squeezed, scolded, and abused by other women for her folly in bringing a child out into such a crowd, she at last found herself in the great square.  A hideous hubbub of coarse, loud voices pierced her unaccustomed ears; she could have sunk on the earth and cried; but she kept up her courage and collected all her energies, for she saw in the distance a large gilt cross over a lofty doorway.  It was like a greeting and welcome home.  Under its protection she would certainly, find rest, consolation and safety.

But how was she to reach it?  The space before her was packed with men as a quiver is packed with arrows; there was not room for a pin between.  The only chance of getting forward was by forcing her way, and nine-tenths of the crowd were men—­angry and storming men, whose wild and strange demeanor filled her with terror and disgust.  Most of them were monks who had flocked in at the Bishop’s appeal from the monasteries of the desert, or from the Lauras and hermitages of Kolzum by the Red Sea, or even from Tabenna in Upper Egypt, and whose hoarse voices rent the air with vehement cries of:  “Down with the idols!  Down with Serapis!  Death to the heathen!”

This army of the Saviour whose very essence was gentleness and whose spirit was love, seemed indeed to have deserted from his standard of light and grace to the blood-stained banner of murderous hatred.  Their matted locks and beards fringed savage faces with glowing eyes; their haggard or paunchy nakedness was scarcely covered by undressed hides of sheep and goats; their parched skins were scarred and striped by the use of the scourges that hung at their girdles.  One—­a “crown bearer”—­had a face streaming with blood, from the crown of thorns which he had vowed to wear day and night in memory and imitation of the Redeemer’s sufferings, and which on this great occasion he pressed hard into the flesh with ostentatious martyrdom.  One, who, in his monastery, had earned the name of the “oil-jar,” supported himself on his neighbors’ arms, for his emaciated legs could hardly carry his dropsical carcass which, for the last ten years, he had fed exclusively on gourds, snails, locusts and Nile water.  Another was chained inseparably to a comrade, and the couple dwelt together in a cave in the limestone hills near Lycopolis.  These two had vowed never to let each other sleep, that so their time for repentance might be doubled, and their bliss in the next world enhanced in proportion to their mortifications in this.

One and all, they were allies in a great fight, and the same hopes, ideas, and wishes fired them all.  The Abominable Thing—­which imperilled hundreds of thousands of souls, which invited Satan to assert his dominion in this world—­should fall this day and be annihilated forever!  To them the whole heathen world was the “great whore;” and though the gems she wore were beautiful to see and rejoiced the mind and heart of fools, they must be snatched from her painted brow; they would scourge