to all nations as the universal Saviour and Redeemer? This Jesus came into the world, and lived and taught; was preceded by so long a preparation of prophetic annunciation, and accompanied by so sublime demonstrations of almighty power, to this end, and to this end only, that he might save us from our sins, and from those penal consequences in this world and in worlds to come, which are bound to them by the stern decrees of fate. Yes, Aurelian, Jesus came only that he might deliver mankind from the thraldom of every kind of wickedness, and raise them to a higher condition of virtue and happiness. He was a great moral and religious teacher and reformer, endowed with the wisdom and power of the supreme God. He himself toiled only in Judea; but he came a benefactor of Rome too--of Rome as well as of Judea. He came to purge it of its pollutions; to check in their growth those customs and vices which seem destined, reaching their natural height and size, to overlay and bury in final ruin the city and the empire; he came to make us citizens of Heaven through the virtues which his doctrine should build up in the soul, and so citizens of Rome more worthy of that name than any who ever went before. He came to heal, to mend, to reform the state; not to set up a kingdom in hostility to this, but in unison with it; an inward, invisible kingdom in every man's heart, which should be as the soul of the other. 'It was to reform the morals of the state, to save it from itself, that you, Aurelian, in the first years of your reign, applied those energies that have raised the empire to more than its ancient glory. You aimed to infuse a love of justice and of peace, to abate the extravagances of the times, to stem the tide of corruption that seemed about to bear down upon its foul streams the empire itself, tossing upon its surface a wide sea of ruin. It was a great work--too great for man. It needed a divine strength and a more than human wisdom. These were not yours; and it is no wonder that the work did not go on to its completion. Jesus is a reformer; of Rome and of the world also. The world is his theatre of action; but with him there is leagued the arm and the power of the Supreme God; and the work which he attempts shall succeed. It cannot but succeed. It is not so much he, Jesus of Nazareth, who has come forth upon this great errand of mercy and love to mankind, as God himself in and through him. It is the Great God of the Universe, who, by Jesus Christ as his agent and messenger, comes to you, and would reform and redeem your empire, and out of that which is transitory, and by its inherent vice threatened with decay and death, make a city and an empire which, through the energy of its virtues, shall truly be eternal. Can you not, O Emperor, supposing the claims of this religion to a divine origin to be just, view it with respect? Nay, could you not greet its approach to your capital with pleasure and gratitude, seeing its aim is