Forlong - Rivers of Life

514
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
ing sanctuary of Jerusalem. Julian indignantly removed the tombs and chapels which a
domineering faith had built over the ancient sacred spots, and calumny and abuse were
of coure heaped upon him; for like all dogmatic religions, the Christianity of those
days, swayed by priests, knew no tolerance. It had hewn down all that the more
ancient faith had held sacred, and now it turned round and visited with most unjust
invective the grave and impartial man who practically inculcated the golden rule, “Do as
ye would be done by,” and who firmly and intrepidly stopped for a time the Church’s
career of blood and spoliation. Alas! that Julian lived so short a time, for he clearly
desired—like all good modern rulers—that every subject of his wide empire should be
protected in the exercise of all his. rights—nay, fancies,—without fear or favour, provided
always that these did not encroach on the righm of others. But this was a long
step in advance of the Christianity of the day, and priestly teachings of all days.
Thanks to the advanced culture of laymen, we now breathe in peace uder “the
proud banner,” so unjustly called that of “Saint George;” unjustly, I say, because after
the low-bred fuller’s son of Epiphanis, the fraudulent “vendor of bacon and salt stuffs”
—the runaway convict and sacrilegious tyrant, who was finally lynched by the insulted
and deeply aggrieved people of Alexandria; thanks, I say, to secular learning, and to
laymen and civilization, alas, not to priests, churches, or faiths, that England’s proud
banner floats benignly over the shrines of every faith of man on earth, and watches
lynx-eyed so that no one shall interfere with the manner any one choose to worship
his God.
Faiths, to move permanently and for good, must progress with the mental
calibre and education of men, and not by miracles or kingly sway, much though these
may affect a nation for a time; so people went with Julian in the fourth century
A.C., as they had done with Macedonian permission in the fourth century B.C., but by
no means as warmly in the latter times as in the former; for philosophy hnd increased
the bounds of the mental horizon, and in doing so had perplexed the thoughtful, and
made the ignorant more than ever conservative. It was because the superstitions,
miracles and stories circulated concerning the new incarnate God were too like their
own and too common, that the masses felt disinclined to leave the old faith for the new.
The anchors, however, were shifting and dragging; the people, not knowing exactly
what awaited them in this sea of uncertainty, anxiously looked for any haven;
and as a philosophical or spiritual one was beyond their mental powers, and miracles
and incarnations common and agreeable to all their notions, they were fast drifting
towards what zealous Christian propagandists and men in power asked them to believe
in. The pauses on the road to victory, which an impartial reign such as that of
Julian necessitated, were far from ultimately injuring the rising faith; these brought
wisdom into council, making the rapacious and violent re-consider their ways and
discipline their forces; regarding which, however, enough; as we have much to say
about this in considering the rise of Christianity.
After Serapis of the Nile and Adonis of the sacred Orontes, let us dwell for a