Читать книгу Fabiola; Or, The Church of the Catacombs онлайн

71 страница из 93

The Arch of Titus.

As they were entering the palace, that part of which Sebastian’s cohort guarded, he said to his companion: “Every time that I enter here, it strikes me how kind an act of Divine Providence it was, to plant almost at the very gate of Cæsar’s palace, the arch which commemorates at once the downfall of the first great system that was antagonistic to Christianity, and the completion of the greatest prophecy of the Gospel,—the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman power.[37] I cannot but believe that another arch will one day arise to commemorate no less a victory, over the second enemy of our religion, the heathen Roman empire itself.”

“What! do you contemplate the overthrow of this vast empire, as the means of establishing Christianity?”

“God forbid! I would shed the last drop of my blood, as I shed my first, to maintain it. And depend upon it, when the empire is converted, it will not be by such gradual growth as we now witness, but by some means, so unhuman, so divine, as we shall never, in our most sanguine longings, forecast; but all will exclaim, ‘This is the change of the right hand of the Most High!’”