when a multitude were listening to him in groves near the city, his voice suddenly fell, as if he were alarmed by something. He lost the thread of his discourse, and finally became silent. Then suddenly advancing three or four steps, he cried aloud: "Strike the tyrant! Strike him!" Turning to the audience, he said: "Rejoice, Ephesians! The tyrant is killed. This very moment the deed is done. The news will soon be here. Meanwhile, I will go and return thanks to the gods for what I have seen." A courier afterward arrived, bringing tidings that Domitian had been stabbed at Rome; and it was ascertained that the murder took place at the moment Apollonius had spoken. This circumstance of course greatly increased his reputation for prophecy.

He is supposed to have lived more than a century. When Nerva succeeded to the throne, ninety-six years after our era, it is said the aged philosopher was still vigorous in mind and agreeable in person. The emperor invited him to come and assist him with his wise counsels. He replied: "We shall live together a long time, during which we shall not command others, nor will others command us." It was afterward supposed that he knew he was about to die, and that the reign of Nerva would be a short one. He never spoke on the subject to Damis. He sent him to Rome with a letter, and said at parting: "Whenever you are alone, and your whole soul given up to philosophy, think of me." When the disciple returned, he could find no traces of his beloved teacher. Some say he died at Ephesus; others that his last days were spent in Crete. There was a temple of Diana in that place, containing rich treasures, guarded by furious dogs. Apollonius frequented the temple whenever he chose, at all hours of the day and night. The dogs did not bark at him, but fawned upon him with the utmost affection. Once, after he had entered the temple at midnight, the priests heard sweet voices singing: "Leave the earth, and come to heaven! Come! Come!" Apollonius returned no more. This story induced many to believe that he was carried to the gods,

without dying. Philostratus, his biographer, says: “I do not remember ever to have seen any tomb, or cenotaph, raised in honour of him; though I have gone over most parts of the known world, and in all countries met men who told wonderful things of him." He elsewhere plainly implies doubts whether he ever died.

A young man, who did not believe in the immortality of the soul, visited Tyana, and during ten months prayed to the departed Apollonius that his spirit would become visible, and thus resolve his doubts. At last he grew weary, and said jestingly to his fellow students: "He, poor man, is so dead that he cannot hear me; or he would appear, in answer to my prayers, to prove that he is immortal." Five days after, he chanced to fall into a sound sleep in the midst of the same companions, some of whom were reading, others tracing geometrical figures in the sand. Suddenly he started up in a perspiration, exclaiming: “I believe you, now." When asked what he meant, he replied: "Don't you see Apollonius there, listening to our disputations? Haven't you heard him saying wonderful things about the soul?" They said they did not; though they would give the richest earthly possessions in exchange for such a sight. The youth then concluded that the vision was sent solely to enlighten him.

The

The fame of Apollonius long survived him, and many honours were paid to his memory. The emperor Adrian made a collection of his letters, which he preserved in his palace at Antium. Among them was the book of oracular answers brought from the cave of Trophonius. emperor Caracalla ordered a temple to be erected, and dedicated to his memory. The emperor Alexander Severus caused his statue to be placed in the imperial chapel, together with those of Abraham, Orpheus, and Christ. When the emperor Aurelian took Tyana, he treated the inhabitants with great lenity, because it was the birth-place of Apollonius, and therefore regarded by many as a sacred city. The Tyanians, proud of their distinguished countryman, declared that he was a son of Jupiter; but he al

ways said he was the son of Apollonius, whose name he bore. It was a common tradition among them that a flash of lightning descended to the earth, then rose suddenly, and vanished in the heavens, at the moment he was born.

The record of his life, by his disciple Damis, was written in an unpleasing style, and was therefore not sought by those who copied books for sale. But the empress Julia, wife of Alexander Severus, was so much interested in its contents, that she requested Flavius Philostratus, an Athenian author of reputation, to collect, from that and other sources, all that was known of Apollonius, and write an account of him in more attractive style. He did this more than one hundred years after the death of Apollonius, when many traditions concerning him were afloat. His book is often referred to by cotemporary writers. The. early Christian Fathers, in alluding to it, do not deny the miracles it recounts, but attribute them to the aid of Evil Spirits, procured by magical arts. Philostratus himself expresses his belief that a man could learn the language of animals by eating the liver of a dragon; and this remark merely indicates the universal credulity of his time. Nothing in the volume implies that either Apollonius or his biographer was at all acquainted with the history or doctrines of Christ.

SIMON MAGUS.-Simon, the Samaritan, produced marked effects on the times succeeding him; being the progenitor of a large class of sects, which long troubled the Christian church. He is therefore entitled to a passing notice. A knowledge of magic had spread from Central Asia into Syria, by means of the return of the Jews from Babylon, and had afterward extended widely through the mixing of nations, produced by Alexander's conquests. In Simon's time, it was almost universally believed that men could foretell events, cure diseases, and obtain control over the forces of nature, by the aid of Spirits, if they knew how to invoke them. It was Simon's proficiency in this occult

science, which gained him the surname of Magus, or Magician.

The Christian Scriptures informs us that when Philip went into Samaria to preach Christ, he found "a certain man called Simon, who had used sorcery and bewitched the people, giving out that he himself was some great one; to whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying: This man is the Great Power of God." When Simon saw Philip performing miracles, he was baptized by him; perhaps thereby expecting to receive the Holy Spirit, because he had heard that it descended on Jesus at baptism. Afterward, when Peter and John went into Samaria to preach, and "Simon saw by laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying: Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost." He probably asked this because he had been accustomed to pay for instruction in magical arts, of which he supposed that the power of the apostles was only a new manifestation. Peter indignantly replied: "Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Repent, therefore, of this wickedness, and pray to God if perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee." A reverent willingness to believe in all marvellous power is implied by Simon's meek response: "Pray ye to the Lord for me, that none of these things which ye have spoken come upon me."

Desire to obtain an increase of magical power, was probably all that attracted him toward the teachers of Christianity; for the Scriptures make no further allusion to him, and subsequent traditions represent him as acting in opposition to them. His doctrines seem to have been a mixture of Persian and Hindoo ideas, with variations of his own. He taught that the Source of all Good dwelt in plenitude of Light. From him emanated three successive couples of united beings, masculine and feminine. The first feminine emanation, he called Ennoia, which means Interior Thought. From her proceeded Spirits of greater

or less degree of perfection. By their assistance, she created the world, and entrusted them with the government of it. He supposed that Matter was a dark, chaotic mass, co-eternal with God. Moral and physical disorders were mere perversities occasioned by the soul's contact with it, and were observable only in the inferior world. He accounted for the ascendancy of evil in a manner peculiarly his own. According to him, the Spirits employed by Ennoia to create the world, and afterward to govern it, became jealous of her superiority. They felt humiliated in performing the part of simple agents, and resolved to combine together to enfranchise themselves. They accordingly seized her and held her captive. They detached the inferior world, of which they were masters, from the superior world, of which they were subjects; and to be free from any fear that Ennoia would return to her former dominion, they exiled her into a human body. From that time, evil triumphed over good in the world. To impede its progress, emanations from the Supreme had appeared to various nations, with instructions adapted to their wants. In an especial manner, God had spoken by his Holy Spirit to the Greeks. But Ennoia still languished far from her native sphere, subject to transmigration, and enslaved by material laws. She became the victim of all manner of abuse and ignominy, and sunk into the depths of degradation. Hindoo Vedas, Pythagoras, Plato, and Cabalists, all represented mortals as souls fallen from spheres of light, imprisoned in bodies, and striving to return whence they came. But the fall was always by their own fault; while Ennoia was an innocent victim, dragged down by others, and forever longing to be restored to the heavenly home, from which she had been forcibly withdrawn.

At last, the Wisdom of the Supreme, corresponding to the Logos, weary of these disorders, descended in the form of Simon Magus, to rescue her, and redeem the world from evil. Simon said he found the exiled Ennoia in the form of a beautiful Tyrian slave, named Helen, who was leading