so wrought even upon the mind of your great predecessor, the Emperor
Tiberius, that he would fain receive him into the number of the gods of
Rome. And why, O Emperor, was this great personage sent forth into the
world, encircled by the rays of divine power and wisdom and goodness, an
emanation of the self-existent and infinite God? And why do we so honor
him, and cleave to him, that we are ready to offer our lives in
sacrifice, while we go forth as preachers of his faith, making him known
to all nations as the universal Saviour and Redeemer? This Jesus came
into the world, and lived and taught; was preceded by so long a
preparation of prophetic annunciation, and accompanied by so sublime
demonstrations of almighty power, to this end, and to this end only,
that he might save us from our sins, and from those penal consequences
in this world and in worlds to come, which are bound to them by the
stern decrees of fate. Yes, Aurelian, Jesus came only that he might
deliver mankind from the thraldom of every kind of wickedness, and raise
them to a higher condition of virtue and happiness. He was a great moral
and religious teacher and reformer, endowed with the wisdom and power of
the supreme God. He himself toiled only in Judea; but he came a
benefactor of Rome too--of Rome as well as of Judea. He came to purge it
of its pollutions; to check in their growth those customs and vices
which seem destined, reaching their natural height and size, to overlay
and bury in final ruin the city and the empire; he came to make us
citizens of Heaven through the virtues which his doctrine should build
up in the soul, and so citizens of Rome more worthy of that name than
any who ever went before. He came to heal, to mend, to reform the
state; not to set up a kingdom in hostility to this, but in unison with
it; an inward, invisible kingdom in every man's heart, which should be
as the soul of the other.

'It was to reform the morals of the state, to save it from itself, that
you, Aurelian, in the first years of your reign, applied those energies
that have raised the empire to more than its ancient glory. You aimed to
infuse a love of justice and of peace, to abate the extravagances of the
times, to stem the tide of corruption that seemed about to bear down
upon its foul streams the empire itself, tossing upon its surface a wide
sea of ruin. It was a great work--too great for man. It needed a divine
strength and a more than human wisdom. These we