From this second visit, and a longer acquaintance, Hadrian seems to have formed a very poor opinion of the Egyptians and Egyptian Jews; and the following curious letter, written in 134 A.D. to his friend Servianus, throws much light upon their religion as worshippers of Serapis, at the same time that it proves how numerous the Christians had become in Alexandria, even within seventy years of the period during which the evangelist Mark is believed to have preached there: 

“Hadrian Augustus to Servianus, the consul, greeting: 

“As for Egypt, which you were praising to me, dearest Servianus, I have found its people wholly light, wavering, and flying after every breath of a report.  Those who worship Serapis are Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are devoted to Serapis.  There is no ruler of a Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no presbyter of the Christians, who is not a mathematician, an augur, 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