The Chosen People: A Compendium of Sacred and Church History for School-Children

LESSON XXIII
THE FALL OF JERUSALEM

"The Lord hath accomplished His fury; He hath poured out His fierce anger, and hath kindled a fire in Zion, and it hath devoured the foundations thereof"—Lam. iv. 11.

In His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, oar Lord had wept for the woes of the city which would not own Him, and had foretold that the present generation should not pass away until His mournful words had been fulfilled. One alone of His Apostles was left to tarry until this coming for vengeance; the rest had all gone through the pains of martyrdom to their thrones in Heaven. St. Andrew died in Greece, bound on a cross shaped like the letter X, and preaching to the last. His friend, St. Philip, had likewise received the glory of the Cross in Asia; and the last of the Bethsaida band, St. Bartholomew, was tied to a tree and flayed alive, in Armenia. St. Matthew and St. Matthias died in Ethiopia or Abyssinia, leaving a Church which is still in existence; and St. Thomas was slain by the Brahmins in India, where the Christians of St. Thomas ever after kept up their faith among the heathen around. St. Jude died in Mesopotamia, after writing an epistle to his flock; and his brother, St. Simon Zelotes, also went by the same path to his rest; but their deaths only strengthened the Church, and their successors carried out the same work.

The judgments of God were darkening around Jerusalem. A procurator named Florus was more cruel and insulting than usual, and a tumult broke out against him. Agrippa tried to appease it, but the Jews pelted him with stones, and drove him out of Jerusalem; they afterwards burnt down his palace, and rose in rebellion all over Judea, imagining that the prophesied time of deliverance was come, and that the warlike Messiah of their imagination was at hand. Nero was much enraged at the tidings, and sent an army, under a plain blunt general, named Vespasian, to punish the revolt. This army subdued Galilee and Samaria, and was already surrounding Jerusalem, when Vespasian heard that there had been a great rebellion at home, and that Nero had been killed. He therefore turned back from the siege, to wait and see what would happen, having thus given the token promised by our Lord, of the time when the desolation of Jerusalem should be at hand, when the faithful were to flee. Accordingly, in this pause, all the Christians, marking well the signs of coming wrath, took refuge in the hills while the way was still open. Armies were seen fighting in the clouds; a voice was heard in the Holy of Holies saying, "Let us depart hence!" the heavily-barred gate of the Temple flew open of its own accord; and a man wandered up and down the streets day and night, crying, "Woe to Jerusalem! Woe! woe!" The Jews were hardened against all warning; they had no lawful head, but there were three parties under different chiefs, who equally hated the Romans and one another. They fought in the streets, so that the city was full of blood; and fires consumed a great quantity of the food laid up against the siege; yet still the blind Jews came pressing into it in multitudes, to keep the now unmeaning Feast of the Passover, even at the time when Vespasian's son, Titus, was leading his forces to the siege.

It was the year 70, thirty-seven years since that true Passover, when the Jews had slain the true Lamb, and had cried, "His Blood be on us and our children!" What a Passover was that, when one raging multitude pursued another into the Temple, and stained the courts with the blood of numbers! Meanwhile, Titus came up to the valleys around the crowned hill, and shut the city in on every side, digging a trench, and guarding it closely, that no food might be carried in, and hunger might waste away the strength of those within. Then began the utmost fulfilment of the curses laid up in the Law for the miserable race. The chiefs and their parties tore each other to pieces whenever they were not fighting with the enemy; blood flowed everywhere, and robbers rushed through the streets, snatching away every fragment of food from the weak. The famine was so deadly, that the miserable creatures preyed on the carcases of the dead; nay, "the tender and delicate woman" was found who, in the straits of hunger, killed her own babe, roasted, and fed upon him. So many corpses were thrown over the walls, that the narrow valleys were choked, and Titus, in horror, cried out that the Jews, not himself, must be accountable for this destruction.

For the sake of the Christian fugitives in the mountains, these dreadful days were shortened, and were not in the winter; and in August Titus's soldiers were enabled to make an entrance into the Temple. For the sake of its glorious beauty, he bade that the building should be spared; but it was under the sentence of our Lord, and his command was in vain. A soldier threw a torch through a golden window, and the flames spread fast while the fight raged; the space round the Altar was heaped with corpses, and streams of blood flowed like rivers. Ere the flames reached the Sanctuary, Titus went into it, and was so much struck with its beauty, that he did his utmost to save it, but all in vain; and the whole was burnt, with 6,000 poor creatures, whom a false prophet had led to the Temple, promising that a wonder should there be worked for their deliverance. The city still held out for twenty more days of untold misery; but at last the Romans broke in amid flames quenched in blood, and slaughter raged everywhere. Yet it was a still sadder sight to find the upper rooms of the houses filled with corpses of women and children, dead of hunger; and indeed, no less than a million of persons had perished in the siege, while there were 97,000 miserable captives, 12,000 of whom died at once from hunger. As Titus looked at the walls and towers, he cried out that God Himself must have been against the Jews, since he himself could never have driven them from such fortresses. He commanded the whole, especially the Temple, to be leveled with the ground, no two stones left standing, and the foundation to be sown with salt; and he carried off the Candlestick, Shewbread Table, and other sacred ornaments, to be displayed in his triumph. An arch was set up at Rome in honour of his victory, with the likeness of these treasures sculptured on it. It is still standing, and the figures there carved are the chief means we have of knowing what these holy ornaments were really like. He gave the Jews, some to work in the Egyptian mines, some to fight with wild beasts to amuse the Romans, and many more to be sold as slaves. Other people thus dispersed had become fused into other nations; but it was not so with the Jews. "Slay them not, lest my people forget it, but scatter them abroad among the heathen," had been the prophecy of the Psalmist; and thus it has remained even to the present day. The piteous words of Moses have been literally fulfilled, and among the nations they have found no ease, neither has the sole of their foot found any rest; but the trembling heart, and failing eye, and sorrowful mind, have always been theirs. They have ever been loathed and persecuted by the nations where their lot has been cast, ever craving for their lost home, ever hoping for the Messiah of their own fancy. Still they keep their Sabbath on the seventh day; still they follow the rules of clean and unclean; and on each Friday, such as still live at Jerusalem sit with their faces to the wall, and lift up their voice in mournful wailing for their desolation. Their goodly land lies waste, the sky above like brass, the earth beneath like iron; her fruitfulness is over, and from end to end she is a country of ruins, a sign to all nations! Some there are who read in the prophecies hopes for the Jews, that they may yet return and learn Who is the Saviour. Others doubt whether this means that they will ever be restored as a nation; and still the Jews stand as a witness that God keeps His word in wrath as well as in mercy—a warning that the children of the free New Covenant must fear while they are thankful.

LESSON XXIV
THE PRIMITIVE CHURCH

"I will also take of the highest branch of the high cedar, and will set it; I will crop off from the top of his young twigs a tender one, and will plant it on a high mountain and eminent."—Ezekiel, xvii. 22.

In the year 70, the same in which Jerusalem was destroyed, happened the first great eruption of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius, in which was killed Drusilla, the wife of Felix. Her brother, Agrippa, ruled by favour of the Romans for many years in the little domain of Chalcis. Titus was emperor after his father. He was a very kind-hearted man, and used to say he had lost a day whenever he had spent one without doing a good action; but he was soon poisoned by his wicked brother, Domitian, who succeeded to his throne in 81. Domitian was a savage tyrant, cruel to all, because he was afraid of all. He hated the Jews; and hearing that some persons of royal blood still existed among them, he caused search to be made for them, and two sons of St. Jude were brought before him. They owned that they came of the line of David; but they told him they were poor simple men, and showed him their hands hardened with toil; and he thought they could do him so little harm, that he let them go. He also laid hands on the aged St. John, and caused him to be put into a caldron of boiling oil; but the martyr in will, though not in deed, felt no hurt, and was thereupon banished to the little Greek Isle of Patmos. Here was vouchsafed to him a wonderful vision, answering to those of Daniel, his likeness among the prophets. He saw the true heavenly courts, such as Moses had shadowed in the Tabernacle, and which Ezekiel had described so minutely; he saw the same fourfold Cherubim, and listened to the same threefold chant of praise, as Isaiah had heard; he saw the seven lamps of fire, and the rainbow of mercy round about the Throne; and in the midst, in the eternal glory of His priestly robes, he beheld Him on Whose bosom be had lain, and Who had called him beloved. From His lips he wrote messages of counsel and warning to the angels, or Bishops, of the Seven Churches of Asia Minor; and then came a succession of wonderful visions, each opening with the Church in Heaven and in earth constantly glorifying Him that sitteth on the Throne, and the Lamb, for ever and ever; but going on to show the crimes in the world beneath, and the judgments one after another poured out by the Angels; the true remnant of the Church persecuted; and the world partly curbed by, partly corrupting, the visible Church; then the destruction of the wicked world, under the type of Babylon; the last judgment; the eternal punishment of the sinful; the final union of Christ and His Church; and the eternal blessedness of the faithful in the heavenly Jerusalem, with the Tree of Life restored.

When Domitian was killed, in 86, St. John went back to Ephesus, and there wrote his Gospel, to fill up what had been left out by the other three Evangelists, and especially dwelling on the discourses of the Lord of Life and Love. That same sweet sound of love rings through his three Epistles; and yet that heart-whole love of his Master made him severe, for he started away from a house he had entered, and would not go near it while it contained a former believer who had blasphemed Christ. A young man whom he had once converted fell into evil courses in his absence, and even became a tobber. St. John, like the Good Shepherd, himself went out into the wilderness to find him, and was taken by the thieves When his convert saw him, he would have fled in shame and terror; but St. John held out his arms, called him back, and rested not till he had won him to repentance. So gentle was he to all living things, that he was seen nursing a partridge in his hands, and when he became too old to preach to the people, he used to hold out his hands in blessing, and say, "Little children, love one another." He died in the year 100, just before the first great storm which was to try the Church.

The Emperor Trajan had found out that the iron of the Roman temper had become mixed with miry clay, and that the men of his time were very different from their fathers, and much less brave and public spirited. He fancied this was the fault of new ways, and that Christianity was one of these. There were Christians everywhere, in every town of every province, nobles, soldiers, women, slaves, rich and poor; all feeling themselves members of one body, all with the same faith, the same prayers and Sacraments. All day they did their daily tasks, only refusing to show any honour to idols, such as pouring out wine to the gods before partaking of food, or paying adoration to the figures of the Cæsars, which were carried with the eagle standards of the army; and so close was the brotherhood between them, that the heathen used to say, "See how these Christians love one another!" At night they endeavoured to meet in some secret chamber, or underground cave. At Rome, the usual place was the Catacombs, great vaults, whence the soft stone for building the city had been dug out, and where the quarry-men alone knew the way through the long winding passages. Here, in the very early morning of Lord's Day, the Christians made every effort to assemble, for they were sure of meeting their Bishop, and of receiving the Holy Communion to strengthen them for the trials of the week. The Christian men and women stood on opposite sides; a little further off were the learners, as yet unbaptized, who might only hear the prayers and instructions; and beyond them was any person who had been forbidden to receive the Holy Eucharist on account of some sin, and who was waiting to be taken back again. The heathen knew nothing of what happened in these meetings, and fancied that a great deal that was shocking was done there; and Trajan ordered that Christians should be put to the torture, if they would not confess what were their ceremonies. Very few would betray anything, and what they said, the heathen could not understand; but the emperor imagining that these rites would destroy the old Roman spirit, forbade them, and persecuted the Christians, because they obeyed God rather than man. The Bishop of Antioch was an old man named Ignatius, who is believed to have been the little child whom our blessed Lord had set in the midst of His disciples as an example of lowliness. He had been St. John's pupil, and always walked in his steps, and he is the first Father of the Church, that is, the first of the great wise men in those early days, whose writings have come down to us. As Trajan was going through Antioch, he saw this holy man, and sentenced him to be carried to Rome, there to be thrown to the lions for the amusement of the bloody-minded Romans. As has been said, from early days the favourite sport of this nation had been to sit round on galleries, built up within a round building called an amphitheatre, to watch the gladiators fight with each other, or with savage beasts. Many of these buildings are still to be found ruined in different parts of the empire, and one in especial at Rome, named the Coliseum, where it is most likely that the death of St. Ignatius took place, when, as he said, he was the wheat of Christ, ground by the teeth of the lions. He is reckoned as one of the Fathers of the Church. His great friend was Polycarp, Bishop or Angel of Smyrna, the same, as it is believed, to whom St. John had written in the Revelation, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."

The Emperor Antoninus began a persecution, which was carried on by his successor, Marcus Aurelius; and in 167, St. Polycarp, who was a very aged man, and had ruled the Church of Smyrna towards seventy years, was led before the tribunal. The governor had pity on his grey hairs, and entreated him to save his life by swearing by the fortunes of Caesar, and denying Christ. "Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He has never done me a wrong; how could I then blaspheme my King, who hath saved me?" said Polycarp; and all the threats of the governor did but make him glad to be so near glorifying God by his death. He was taken out to be burnt alive, and as he stood bound to the stake, he cried aloud, "Lord God Almighty, Father of the blessed and well-beloved Son, Jesus Christ, by Whom we have received the grace to know Thee; God of angels and of powers, God of all creatures, and of the just who live in Thy Presence, I thank Thee that Thou hast brought me to this day and hour, when I may take part in the number of the martyrs in the Cup of Thy Christ, to rise to the eternal life of soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit. May I be received into Thy Presence with them as an acceptable offering, as Thou hast prepared and foretold, Thou the true God Who canst not lie. Therefore I praise Thee, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee by the eternal and heavenly High Priest, Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, to Whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be glory now and for ever and ever. Amen." The fire was kindled, and to the wonder of the beholders, it rose into a bright vault of flame, like a glory around the martyr, without touching him; whereupon the governor became impatient, and caused him to be slain with the sword. He was the last of the companions of the Apostles; but there was no lessening of the grace bestowed on the Church. Even when Aurelius's army was suffering from a terrible drought in an expedition to Germany, a legion who were nearly all Christians, prayed aloud for rain, a shower descended in floods of refreshment. The emperor said that his god Jupiter sent it, and caused his triumphal arch to be carved with figures of soldiers, some praying, others catching rain in their helmets and shields; but the band was ever afterwards called the Thundering Legion. This unbelieving emperor persecuted frightfully, and great numbers suffered at Vienne in Gaul, many dying of the damp of their prison, and many more tortured to death. Of these was the Bishop Pothinus of Lyons, ninety years old, who died of the torments; and those who lived through them were thrown to wild beasts, till the animals were so glutted as to turn from the prey; but no pain was so great as not to be counted joy by the Christians; and the more they were slain, the more persons were convinced that the hope must be precious for which they endured so much; and the more the Word of God prevailed. Aurelius Caesar died in 180, and the Church was left at rest for a little while,

LESSON XXV
THE PERSECUTIONS

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven."—Matt v. 10.

It had been revealed to St. John that the Church should have tribulation for ten days; and accordingly, in her first three hundred years, ten emperors tried to put out her light. Nero, Domitian, Trajan, Antoninus, and Aurelius, have been mentioned; and the next persecutor was Severus, an emperor who went to Britain, firmly established the Roman power over England, and built the great wall to keep the Scots from injuring the northern settlers.

In his time died the glorious band of martyrs of Carthage—five young converts, two men, named Satur and Saturninus, a noble young married lady, called Perpetua, who had a young infant, and two slaves, Revocatus and Felicitas, the last of whom gave birth to a daughter in the prison. But not even love to their babes could lead these faithful women to dissemble their belief; Perpetua left her child with her family; Felicitas gave hers to a Christian woman to bring up; and the lady and the slave went out singing, hand in hand, to the amphitheatre, where they were to be torn by beasts. A wild cow was let loose on them, and threw down the two women; but Perpetua at once sat up again, covered herself with her garments, and helped up Felicitas, but as if in a dream, for she did not remember that the cow had been loosed on her. Satur had an especial horror of a bear, which was intended to be the means of his death, and a good soldier named Pudens put meat in front of the den, that the beast might not come out. A leopard then flew at him, and tore him; Satur asked the soldier for his ring, dipped it in his own blood, and gave it back as a memorial, just before he died under the teeth and claws of the animal. The others were all killed by soldiers in the middle of the amphitheatre, Perpetua guiding the sword to her own throat.

The persecution of the Emperor Decius was one of the worst of all, for the heathen grew more ingenious by practice in inventing horrible deaths.

Under the Emperor Valerian died St. Lawrence, a young deacon at Rome, whom the judge commanded to produce the treasures of the Church. He called together all the aged widows and poor cripples who were maintained by the alms of the faithful, "These," he said, "are the treasures of the Church." In the rage of the persecutors, he was roasted to death on bars of iron over a fire. St. Cyprian, the great Bishop of Carthage, was beheaded; and one hundred and fifty martyrs at Utica were thrown alive into a pit of quick-lime. At Antioch one man failed; Sapricius, a priest, was being led out to die, when a Christian named Nicephorus, with whom he had a quarrel, came to beg his forgiveness ere his death. Sapricius would not pardon, and Nicephorus went on humbly entreating, amid the mockery of the guards, until the spot of execution was reached, and the prisoner was bidden to kneel down to have his bead cut off. Then it appeared that he who had not the heart to forgive, had not the heart to die; Sapricius's courage failed him, and he promised to sacrifice to the idols; and Nicephorus was put to death, receiving the crown of martyrdom in his stead. The persecuting Valerian himself came to a miserable end, for he was made prisoner in a battle, in 258, with the Persians, and their king for many years forced the unhappy captive to bow down on his hands and knees so as to be a step by which to climb on his elephant, and when he died, his skin was taken off, dyed red, and hung up in a temple. After his captivity, the Church enjoyed greater tranquillity; many more persons ventured to avow themselves Christians, and their worship was carried on without so much concealment as formerly.

But the troublous times were not yet over, and the rage of the prince of this world moved the Romans to make a yet more violent effort than any before to put down the kingdom of the Prince of Peace. Two emperors began to reign together, named Diocletian and Maximian, dividing the whole empire between them into two parts, the East and the West. After a few years' rule, they both of them fell savagely upon the Christians. In Switzerland, a whole division of the army, called the Theban Legion, 6,000 in number, with the leader, St. Maurice, all were cut to pieces together rather than deny their faith. In Egypt the Christians were mangled with potsherds, and every torture was invented that could shake their constancy. Each tribunal was provided with a little altar to some idol, and if the Christians would but scatter a few grains of incense upon it, they were free; but this was a denying of their Lord, and the few who yielded in the fear of them who could kill the body, grieved all their lives afterwards for the act, and were not restored to their place in the Church until after long years of penance, or until they had atoned for their fall by witnessing a good confession. Sometimes they were not allowed to receive the Holy Communion again till they were on their dying beds. But these were the exceptions; in general, God's strength was made perfect in weakness, and not only grown men, but timid women, tender maidens, and little children, would bear the utmost torture with glad faith, and trust that it was working for them an exceeding 'weight of glory. St. Margaret of Antioch was but fifteen years old, St. Agnes of Rome only twelve, and at Merida, in Spain, Eulalia, at the same age, went out in search of martyrdom, insulting the idols, until she was seized and put to death full of joy; but in general, the Christians were advised not needlessly to run into the way of danger.

This was the first persecution that reached to Britain, There a kind-hearted Roman soldier, named Alban, received into his house a priest who was fleeing from his persecutors, and while he was there, learnt from him the true faith. When search was made for his guest, Alban threw on the dress of the priest, and was taken in his stead; he was carried to the tribunal, and there declaring himself a Christian, was sentenced to be beheaded. The city where he suffered is called after him St. Alban's, and a beautiful church was afterwards built in memory of him. These cruelties did not long continue in Britain, for the governor, Constantius, had married a Christian British lady, named Helena; and as soon as he ventured to interfere, he stopped the persecution.

Diocletian became tired of reigning, and persuaded his comrade, Maximian, to resign their thrones to Constantius and to another prince named Galerius. Constantius forbade all persecution in the West, but Galerius and his son-in-law, Maximin, were very violent in the East; and Maximin is counted as the last of the ten persecuting emperors. Under him a great many Christians were blinded, scarred with hot iron, or had their fingers and ears cut off. Some were sent to the deserts to keep the emperor's cattle; some were driven in chains to work in the mines. These, who suffered bravely everything except death, were called confessors instead of martyrs. Galerius died in great misery in 311, of the same horrible disease as the persecutor of the Jews, Antiochus Epiphanes; and like him, he at last owned too late the God whom he had rejected, and sent entreaties that prayers might be offered up for him.