. For a time, he seemed to hold Christianity as then known, in his very heart. He visited the tombs of the martyrs-he fastedhe prayed-he found pleasure in the menial services as well as higher functions of the sanctuary. "He narrowly escaped being made a bishop, or even a saint." But first Paganism, then hypocrisy, then keen persecution, guided by open and avowed hostility to Christ and the Christian name, became the characteristics of Julian. And whence the change? · Because Julian's religion was only that which bishops and other human beings teach-the creed of his family, his guardians, his Church-not that faith which the Holy Ghost produces, which comes from heaven and will guide us to it. Julian, in short, was an unconverted man; while praying and fasting, grace had taken no hold, and exercised no influence on his heart; hence his apostasy when temptation came |—an apostasy signalized by the high level at which took place, but paralleled sooner or later, in its principles, in the case of all who have no religion but what man teaches, and no creed but what their fathers held. "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us." (1 John ii. 19.) "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." (1 Cor. x. 12.)

A STORY OF THE PERSECUTION.

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sweetest music. The blackbird and the thrush were piping their richest notes on the "greenwood tree;" the gentle cooing of the wood-dove issued with a delicious softness from the grove; and the joyous lark, high in the air, was pouring a flood of melody down upon the wilderness. The wild bees were humming among the honeyed blossoms of the hawthorn; the scented wind, breathing over the fragrant heath, was playing with the rustling foliage; the brook was murmuring in the ravine below; the lambkins were gamboling on the verdant lea, and the sheep were grazing quietly by their side; while on the distant hill the shepherd was seen, wrapped in his plaid, with his sportive dog at his foot, slowly winding his way up the steep ascent. The good man's heart beat high with rapture his delighted eye roamed over the charming variety of hill and dale-he contemplated the glorious sun, and all the splendid scenery of the sky-he felt as if he were standing on holy ground, in the midst of the great temple of nature--he experienced an unusual elevation of mind, and all the freshness and buoyancy of youth seemed once more to take possession of his aged frame. Full of devout sentiments he uncovered his head, the silvery hairs of which were streaming on his shoulders, and, lifting up his hands, he “praised, and | honoured, and extolled the King of Heaven, all whose works are truth, and whose ways are judgment." He had fixed his eye on a cottage far off in the waste, in which lived a godly man AMONG the many hiding-places to which he ocwith whom he had frequent intercourse; and casionally retreated, was the solitude of Glen- there being nothing within view calculated to dyne, about three miles to the east of Sanquhar. excite alarm, he resolved to pay his friend a A more entire seclusion than this is rarely visit. With his staff in his hand he wended to be found. Glendyne stretches eastward, his way to the low grounds to gain the track winding among the hills for nearly three miles. which led to the house. He reached it in The width of the glen at the bottom is in many safety, was hospitably entertained by the kind places little more than five or six times the landlord, and spent the time with the household breadth of the brawling torrent that rushes in pious conversation and prayer, till sunset. through it. Dark precipitous mountains, frown- Not daring to remain all night, he left them, to ing on either side, rise from the level of the return to his dreary cave. As he was trudging valley to an immense height. On the eastern along the soft footpath, and suspecting no harm, extremity of the glen a cluster of hills gathers all at once several moss-troopers appeared to a point, and forms an eminence of great coming over the bent, and advancing directly altitude, from which a noble prospect of a vast upon him. He fled across the moor, and when extent of country is obtained. Near the lower about to pass a mountain streamlet, he acciend of this defile, which in ancient times was dentally perceived a cavity underneath its bank, thickly covered with wood, and where it termi- that had been scooped out by the running nates its sinuous course with one majestic brook, into which he instinctively crept, and sweep, reaching forward to the bleak moor- stretching himself at full length, lay hidden lands beneath, our revered worthy had selected beneath the grassy coverlet, waiting the result. for himself a place of refuge. This spot, con- In a short time the dragoons came up, and cealed by the dark mantling of the forest, was having followed close in his track, reached the known only to a few who made the cause of rill at the very spot where he was ensconced. these sufferers their own. It happened, on one As the heavy horses came thundering over the occasion, that this honoured servant of Christ, smooth turf on the edge of the rivulet, the foot having emerged from his covert, stood by the of one of them sank quite through the hollow margin of the forest, on the beautiful slope of covering under which the object of their purthe mountain above. It was the balmy month suit lay. The hoof of the animal grazed his of May, and nature had just put on her love-head, and pressed his bonnet deep into the soft liest attire. The forest was vocal with the clay at his pillow, and left him entirely unin

ALEXANDER PEDEN.

No position, it apears to me, can well be more simple I sadly remember sometimes the tears and words of