A new temple was reared for this new idol on the Palatine Hill. Its worship was introduced with splendor such as Rome had never yet witnessed. Syrian girls of great beauty danced around the altar. Elagabalus, with his crowd of adorers of the new divinity, rioted in those dissolute rites, which even the pen of a Roman historian shrinks from recording. The palaces of the Cæsars had been as corrupt as Europe knew how to make them; but Elagabalus transported to them all the additional vices of Asia. Modern civilization will not allow the story of his infamy to be told: the enlightenment of the nineteenth century could not bear the recital. The change which Christianity has introduced into the world is so great, that there is not a court in Europe now, no matter how corrupt, which would endure for a day a Nero or an Elagabalus. Even pagan Rome could not long submit to so unmitigated a wretch. There was mutiny in the camp. Elagabalus was cut down in the fray. A mob of soldiers, with infuriate yells, dragged the corpse by the heels through the streets, and cast the mangled, gory mass into the Tiber. The senate passed a decree consigning his name to eternal infamy. Posterity has ratified that decree. There are those, it is said, who believe that there is no punishment after death; that all the dead go at once to heaven. Strange must be the philosophy, and stranger still the theology, which can contemplate Elagabalus welcomed at the golden gates, angels crowding to meet him, while God, with beaming countenance, exclaims, “Well done, good and faithful servant! enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” The Pretorian Guard of sixteen thousand mailed and veteran soldiers, whose encampment was just outside the walls of Rome, took a nephew of Elagabalus,――Alexander Severus, a boy of but seventeen years of age,――and made him emperor. Two reasons influenced them: first, he was available; second, he was young, and they thought they could mould him at their will. And now again we get a gleam of Christian light upon this dark scene,――a gleam of that Christian influence which ennobles statesmanship, purifies morals, and promotes every virtue; that sublime Christian principle, which requires, that whether we eat or drink, or whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God. The mother of young Alexander was a Christian. Never was the maxim more beautifully illustrated, that blessed is the boy who has a pious mother. This noble woman, notwithstanding all the unspeakable corruptions which surrounded her, had trained her child in the faith and morals of Jesus. Like a guardian angel, she had watched over her son amidst all the temptations of the palace.