Grave doubts have been advanced, by one writer or another, of what may be called the ancient belief on this subject. It has been questioned: I. Whether the attempt to rebuild the Temple ever was really made; and II. whether, allowing the work to have been begun and interrupted, its interruption was not due to natural causes only.

I. It is argued, chiefly by Lardner,[261] that Julian did no more than project such an undertaking, which he never attempted to carry into effect. In his letter addressed to the Jewish people, he tells them, ‘if he returned from his Persian expedition, he would rebuild and inhabit with them the holy city of Jerusalem.’ But, as he never returned, Lardner argues that he never made the promised attempt. The same appears to be the tradition of the Jews.[262] Thus, David Gans, in the fifteenth century, writes, ‘The work was prevented from being accomplished, for Julian never returned, but perished in the Persian War;’ and similarly Cassel: ‘He made preparations for restoring the Temple, but, after a brief reign, fell in battle.’ A passage from one of Julian’s orations is, further, quoted by Lardner, in which he says that, ‘he conceived the design of rebuilding the Temple.’ But, as he does not add that he executed it, Lardner reasons that he probably did not.

It is almost needless to say that these arguments carry very little weight. The reader should note that Julian did not promise to rebuild the Temple, on his return from Persia, but Jerusalem. As that city was then standing, his meaning must have been, that he would restore it to its pristine magnificence. This would be a long and costly work, which might well require his personal presence. But he might commit the rebuilding of the Temple, the design of which was well known, to a deputy—an instalment, so to speak, of the greater work to follow. Nor can it be reasonably argued, that, because a man does not say that he put in force a design, therefore he did not put it in force.[263]

Whatever weight Lardner’s reasoning might carry is lost altogether, when we take into consideration the testimony of the contemporaneous historians, and those of the age immediately following. The first include Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and Ammianus Marcellinus; the second, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. All these record the main facts, viz., the repeated bursting forth of the fire, until the work was abandoned from the impossibility of persisting. Each adds some minor details, which do not affect the credibility of the occurrence itself.[264] The most important witness is Ammianus Marcellinus, a heathen and a personal friend of the Emperor. It will be better to give his account of the matter in his own words. ‘The Emperor was meditating,’ he writes,[265] ‘the restoration, at an unlimited expense, of the Jewish Temple, and had committed the care of the matter to Alypius of Antioch. When, then, Alypius was vigorously prosecuting the work, and the governor of the province was rendering him his help, frightful balls of fire breaking forth with continued outbursts near the foundations, again and again consumed the workmen, and rendered it impossible to approach the spot; and in this manner the element more obstinately (i.e., more obstinately than even the pertinacious persistence of the workmen) driving them away, the attempt was abandoned.’

In the face of evidence like this, he must be a hardy advocate who would maintain that the occurrence never took place.

But it may be contended that although it did take place, there was nothing in it of a miraculous character. It may be alleged,—

(1) That there was simply an earthquake, to which the whole was due.

(2) That there may have been an explosion of foul air, caused by the sudden opening of the vaults under the Temple. These had long been closed, and the noxious vapours, coming into contact with the workmen’s fires, exploded.

(3) That it is improbable that such a miracle would be worked, there being nothing in the rebuilding of the Temple which called for a miracle. Our Lord, no doubt, had declared that the Temple should be utterly destroyed, but not that it should never be rebuilt. Nor had Daniel (rightly understood), or any other prophet, ever said so.

(4) That the age in which the miracle is related to have taken place is one in which miracles are spoken of as having been of almost daily occurrence—some of them frivolous and childish to the last degree. In these no reasonable man can place any faith; and there is nothing to separate this miracle from them.

Let us consider these objections.

1. Earthquakes have always been of common occurrence in Palestine. Nor is it denied that an earthquake took place on the present occasion. But a simple earthquake will not account for the bursting forth of the fiery balls, as often as the labourers attempted to resume the work. No other earthquake ever exhibited these phenomena.

2. This explanation was, I believe, unknown to Warburton, Basnage, Lardner, or Gibbon. It appears to have been first suggested in a German magazine,[266] by the celebrated Michaelis, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. But, on inquiry, it appears more ingenious than probable. Who knows that the caverns under the Temple had been hermetically sealed for a long time previously to Julian’s attempt? They were constantly opened at other times (as the story told by Benjamin of Tudela evidences), and no such result followed. The present was but one out of many occasions when foundations had been dug and buildings erected in the same spot; but without any explosion or fiery outburst. How was it that Solomon’s workmen, and Zorobabel’s, and Adrian’s, and I know not how many more—how was it that they escaped the fatal injuries that befell those of Julian?

Again, the phenomena related by Marcellinus and others do not accord with the idea of an explosion of mephitic gases. These ignite instantaneously, and burn till exhausted. They could not be described by any writer as ‘balls of fire’ breaking forth with continual outbursts, as often as the labourers attempted to resume the work. It is also evident that the fire did not break forth the moment the ground was opened, but only when the whole foundation had been laid and the masons had begun to build; for Chrysostom says that some of the stones already laid were thrown down.

3. In dealing with this objection, we enter on new and more difficult ground. It may be true, and I incline to believe it is so, that the truth of Holy Writ was not, so to speak, imperilled by this enterprise. If it had succeeded, I do not see that any saying of Inspiration would have been thereby contravened.[267] But such an occurrence would surely have been at variance with the Divine purpose in setting up the Christian Church. Type and shadow were to vanish when the reality and the substance came. The rebuilding of the Jewish Temple would have been an unmeaning renewal of them. Further, such strange anomalies as the reconstruction of the Holy of Holies, with its veil unrent, and the renewal of the Temple sacrifices, foreshadowing an event long past, would have disturbed the faith of large numbers of professing members of the Church, as well as deterred equally large numbers from entering its pale. It is a difficult—it may be thought a presumptuous—thing to attempt determining what would be a sufficient reason for expecting a miracle. But if there ever has been an instance in the history of the Christian Church when a miracle was, so to speak, demanded, it was the one we have under consideration. Almighty God had been directly challenged by the supreme human ruler of the earth, and in the sight of all Christendom, to show the right. Do we wonder that, as at Mount Carmel, He answered by fire?

4. These considerations make it easy to deal with the last of the four objections. It may freely be granted that the age of Julian was signalized by the endless recurrence of reported miracles—most of which must be regarded with grave suspicion, while many others are wholly unworthy of credit. Thus Gregory relates of Julian, that one day when he was sacrificing, the entrails of the victim were found to be impressed with the emblem of a cross within a circle.[268] On another occasion, when he attempted to build a heathen temple over the spot where a Christian had been buried, it fell down again as soon as it was put up.[269] These are two instances, out of many, of the idle tales current in that day. If the occurrence we have now under consideration is to be classed with these, no one could wonder at the unwillingness of men to lend it credit. But it stands entirely apart from them. It was not worked at the command or through the entreaty of any man. It was not manifested to prove the truth of any disputed dogma, or the sanctity of any theological leader, or the orthodoxy of any party in the Church. It was wrought by the finger of God directly and visibly; and, unless we are prepared to affirm that since the Apostolic age He has never openly interfered in the affairs of men, we may reasonably believe that He interfered here.