Constantine to our own times, has been a series of religious rivalries, of bitter contentions between opposing sects, of wars between Christians and Turks, of weary and inefficacious pilgrimages from the snows of Russia and the sands of Africa, of useless expenditures of treasure, of relic worship, and of the utter absence of moral influence on Moslem and Jew. Such a miraculous intimation given to the apostles would have been more appropriate than to a warrior whose piety is as questionable as the results of his conversion have proved disastrous to mankind. To an enlightened Christian mind it would afford a melancholy pleasure to stand on Calvary and sit in the Savior’s tomb, but the temptation to idolatry would be too strong for the common mind to brook. Duped by a mercenary priesthood for fifteen centuries, millions of Greek and Latin pilgrims have bowed in idolatrous veneration before the reputed tomb of Jesus; and for a boon so humble, immense donations have been demanded for the support of ecclesiastical establishments. The genuineness of this divine intimation is affected by the character of the age of Constantine. It was the age of pious frauds. Monkery had existed for two centuries; heresies had taken deep root; saints were worshiped, martyrs canonized, relics adored; and, sanctioned by imperial example, the people were ripe for any deception. Either the theory of an unbroken tradition coming down from the apostolic age to the time of Eusebius, and the existence of a pagan temple upon the well-known tomb must be abandoned, or the pretended miracle for its recognition must be relinquished, as the one supersedes the necessity of the other. Both can not co-exist; one or the other is without foundation in truth.