in

every age, to be the birth-place or the refuge of religion,) raised his standard against Maxentius, the usurper of the Roman throne.

Breaking through the armies which met him on his descent from the Alps, he marched to find his rival, and rushed onward until he saw the army of Maxentius drawn up before the gates of Rome. On that day one of the most memorable changes of earth, arising out of one of the most striking interpositions of Heaven, stamped the character of the army, the victor, and the empire.

Constantine had crossed the Alps with but 40,000 men; Maxentius was at the head of an army of 175,000 foot, and 18,000 horse. The force which now covered Rome was of appalling superiority. Constantine was the first soldier of his age, yet even his undaunted courage might well have pondered on the chances of the morrow. But he had a hidden source of anxiety, which in the later ages of Rome haunted the most powerful minds; Maxentius was believed to have strengthened his arms by magic. The spirits that disposed of thrones at the command of the magician, were still more appalling than the armed multitudes of the warrior.

In the simple, but most striking, narrative which Eusebius gives, from the lips of Constantine himself, long after he was master of the world, and had neither rivalry to dread nor feeling to disguise, we are told that, on the day before the

battle, "thinking that he had need of force superior to that of arms to surmount the magic arts of Maxentius, he first looked to the gods. But he then began to reflect, that those emperors who had relied on the multitude of gods had come to an evil end, and had been deceived by their oracles; while his father Constantius, who during his whole life had honoured One Sovereign God, had received evident marks of his protection. He now considered, that it was a folly to honour gods which were nothing, and that he ought to worship only the God of his father. He then invoked Him, praying fervently that he would make himself known, and help him. While he was praying, he saw an extraordinary sign; and such as, if any other person had told him of it, he would scarcely have believed. But I," says Eusebius, "who write this history, and heard the emperor himself, long after, when I had the honour of familiarly conversing with him, tell this, and with an oath, how can I refuse it credit? A little after the hour of noon, and while the sun was almost in mid-heaven, he saw on the surface of that body a cross, resplendent with light, with the inscription, By this conquer!' which gave him great surprise, as well as the soldiers who were on the march with him, and who also were its witnesses '."

The "Sign of the Son of Man," the cross, the peculiar emblem of Christianity, had thus been

shown to Constantine under circumstances of the most conspicuous and convincing nature. But, though habitually disposed by his father's example to respect Christianity, he was not yet a Christian. In a vision, that night, the form of our Lord appeared to him, commanding him to inscribe the shields of his army with the "celestial sign of God," the cross. The command was obeyed; the sign was adopted, and the troops, with the cross on their shields, marched to the attack of Maxentius, and drove his enormous host from the field. In their retreat to Rome by the Milvian bridge, Maxentius was forced into the Tiber by the flying multitude, and drowned. The Cross, from this period, became the universal sign of the troops of Constantine. "The Cross glittered on their helmets, it was engraved on their shields, it was interwoven into their banners."The emperor ordered that the Cross should form the principal standard of the army. This standard, named the Labarum, was "a long pike intersected by a transversal beam. The silken veil which hung down from the beam, was curiously inwrought with the images of the reigning monarch and his children. The summit of the pike supported a crown of gold which enclosed the monogram, at once expressive of the figure of the Cross, and of the initial letters of the name of Christ1."

CHAPTER XLI.

THE VISION OF CONSTANTINE.

THE interest of a subject which has occupied the most learned pens of Europe, might justify a longer discussion than can be indulged in these pages. It can be here adverted to scarcely more than as one of the instances of that culpable and dangerous compliance, which belonged to a decaying age of theological vigour. We have in it the example of an unquestionable fact, of the first importance as a feature of history, the seal of one of the greatest transactions of the world, and the direct subject of prophecy, sacrificed to a sneer; the work of inveterate infidelity done by spurious moderation.

On the revival of religion in the sixteenth century, the character of the monkish miracles had thrown a shade over all miracle; and the vision of the Cross, strongly upheld by the Papal writers as a plea for the prevalent homage to the Crucifix, became a subject of close inquiry.

Jaques Godefroy, of Geneva, in an edition of

Philostorgus, in 1642, compiled the objections; which, however, were found to amount only to the discrepancies of the various narratives. The feebleness of this species of argument was easily exposed, and the topic became a general trial of skill among the learned. At length the world grew weary of this verbal contest; the novelty was gone, and the fact was left, unshaken and neglected, until the close of the last century. Gibbon then came, the disciple of French infidelity, to embody the scepticism of all ages and his own, in that history, which gives so strong an evidence of the bitter prejudices that may render learning worthless, sagacity a dupe, and the vigour of highly cultivated ability only the vigour of infatuation. Connected as the vision of the Cross was with Christianity, it naturally became an object of his spleen. Some hostility might have been expected from an avowed infidel; but Gibbon's practices on this occasion are actually disingenuous and pitiful in the extreme. He exhibits, throughout, a palpable consciousness that the evidence is too strong for him, and an equally palpable determination to swindle the reader into disbelief, if he can. He begins circuitously, by a general insinuation of the liability of the human senses to be deceived, and the tendency of all narrators to exaggerate. He then proceeds to prove the improbability of the narrative--by taking every step of his argument for granted; he first