a bishop; or surely in a like trial you would have heard like language. O Prefect, in other things we are gentle, and more humble than all men living, for such is the commandment; so as not to raise our brow, I say not against 'so great a prince,' but even against one of least account. But when God's honour is at stake, we think of nothing else, looking simply to Him. Fire and the sword, beasts of prey, irons to rend the flesh, are an indulgence rather than a terror to a Christian. Therefore insult, threaten, do your worst, make the most of your power. Let the emperor be informed of my purpose. Me you gain not, you persuade not, to an impious creed, by menaces even more frightful.”—Greg. Orat. 20, p. 349.

Modestus parted with him with the respect which firmness necessarily inspires in those who witness it; and, going to the emperor, repeated the failure of his attempt. A second conversation between the bishop and the ministers of the court took place in the presence, as some suppose, of Valens himself, who had generosity enough to admire his high spirit, and to dismiss him without punishment. Indeed, his admiration of Basil occasioned a fresh trial of the archbishop's constancy, more distressing, perhaps, than any which he had hitherto undergone. On the feast of the Epiphany, he attended the church where Basil officiated, with all his court, and heard his sermon. Afterwards followed the ceremony of bringing oblations to the altar, in commemoration of the offerings of the Magi. Valens is said to have been much affected by the chants which accompanied the service, and the order which reigned through the congregation, and almost to have fainted away. At length he made an effort to approach the holy table to offer the oblation; but none of the ministers of the church presenting himself to receive it from him, his limbs again gave way, and it was only by the assistance of one of them that he was kept from falling.

It cannot be too much insisted on that the Church gains the respect of the great, not by courting them, but by treating them as her children. It would be a satisfaction, however, to be able to indulge a hope that

the good feelings of the emperor were more than the excitement of the moment, but his persevering persecution of the Catholics for years afterwards forbids the favourable supposition. Yet it was not once only that he trembled before the majestic presence of the exarch of Cæsarea, who ensured for his own provinces an immunity, in great measure, of the sufferings with which the Catholics elsewhere were visited, and exerted an influence over him so far, as to gain some of the best of the imperial lands in the neighbourhood, for the endowment of an hospital which he had founded for lepers.

Chapter bi

Trials of Basil

"As a servant earnestly desireth the shadow, and as an hireling looketh for the reward of his work, so am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.

ON various occasions, before his episcopate, Basil had

shown his care for the poor and afflicted. His sale of his lands to alleviate the miseries of a famine, has already been mentioned: he raised funds for erecting and endowing a hospital near Cæsarea, principally for lepers, whom he treated with a studious familiarity in order to remove the horror at their persons which their malady commonly excited. The buildings also contained accommodation for travellers, and were so extensive as to go by the name of the "New Town." Institutions such as these have been ever felt as especially characteristic of Christianity, and St. Basil seems to have succeeded in introducing them throughout his province.

If personal suffering be the providential means of sympathising in the sufferings of others, Basil had abundant opportunities of learning this Christian grace. From his multiplied trials he may be called the Jeremiah or Job of the fourth century, though occupying the honoured place of a ruler in the Church at a time when heathen violence was over. He had a very sickly constitution, to which he added the rigour of an ascetic life. He was surrounded by jealousies and dissensions at home; he was accused of heterodoxy in the world; he was insulted and roughly treated by great men: and he laboured, apparently without fruit, in the endeavour to restore unity and stability to the Catholic Church.

If temporal afflictions work out for the saints "an exceeding weight of glory," who is higher in the kingdom. of heaven than Basil?

I will first give some specimens of his private trials, reserving for the present those which more especially belong to him as bishop. As to his austerities, we

know something of them from his own picture what a monk's life should be, and from Gregory's description of them. In a letter to the latter, (Ep. 2.) Basil limits the food of his recluses to bread, water, herbs, and but one meal a day, and allows of sleep only till midnight, when they were to rise for prayer. And he says to the emperor Julian, "Cookery with us is idle; no knife is familiar with blood; our daintiest meal is vegetables with coarsest bread and vapid wine." Ep. 41. Gregory, in like manner, when expecting a visit from Basil, writes to Amphilochius to send him "some fine pot-herbs, if he did not wish to find Basil hungry and cross." Ep. 12. And in his account of his friend, after his death, he says, that "he had but one inner and outer garment; his bed was the ground; little sleep, no bath; his food bread and salt, his drink the running stream." Orat. 20. He slept in a hair-shirt, or other rough garment; the sun was his fire; and he braved the severest frosts. Even when bishop he was supported by the continual charity of his friends. He kept nothing.

His constitution was naturally weak, or rather unhealthy. What his principal malady was, is told us in the following passage of his history, which sets before us another kind of trial, of which one specimen has already come before us.-A widow of rank being importuned with a proposal of marriage from a powerful quarter, fled for refuge to the altar. St. Basil received her. This brought him into trouble with the sub-prefect of Pontus, who summoned him. When he had presented himself, the magistrate gave orders to pull off his outer garment. His inner garment, which remained, did not conceal his emaciated body. The brutal persecutor threatened to tear out his liver. Basil smiled and answered, "Thanks for your intention: where it is at present, it has been no slight annoyance."

On one occasion he gives the following account of his maladies to Eusebius, bishop of Samosata.

"What was my state of mind, think you, when I received your piety's letter? When I thought of the feelings which its language expressed, I was eager to fly straight to Syria; but when I thought of the bodily illness, under which I lay bound, I saw myself unequal, not only to flying, but to turning even on my bed. This is the fiftieth day of my illness, on which our beloved and excellent brother and deacon Elpidius has arrived. I am much reduced by the fever, which, failing what it might feed on, lingers in this dry flesh as in an expiring wick, and so has brought on a wasting and tedious illness. Next, my old plague, the liver, coming upon it, has kept me from taking nourishment, prevented sleep, and held me on the confines of life and death, granting just life enough to feel its inflictions. consequence I have had recourse to the hot springs, and have availed myself of aid from medical men.' Ep. 138.

In

The fever here mentioned seems to have been an epidemic, and so far unusual: but his ordinary state of health will be understood from the following letter, written to the same friend in the beginning of his illness, in which he describes the fever as almost a change for the better.

"In what state the good Isaaces has found me, he himself will best explain to you; though his tongue cannot be tragic enough to describe my sufferings, so great was my illness. However, any one who knows me ever so little, will be able to conjecture what it was. For if when I am called well, I am weaker even than persons who are given over, you may fancy what I was when thus ill. Yet since disease is my natural state, it would follow (let a fever have its jest) that in this change of habit, my health became especially flourishing. But it is the scourge of the Lord which goes on increasing my pain according to my deserts; therefore, I have received illness upon illness, so that now even a child may see that this shell of mine must for certain fail,