rashing down, when a swarm of rats, which
had long made their home in it, rushed forth, and scampered off in all
directions. Even the heathens who were in the crowd, on seeing this,
began to laugh at their god. The idol was demolished, and the pieces of
it were carried into the circus, where a bonfire was made of them; and,
in examining the temple, a number of tricks by which the priests had
deceived the people were found out, so that many heathens were converted
in consequence of having thus seen the vanity of their old religion, and
the falsehood of the means by which it was kept up.

Egypt, as you perhaps know, does not depend on rain for its crops, but
on the rising of the river Nile, which floods the country at a certain
season; and the heathens had long said that the Christians were afraid
to destroy the idols of Egypt, lest the gods should punish them by not
allowing the water to rise. After the destruction of Serapis, the usual
time for the rising of the river came, but there were no signs of it;
and the heathens began to be in great delight, and to boast that their
gods were going to take vengeance. Some weak Christians, too, began to
think that there might be some truth in this, and sent to ask the
emperor what should be done. "Better," he said, "that the Nile should
not rise at all, than that we should buy the fruitfulness of Egypt by
idolatry!" After a while the Nile began to swell; it soon mounted above
the usual height of its flood, and the Pagans were now in hopes that
Serapis was about to avenge himself by such a deluge as would punish the
Christians for the destruction of the idol; but they were again
disappointed by seeing the waters sink down to their proper level.

The emperor's orders were executed by the destruction of the Egyptian
temples and their idols. But we are told that the bishop of Alexandria
saved one image as a curiosity, and lest people should afterwards deny
that their forefathers had ever been so foolish as to worship such
things. Some say that this image was a figure of Jupiter, the chief of
the heathen gods; others say that it was the figure of a monkey; for
even monkeys were worshipped by the Egyptians!

CHAPTER XVII.

CHURCH GOVERNMENT.

By this time the Gospel had not only been firmly settled as the religion
of the great Roman empire, but had made its way into most other
countries of the world then known. Here, then, we may stop to take a
view of some things connecte