seem to you too sublime, two shadowy, for those human associations, those touching connections between Creator and creature, to which the weak heart clings—­contemplate Him in His Son, who put on mortality like ourselves.  His mortality is not indeed declared, like that of your fabled gods, by the vices of our nature, but by the practice of all its virtues.  In Him are united the austerest morals with the tenderest affections.  If He were but a mere man, He had been worthy to become a god.  You honour Socrates—­he has his sect, his disciples, his schools.  But what are the doubtful virtues of the Athenian, to the bright, the undisputed, the active, the unceasing, the devoted holiness of Christ?  I speak to you now only of His human character.  He came in that as the pattern of future ages, to show us the form of virtue which Plato thirsted to see embodied.  This was the true sacrifice that He made for man; but the halo that encircled His dying hour not only brightened earth, but opened to us the sight of heaven!  You are touched—­you are moved.  God works in your heart.  His Spirit is with you.  Come, resist not the holy impulse; come at once—­unhesitatingly.  A few of us are now assembled to expound the word of God.  Come, let me guide you to them.  You are sad, you are weary.  Listen, then, to the words of God:  “Come to me”, saith He, “all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest!"’

‘I cannot now,’ said Apaecides; ‘another time.’

‘Now—­now!’ exclaimed Olinthus, earnestly, and clasping him by the arm.

But Apaecides, yet unprepared for the renunciation of that faith—­that life, for which he had sacrificed so much, and still haunted by the promises of the Egyptian, extricated himself forcibly from the grasp; and feeling an effort necessary to conquer the irresolution which the eloquence of the Christian had begun to effect in his heated and feverish mind, he gathered up his robes and fled away with a speed that defied pursuit.

Breathless and exhausted, he arrived at last in a remote and sequestered part of the city, and the lone house of the Egyptian stood before him.  As he paused to recover himself, the moon emerged from a silver cloud, and shone full upon the walls of that mysterious habitation.

No other house was near—­the darksome vines clustered far and wide in front of the building and behind it rose a copse of lofty forest trees, sleeping in the melancholy moonlight; beyond stretched the dim outline of the distant hills, and amongst them the quiet crest of Vesuvius, not then so lofty as the traveler beholds it now.

Apaecides passed through the arching vines, and arrived at the broad and spacious portico.  Before it, on either side of the steps, reposed the image of the Egyptian sphinx, and the moonlight gave an additional and yet more solemn calm to those large, and harmonious, and passionless features, in which the sculptors of that type of wisdom united so much of loveliness with awe; half way up the extremities of the steps darkened the green and massive foliage of the aloe, and the shadow of the eastern palm cast its long and unwaving boughs partially over the marble surface of the stairs.