The world into which Basil and Gregory came was ruled by their old schoolmate Julian. He was attempting a restoration of paganism.

Julian had been brought up a Christian, but he hated Christianity. He despised the sophistries of his instructors, men of the Arian theology, who, neglecting the study of Christ and the gospel, occupied their time with the dreariest of metaphysical discussions. He turned to Homer and Hesiod, to Plato and Aristotle. He was repelled by the contentions of the Christians as they wrangled over points of doctrine, fighting in the streets and in the churches, debating theology with fists and clubs, and hating one another for the love of God. That secularization of religion, which was sending devout men out of the church into the monastic life, inclined Julian to seek for God in the old pagan way. It is a serious arraignment of the Christianity of the fourth century that Julian, earnest, pure-minded, sincerely religious, honestly devoted to the welfare of the empire, regarded it as he did.

It is at the same time an evidence of the substantial strength of the Christian Church that Julian was unable even to endanger it. He ordered the rebuilding of the temples which the Christians had destroyed, and the renewal of the sacrifices. He brought back deposed bishops whom his predecessors had exiled, leaders of heresies and schisms, and thereby increased the confusions and contentions of the church. He abolished the privileges which had been granted to the Christians, and forbade them to teach in the schools. He declined to interfere with the mobs who attacked the churches and the clergy. He brought the whole influence of his imperial power to the service of the pagan restoration. But it was like an endeavor to give life to the dead. The day of paganism had passed. It is said of Julian that he once asked, "What is the Galilean carpenter doing now?" and was answered, "He is making a coffin"—a coffin for dead paganism. It was believed among the Christians that when Julian died, in an inglorious war against the Persians, he cried, "O Galilean, thou hast conquered!" His endeavor to establish an imperial pagan church never even approached success.

After Julian came Valens. As Julian had attempted to make the empire pagan, Valens tried to make it Arian. This was a much more serious matter. The long controversy between the Arians and the Athanasians was in such a state that nobody could predict with reasonable confidence whether the faith of Nicæa, would be maintained or rejected. Athanasius was still living, but he was in the end of his days, and the next Pope of Alexandria was an Arian. The Pope of Constantinople was an Arian. Antioch was divided between two claimants of the episcopal office. The Pope of Rome was far away from the centre of the church, ignorant of the Greek language in which the debate was conducted and upon whose fine distinctions it depended, and much perplexed by the subtleties of the metaphysical discussion. There was crying need of a strong, clear-minded, influential orthodox leader, to come to the reinforcement of the losing side. He must be able to hold his own against a hundred bishops, and to withstand an emperor.

Such a man appeared in the person of Basil, now archbishop of Cæsarea. He took the direction of the cause of orthodoxy. His commanding personality, which had made him the founder of the new monasticism, made him the savior of the church. His energy was endless. He administered his vast diocese, preached persistently, fostered monasteries, established so great a hospital outside the walls of Cæsarea that it seemed a town by itself, wrote innumerable letters, published tracts and books which involved serious study, revised the liturgy, participated vigorously in a hundred controversies.

To him once appeared the Pretorian Prefect Modestus, sent by Valens to require him to conform to the Arian heresy or to resign. "Do you know," said the prefect to the prelate, "what I can do to you?"—"What can you do?"—"I can punish you with confiscation, with torture, and with death."—"Do your worst," said Basil. "All that I have is a few books and these clothes; you cannot exile me from the grace of God; and death will but bring me the sooner into His blessed presence."—"We bishops," he said, "are not arrogant, nor wantonly defiant; but where the cause of God is at stake, we despise all else: fire, sword, wild beasts, have no terror for us."

Presently, Valens came himself. Basil was in his cathedral, which was filled with a multitude of people. The responses in the service sounded like peals of thunder. The bishop stood, according to the ancient custom, behind the Holy Table, facing the congregation. His appearance—tall, with white beard, attired in the splendid vestments of his office—overawed the emperor. Valens had a conference with Basil, after which he sent him money for his hospital.

Meanwhile, Cappadocia had been divided into two provinces, and Cæsarea in Cappadocia Prima had a rival in Tyana in Cappadocia Secunda. The rivalry extended to the bishops. Each diocese depended for material support upon the produce of outlying farms; the servants of the two bishops' fought at the crossroads. Thereupon Basil, after the manner of the big man whose overmastering strength makes him inconsiderate of his smaller neighbor, took his brother Gregory and set him down to hold the road at Nyssa, making him bishop of that place, paying no attention to his remonstrances. And he took Gregory his friend and put him down to hold the road at Sasima, making him bishop in the same way. Sasima consisted of a few houses around a posting-station. "There was no water, no vegetation, nothing but dust, and the never-ceasing noise of passing carts." Into these forlorn places Basil thrust the two Gregories, shy and gentle scholars. Thereby he lost their friendship for a time, though they forgave him. He set what he believed to be the good of the church above all friendships; only, in this instance, the good of the church consisted in the safe delivery of eggs and chickens from the Taurus Mountains. Gregory the brother remained at Nyssa; Gregory the friend, after a single look at Sasima, returned to Nazianzus.

In 378 came the battle of Adrianople, and Valens met his death. The Arian cause died with him. The next year Basil died, having seen only the beginning of that triumph of the Nicene faith to which he had so valiantly contributed. In the year following, Gregory of Nazianzus was called to Constantinople.

A new ruler had now established himself on the throne of the empire, the last ruler of the united Roman world. One night in Antioch, a little group of men of rank met in profound secrecy to ask a question of the Fates. The room had been purified by the burning of Arabian incense. In the middle of the floor was a great metal basin, having engraved upon its rim the letters of the Greek alphabet. In the basin stood a tripod made of laurel. Into the dim light of this darkened room came a sorcerer, in white, having in one hand a sprig of a tree, and in the other a thread of flax fastened to a ring. He seated himself upon the tripod, chanted an incantation to the gods who disclose the future, and swung the ring around the rim. The ring was thus to answer the question, Who shall be the next emperor of Rome? The magic ring touched first Th, then e, then o, then d. Thereupon the company in terror or in satisfaction stopped the sorcery, and fled each to his own house. But the secret was betrayed. Valens put some of the conspirators to death, and a number of good and innocent men whose names began with the fatal letters perished with them.

One of the victims of the fear and anger of the emperor was the great commander, Theodosius. He had been the ruler of Britain, where he had defended the Roman colony against the Picts and Scots. He had been the ruler of Africa, where he had quelled a dangerous insurrection. Upon the death of Theodosius, his son, of the same name, gave up his position in the army and retired to his farm in Spain. When Valens fell at Adrianople, Gratian, Emperor of the West, called Theodosius to be Emperor of the East.

Theodosius was still busy at the wars when Gregory appeared in Constantinople. It was not yet certain which side the new ruler would take in the controversy by which the church was divided. The city of Constantinople was almost wholly Arian. The orthodox congregation to which Gregory had come to minister was so weak and small that the services were held in a private house.

But Gregory was an unusual preacher. Lacking as he was in most of the physical advantages which assist public speech,—a short, slight, shy man, bald except for a thin fringe of gray hair, stoop-shouldered, and shabbily dressed,—he had a charm of voice, a directness of manner, an of purpose, and a divine gift of eloquence which profoundly impressed his hearers. He forgot his shyness when he arose to speak, and they forgot his looks. The house became a church, and the church was enlarged until its success alarmed the Arians. One night they stoned it.

The increasing congregation attracted the notice of an ecclesiastical adventurer, named Maximus. Gregory, simple-minded and unsuspecting, trusted him. But Maximus was the candidate of the bishop of Alexandria for the bishopric of Constantinople. If, as now seemed likely, the orthodox faith was to be restored in Constantinople, the bishop of Alexandria desired to secure the supremacy of his own see. So one night, a group of Egyptian bishops, having quietly arrived in Constantinople, and gained entrance by the key of a conspirator to Gregory's church, began the ceremony of consecrating Maximus. The proceedings were delayed by a curious incident. Maximus, who had thus far appeared as a Cynic philosopher, had not only the staff and the cloak but the long hair which belonged to that part. But the canons forbade the clergy to wear their hair long. It was therefore necessary, before the consecration could go on, to cut the flowing locks of Maximus. In the midst of this operation it was discovered that the philosopher's long hair was false. Then arose a tumult and disputing, in the course of which Gregory's congregation discovered what was happening in the church, and drove the Egyptians out with appropriate violence.

On a November day in 380, the emperor Theodosius arrived in Constantinople. He immediately decreed that the churches of the city should be taken from the heretics, in whose possession they had been for forty years, and restored to the orthodox. Two days later he himself escorted Gregory to the cathedral church of Santa Sophia. The sky was gray, and seemed uncertain whether to rain or shine. It was in keeping with the occasion. The orthodox faith had indeed come to its own again, but the procession in which Gregory walked beside the emperor had to be guarded by soldiers, while women wept and men cursed. The sun shone for a moment just as Gregory took his seat in the chancel, and the congregation shouted, "Gregory for bishop! Gregory for bishop!" But it was a sad triumph.

Theodosius called a conference of bishops, now numbered second in the list of the General Councils of the Church. They were, for the most part, from Syria and Asia Minor. The bishop of Alexandria came late, perhaps because he was invited late. The bishop of Rome seem not to have been invited at all. It was a local council. The bishop of Antioch, Meletius, presided; the contention there between Meletius and Paulinus had not been decided, but the party of Meletius was in the majority. Gregory was installed as bishop of Constantinople. Within a few days Meletius died, and Gregory was made president.

The council addressed itself to the discomfiture of heretics: Arians and semi-Arians, Sabellians, Marcellians, Photinians, Apollinarians, Eunomians, and Macedonians—a significant and portentous list. It endeavored to check the ambition of ecclesiastics, forbidding bishops to interfere with the affairs of dioceses other than their own, having special reference to the activities of Alexandria. The death of Meletius had revived the difficulty as to the episcopal succession in Antioch: the council tried to settle that.

It used to be thought that the Nicene Creed was phrased by this council in its present form, and to this is to be ascribed the inclusion of the conference among the General Councils; but there is no trace in the records of any discussion of this matter. The Nicene Creed, in its original wording, was that which had long been recited at Cæsarea, with the addition of certain Nicene words. The Nicene Creed, as it is said to-day, is that which had long been recited at Jerusalem. Cyril of Jerusalem, finding his orthodoxy questioned, may have presented this creed, with the proper Nicene additions, at the Council of Constantinople. Thus it may have come into general notice. It is interesting to find that after the long and tragic debate which had so seriously divided the church, the orthodox faith attained its abiding expression not as the result of any deliberation, and not with the sanction of any vote, but by the gradual commendation of its own merits.

The council debated with the fury of men who had faced each other on fields of battle. Gregory could not control them. He compared them to a flock of chattering jays, and to a swarm of stinging wasps. He wished to resign his presidency, but they would not consent. The bishop of Alexandria, however, when he arrived to add a new disorder to the scene, declared that Gregory having been made bishop of Sasima could not canonically be made bishop of Constantinople. Immediately, with a glad heart, he yielded up his presidency and his bishopric. He bade farewell to the council and the city, and returned to his Cappadocian farm. "I will rejoice," he said, "in my tranquillity, gladly flying from palaces, and cities, and priests." Once Theodosius invited him to attend another council, but he declined. "I will not sit," he said, "in the seat of synods, while geese and cranes confusedly wrangle."

In the shade of his trees, beside a singing brook, he wrote poetry and friendly letters. Sometimes he indulged himself for a while in the luxury of his old asceticism, sleeping on sackcloth, and once going a whole Lent without speaking. The wife and daughter of his kinsman Valentinian insisted on visiting him, till he likened them to Eve in the paradise of Eden: this was his chief annoyance. Thus he continued to the end of his gentle life, saying his prayers and tending his few sheep.