It is not necessary for me to follow out this expedition to its disastrous issue. It is sufficient to say that Julian was inveigled, surrounded, pierced by a spear from some unknown Persian or Saracen hand. He perceived at once that he was mortally wounded. His words at this moment are differently reported. According to one account, he cried out, "Oh, Galilean, thou hast conquered!" Another story relates that he took the blood welling from the wound in his hand, and flung it up towards the sun, his patron god, with an imprecation--"There, take thy fill." Neither saying, perhaps, is reported on sufficiently good authority, but either would accord well with the disappointment and irritation which marked the closing scenes of his life. He inquired what was the name of the place. It was a small village called Parthia. He had been forewarned long ago that in Parthia he should die. He had supposed that the famous country of that name was meant. We are reminded by this incident of an English sovereign lying on his death-bed in the famous chamber at Westminster, which still bears the name of Jerusalem. "It hath been prophesied to me many years I should not die but at Jerusalem, which vainly I supposed the Holy Land." Within a few hours Julian had breathed his last. He died on the 26th June, 363, being not yet quite thirty-two years old, and with him perished the last and best hope of Paganism. Less than twenty years after, the Emperor Gratian refused the title of Supreme Pontiff. This was the first overt act of disestablishment. Then blow followed blow in rapid succession. Paganism was first disestablished, then disendowed, then prohibited; yet it still continued to linger on till at length it was buried in the grave of the empire. St. Augustine's _City of God_ was the pæan of victory over the enemy slain. Julian's work had been found like a child's castle elaborately piled up of sand on the brink of the ocean. The rising tide advanced steadily, inexorably, relentlessly, and no traces of the structure remain. WOMAN AND THE GOSPEL.[11] "And He took the damsel by the hand."--MARK v. 41. In selecting this text I have no intention of saying many words on the actual scene itself. The raising of Jairus's daughter attracts our attention by its vivid narrative, and by its intense human pathos, while the two foreign words, summing up the interest of the story, linger strangely in our ears, impressing it effectually on our memories. Nor, again, do I purpose speaking of its direct theological import, whether as an answer to human faith, or as a manifestation of the Divine power. In this latter aspect this is one of three signal miracles, the anticipations of Christ's own resurrection. It claims, and it has received, the most earnest study, both in itself and in relation to other incidents of the same class.