into fraternal relations; these are two distinct and difficult questions, neither of which admit of an offhand answer.
Acacius returned to Persia. He had anathematized Bar-soma, and engaged to depose him—perhaps with a mental reservation, "if he could"; but their quarrel was ended before he arrived, for the Bishop of Nisibis was dead. He was killed, says Bar-Hebræus, by the monks of Mt. Abdin;[1] but he was dead in any case, and that most strangely mingled character had passed to its account.
A man who did much good, and much evil. Who would win the power he desired by any means; and would use it at once for his own advancement and for what he judged to be the good of his melet. In his status he reminds us of the mediæval prince-prelate, rather than the oriental ecclesiastic. May we judge him by the same rule that we apply to them? Yet he is, withal, the epitome of his people. We see in him their qualities; but those qualities are exaggerated, and he is cast altogether in a larger mould than is the wont. In his quarrelsomeness, in his unscrupulousness, in his love for his Church and love for learning, joined with personal ambition, he is a true son of his annoying and attractive nation. One who has studied the history of the Church must feel some gratitude towards the man who wrote some of its most picturesque pages; and one who has learnt to care for the people must own to a kindness for so representative an Assyrian.
- ↑ B.-H., p. 78. "Killed with the keys of their cells," says the historian. If so, one would like to know how it was achieved, for the oriental key is not an iron bar that can be a weapon on emergency, but a notched slip of wood some eight inches long, and about as formidable as a paper-knife.
