, and a soothsayer. The
very patriarch himself, when he came into Egypt, was by some said to
worship Serapis, and by others to worship Christ. As a race of men, they
are seditious, vain, and spiteful; as a body, wealthy and prosperous,
of whom nobody lives in idleness. Some blow glass, some make paper, and
others linen. There is work for the lame and work for the blind; even
those who have lost the use of their hands do not live in idleness.
Their one god is nothing; Christians, Jews, and all nations worship him.
I wish this body of men was better behaved, and worthy of their number;
for as for that they ought to hold the chief place in Egypt. I have
granted everything unto them; I have restored their old privileges, and
have made them grateful by adding new ones."

Among the crowd of gods that had formerly been worshipped in Egypt,
Serapis had latterly been rising above the rest. He was the god of
the dead, who in the next world was to reward the good and punish the
wicked; and in the growing worship of this one all-seeing judge we
cannot but trace the downfall of some of the evils of polytheism. A
plurality in unity was another method now used to explain away the
polytheism.

[Illustration: 102.jpg EGYPTIAN ORACLE]

The oracle when consulted about the divine nature had answered, "I am
Ra, and Horus, and Osiris;" or, as the Greeks translated it, Apollo,
and Lord, and Bacchus; "I rule the hours and the seasons, the wind and
the storms, the day and the night; I am king of the stars and myself an
immortal fire." Hence arose the opinion which seems to have been given
to Hadrian, that the Egyptians had only one god, and his mistake in
thinking that the worshippers of Serapis were Christians. The emperor,
indeed, himself, though a polytheist, was very little of an idolater;
for, though he wished to add Christ to the number of the Roman gods,
he on the other hand ordered that the temples built in his reign should
have no images for worship; and in after ages it was common to call
all temples without statues Hadrian's temples. But there were other and
stronger reasons for Hadrian's classing the Christians with the Egyptian
astrologers. A Christian heresy was then rising into notice in Egypt in
that very form, taking its opinions from the philosophy on which it was
engrafted. Before Christianity was preached in Alexandria, there were
already three religions or forms of philosophy belonging to the three
races of men who peo