should return victorious from the Persian war, to honor with his own presence the solemnities of reconsecration and the restoration of the Mosaic sacrificial worship,' His real purpose in this undertaking was certainly not to advance the Jewish religion ; for in his work against the Christians he speaks with great contempt of the Old Tes- tament, and ranks Moses and Solomon far below the pagan lawgivers and philosophers. His object in the rebuilding of the temple was rather, in the first place, to enhance the splendor of his reign, and thus gratify his personal vanity ; and then most probably to put to shame the prophecy of Jesus re- specting the destruction of the temple (which, however, was actually fulfilled three hundred years before once for all), to deprive the Christians of their most popular argument against the Jews, and to break the power of the new religion iri Jerusalem," The Jews now poured from east and west into the holy city of their fathers, which from the time of Hadrian they had been forbidden to visit, and entered with fanatical zeal upon the great national religious work, in hope of the speedy irrup- tion of the Messianic reign and the fulfilment of all the proph- ecies. Women, we are told, brought their costly ornaments, turned them into silver shovels and spades, and carried even the earth and stones of the holy spot in their silken aprons. But the united power of heathen emperor and Jewish nation was insufficient to restore a work which had been overthrown by the judgment of God, Repeated attempts at the building were utterly frustrated, as even a contemporary heathen his- torian of conceded credibility relates, by fiery eruptions from subterranean vaults;' and, perhaps, as Christian writers add, '■ Jul. Epist. 25, which is addressed to the Jews, and is mentioned also by Sozo- men, v. 22. * Gibbon, ch. xxiii. : " The restoration of the Jewish temple was secretly connected with the ruin of the Christian church." ^ Juli.an himself seems to admit the failure of the work, but, more prudently, is silent as to the cause, in a fragment of an epistle or oration, p. 295, ed. Spanh., ac- cording to the usual interpretation of this passage. He here asks : Ti Trepl rod veoi (bvTntiai, Tov Trap' ouToiy, rpirov ayarpairei/TOf, iyftpo/xfi/ov 5e ovSe vvv: "What will 56 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. by a violent whirlwind, lightning, earthquake, and miraculous signs, especially a luminous cross, in the heavens,' so that the they [i. e., the Jewish prophets] say of their own temple, which has been three times destroyed, and is not even now restored?" " This I have said (lie continues) with no wish to reproach them, for I myself, at so late a day, had intended to rebuild it for the honor of him who was worshipped there." He probably saw in the event a sign of the divine displeasure with the religion of the Jews, or an accidental misfortune,