Valeria, the Martyr of the Catacombs Part 20

At length, on the triumph of the British-born Emperor, Constantine, over his rivals for the throne of the world, like the trump of Jubilee, the edict of the toleration of Christianity, pealed through the land. It penetrated the gloomy dungeon, the darksome mine, the Catacombs' dim labyrinth, and from their sombre depths, vast processions of "n.o.ble wrestlers for religion," thronged to the long-forsaken churches, with grateful songs of praise to G.o.d.

Christianity, after long repression, became at length triumphant. It emerged from the concealment of the Catacombs to the sunshine of imperial favour. Constantine, himself, proclaimed to eager thousands the New Evangel--the most august lay preacher the Church has ever known. The legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus strikingly ill.u.s.trates the wondrous transformation of society. These Christian brothers, taking shelter in a cave during the Decian persecution, awoke, according to the legend, after a slumber of over a century, to find Christianity everywhere dominant, and a Christian Emperor on the throne of the Caesars.[59] The doctrines of Christ, like the rays of the sun, quickly irradiated the world. With choirs and hymns, in cities and villages, in the highways and markets, the praises of the Almighty were sung. The enemies of G.o.d were as though they had not been.[60] The Lord brought up the vine of Christianity from a far country, and cast out the heathen, and planted and watered it, till it twined round the sceptre of the Caesars, wreathed the columns of the Capitol, and filled the whole land.

The heathen fanes were deserted, the G.o.ds discrowned, and the pagan flamen no longer offered sacrifice to the Capitoline Jove, Rome, which had dragged so many conquered deities in triumph at its chariot wheels, at length yielded to a mightier than all the G.o.ds of Olympus. The old faiths faded from the firmament of human thought as the stars of midnight at the dawn of day. The banished deities forsook their ancient seats. They walked no longer in the vale of Tempe nor in the grove of Daphne. The naiads bathed not in Scamander's stream nor Simois, nor the nereids in the waters of the bright aegean Sea. The nymphs and dryads ceased to haunt the sylvan solitudes. The oriads walked no more in light on Ida's lofty top.

O ye vain false G.o.ds of h.e.l.las!

Ye are vanished evermore!

Long before the recognition of Christianity as the religion of the empire, its influence had been felt permeating the entire community.

Amid the disintegration of society it was the sole conservative element--the salt which preserved it from corruption. In the midst of anarchy and confusion a community was being organized on a principle previously unknown in the heathen world, ruling not by terror but by love; by moral power, not by physical force; inspired by lofty faith amid a world of unbelief, and cultivating moral purity amid the reeking abominations of a sensual age.

We should do scant justice to the blameless character, simple dignity, and moral purity of the primitive Christians, if we forgot the thoroughly effete and corrupt society by which they were surrounded. It would seem almost impossible for the Christian graces to grow in such a foetid atmosphere. Like the snow-white lily springing in virgin purity from the muddy ooze, they are more lovely by contrast with the surrounding pollutions. Like flowers that deck a sepulchre, breathing their fragrance amid scenes of corruption and death, are these holy characters, fragrant with the breath of heaven amid the social rottenness and moral death of their foul environment.

It is difficult to imagine, and impossible to portray, the abominable pollutions of the times. "Society," says Gibbon, "was a rotten, aimless chaos of sensuality." It was a boiling Acheron of seething pa.s.sions, unhallowed l.u.s.ts, and tiger thirst for blood, such as never provoked the wrath of Heaven since G.o.d drowned the world with water, or destroyed the Cities of the Plain by fire. Only those who have visited the secret museum of Naples, or that house which no woman may enter at Pompeii, and whose paintings no pen may describe; or, who are familiar with the scathing denunciations of popular vices by the Roman satirists and moralists and by the Christian Fathers, can conceive the appalling depravity of the age and nation. St. Paul, in his epistle to the Church among this very people, hints at some features of their exceeding wickedness. It was to shame even to speak of the things which were done by them, but which gifted poets employed their wit to celebrate. A brutalized monster was deified as G.o.d, received divine homage,[61] and beheld all the world at his feet, and the nations trembled at his nod, while the mult.i.tude wallowed in a sty of sensuality.

Christianity was to be the new Hercules to cleanse this worse than Augean pollution. The pure morals and holy lives of the believers were a perpetual testimony against abounding iniquity, and a living proof of the regenerating power and transforming grace of G.o.d. For they themselves, as one of their apologists a.s.serts, "had been reclaimed from ten thousand vices;" and the Apostle, describing some of the vilest characters, exclaims, "such were some of you, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified." They recoiled with the utmost abhorrence from the pollutions of the age, and became indeed "the salt of the earth," the sole moral antiseptic to prevent the total disintegration of society.

Thus amid idolatrous usages and unspeakable moral degradation the Christians lived, a holy nation, a peculiar people. "We alone are without crime," says Tertullian; "no Christian suffers but for his religion." "Your prisons are full," says Minutius Felix, "but they contain not one Christian." And these holy lives were an argument which even the heathen could not gainsay. The ethics of paganism were the speculations of the cultivated few who aspired to the character of philosophers. The ethics of Christianity were a system of practical duty affecting the daily life of the most lowly and unlettered. "Philosophy,"

says Lecky, "may dignify, but is impotent to regenerate man; it may cultivate virtue, but cannot restrain vice." But Christianity introduced a new sense of sin and of holiness, of everlasting reward and of endless condemnation. It planted a sublime, impa.s.sioned love of Christ in the heart, inflaming all its affections. It transformed the character from icy stoicism or epicurean selfishness to a boundless and uncalculating self-abnegation and devotion.

This divine principle developed a new instinct of philanthropy in the soul. A feeling of common brotherhood knit the hearts of the believers together. To love a slave! to love an enemy! was accounted the impossible among the heathen; yet this incredible virtue they beheld every day among the Christians. "This surprised them beyond measure,"

says Tertullian, "that one man should die for another." Hence, in the Christian inscriptions no word of bitterness, even toward their persecutors, is to be found. Sweet peace, the peace of G.o.d that pa.s.seth all understanding, breathes on every side.

One of the most striking results of the new spirit of philanthropy which Christianity introduced is seen in the copious charity of the primitive Church. Amid the ruins of ancient palaces and temples, theatres and baths, there are none of any house of mercy. Charity among the pagans, was at best, a fitful and capricious fancy. Among the Christians it was a vast and vigorous organization and was cultivated with n.o.ble enthusiasm. And the great and wicked city of Rome, with its fierce oppressions and inhuman wrongs, afforded amplest opportunity for the Christ-like ministrations of love and pity. There were Christian slaves to succour, exposed to unutterable indignities and cruel punishment, even unto crucifixion for conscience' sake. There were often martyrs'

pangs to a.s.suage, the aching wounds inflicted by the rack or by the nameless tortures of the heathen to bind up, and their bruised and broken hearts to cheer with heavenly consolation. There were outcast babes to pluck from death. There were a thousand forms of suffering and sorrow to relieve; and the ever-present thought of Him who came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many, was an inspiration to heroic sacrifice and self-denial. And doubtless the religion of mercy won its way to many a stony pagan heart by the winsome spell of the saintly charities and heavenly benedictions of the persecuted Christians. This sublime principle has since covered the earth with its inst.i.tutions of mercy, and with a pa.s.sionate zeal has sought out the woes of raan in every land, in order to their relief.

In the primitive Church voluntary collections[62] were regularly made for the poor, the aged, the sick, the brethren in bonds, and for the burial of the dead. All fraud and deceit was abhorred, and all usury forbidden. Many gave all their goods to feed the poor. "Our charity dispenses more in the streets," says Tertullian to the heathen, "than your religion in your temples." He upbraids them for offering to the G.o.ds only the worn-out and useless, such as is given to dogs. "How monstrous is it," exclaims the Alexandrian Clement, "to live in luxury while so many are in want." "As you would receive, show mercy," says Chrysostom; "make G.o.d your debtor that you may receive again with usury." The Church at Antioch, he tells us, maintained three thousand widows and virgins, besides the sick and the poor. Under the persecuting Decius the widows and the infirm under the care of the Church at Rome were fifteen hundred. "Behold the treasures of the Church," said St.

Lawrence pointing to the aged and poor, when the heathen prefect came to confiscate its wealth. The Church in Carthage sent a sum equal to four thousand dollars to ransom Christian captives in Numidia. St. Ambrose sold the sacred vessels of the Church of Milan to rescue prisoners from the Goths, esteeming it their truest consecration to the service of G.o.d. "Better clothe the Christ," says living temples of Jerome, "than adorn the temples of stone." "G.o.d has no need of plates and dishes,"

said Acacius, Bishop of Amida, and he ransomed therewith a number of poor captives. For a similar purpose Paulinus of Nola sold the treasures of his beautiful church, and, it is said, even sold himself into African slavery. The Christian traveller was hospitably entertained by the faithful; and before the close of the fourth century asylums were provided for the sick, aged, and infirm. During the Decian persecution, when the streets of Carthage were strewn with the dying and the dead, the Christians, with the scars of recent torture and imprisonment upon them, exhibited the n.o.bility of a gospel revenge in their care for their fever-smitten persecutors, and seemed to seek the martyrdom of Christian charity, even more glorious than that they had escaped. In the plague of Alexandria, six hundred _parabolani_ periled their lives to succour the dying and bury the dead. Julian urged the pagan priests to imitate the virtues of the lowly Christians.

Christianity also gave a new sanct.i.ty to human life. The exposure of infants was a fearfully prevalent pagan practice, which even Plato and Aristotle permitted. We have had evidences of the tender charity of the Christians in rescuing these foundlings from death, or from a fate more dreadful still--a life of infamy. Christianity also emphatically affirmed the Almighty's "canon 'gainst self-slaughter," which crime the pagans had even exalted into a virtue. It taught that a patient endurance of suffering, like Job's, exhibited a loftier courage than Cato's renunciation of life.

We have thus seen from the testimony of the Catacombs, the immense superiority, in all the elements of true dignity and excellence, of primitive Christianity to the corrupt civilization by which it was surrounded. It enn.o.bled the character and purified the morals of mankind. It raised society from the ineffable slough into which it had fallen, imparted tenderness and fidelity to the domestic relations of life, and enshrined marriage in a sanct.i.ty before unknown.

Notwithstanding the corruptions by which it became infected in the days of its power and pride, even the worst form of Christianity was infinitely preferable to the abominations of paganism. It gave a sacredness before unconceived to human life. It averted the sword from the throat of the gladiator, and, plucking helpless infancy from exposure to untimely death, nourished it in Christian homes. It threw the aegis of its protection over the slave and the oppressed, raising them from the condition of beasts to the dignity of men and the fellowship of saints. With an unwearied and pa.s.sionate charity it yearned over the suffering and the sorrowing everywhere, and created a vast and comprehensive organization for their relief, of which the world had before no example and had formed no conception. It was a holy Vestal, ministering at the altar of humanity, witnessing ever of the Divine, and keeping the sacred fire burning, not for Rome, but for the world. Its winsome gladness and purity, in an era of unspeakable pollution and sadness, revived the sinking heart of mankind, and made possible a Golden Age in the future transcending far that which poets pictured in the past. It blotted out cruel laws, like those of Draco, written in blood, and led back Justice, long banished, to the judgment seat. It ameliorated the rigours of the penal code, and, as experience has shown, lessened the amount of crime. It created an art purer and loftier than that of paganism; and a literature rivaling in elegance of form, and surpa.s.sing in n.o.bleness of spirit, the sublimest productions of the cla.s.sic muse. Instead of the sensual conceptions of heathenism, polluting the soul, it supplied images of purity, tenderness, and pathos, which fascinated the imagination and hallowed the heart. It taught the sanct.i.ty of suffering and of weakness, and the supreme majesty of gentleness and truth.

NOTE.--The entire subject of Christian evidences from the Catacombs, which has been so cursorily glanced at in the foregoing pages, is treated with great fullness of detail and copious pictorial ill.u.s.tration in a work by the writer, "The Catacombs of Rome, and their Testimony Relative to Primitive Christianity." Cr. 8vo, 560 pp., 136 engravings. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Price $2.50. It discusses at length the structure, origin, and history of the Catacombs; their art and symbolism; their epigraphy as ill.u.s.trative of the theology, ministry, rites, and inst.i.tutions of the primitive Church, and Christian Life and Character in the early ages. The gradual corruption of doctrine and practice and introduction of Romanist errors, as the _cultus_ of Mary, the primacy of Peter, prayers of the dead, the invocation of saints, the notion of purgatory, the celibacy of the clergy rite of monastic orders, and other allied subjects are fully treated.

FOOTNOTES:

[57] See Lactantius, _De Mortibus Persecutorum, Pa.s.sim_; Eusebius _Hist.

Ecclec._ viii, 17; ix. 9, 10; Tertullian _ad Scap._, c. 3.

[58] Valeria quoque per varias provincias quindecim mensibus plebeio cultu pervagata.... Ita illis pudicitia et conditio exitio fuit.

Lactantius _De Mart. Persec._ Cap. 51.

[59] Even the sanguine imagination of Tertullian cannot conceive the possibility of this event "Sed et Caesares credidissent super Christo,"

he exclaims, "si aut Caesares non essent seculo necessario, aut si et Christiani potuissent esse Caesares." _Apol._, c. 21.

[60] Literally, "They are no more because they never were." Eusebius applies, the promises of Scripture concerning the restoration of the exiled Jews from Babylon (Psa. lx.x.x; xcviii;) to the condition of Christianity in his day. The above citations are given in his very words.

[61] While yet alive, Domitian was called, "our Lord and G.o.d"--_Dominus et Deus noster._

[62] Nemo compellitur, sed sponte confert _Tertul Apol._ c. 39.

THE END.