330, and will never come back to it again. Rome papal has come into existence, ruled over by the successor of St. Peter, occupying the buildings and filling the place of the older Rome; it is a Rome no longer in any sense pagan-the old heathen deities have scarcely a single real adherent within the walls of the city--but a Rome in which all are in union, where government and people alike profess but a single religion and aim at a single ideal, the religion and ideals no longer of the paganism that is ended, but those of which she is henceforward always to be the centre, the worship of Christianity and the ethical ideals of the Catholic Church of Christ. PART II. CHAPTER I. The Symbolism of the Early Church. IT would not be possible to get any clear idea of the true meaning of such relics of the past as the paintings of the first three centuries on the walls of the catacombs at Rome without a preliminary study of the symbols which were at that time agreed on. At a time when persecution was still constant, and when the Church was surrounded on all sides by hostile pagans, it was clearly quite impossible to depict the mysteries of the Catholic faith in any obvious manner. That was forbidden if in no other and more formal fashion, at least by the thought of the reverence due to the Sacraments of the Church, and by the memory of our Lord's injunction that men should not cast the pearls of their faith to be trampled under foot by swine. Consequently, a whole language of Christian symbolism came into being, in which all Christians. were duly instructed—a language which to them spoke eloquently enough, and which was readily available for the instruction and edification of the youngest neophyte, while to the pagan intruder it told nothing and seemed to be nothing more than ordinary and somewhat uninteresting decorations, The Old Testament. The stories of the Old Testament furnished a large field from which this symbolic language could be drawn. In themselves they were harmless and free from danger, so far as persecution was concerned, since Judaism was one of the permitted religions. But their significance was not limited to the historical facts they commemorated. They spoke also to the Christian of the inner meaning of which those stories were typical. Thus the figures of Adam and Eve standing on each side of the tree in whose branches the serpent is entwined, spoke to them, indeed, of the Fall of man, but also of the second Adam and of man's Redemption. So also the picture of Noe and the Ark recalled the Deluge, but spoke far more eloquently of the Church outside of which was no salvation; of baptism by which men were to be saved from the flood of destruction and brought into the Ark of safety; and of the Resurrection through which men should be brought to a new heaven and a new earth from which all danger should be taken away and all persecution be absent. So, again, the representation of Abraham and Isaac spoke of the sacrifice of the Cross, and of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world; Moses striking the rock told of Peter and the new Covenant, in which the waters of baptism gush from the side of the rock, which Rock is Christ. At Podgoritza (the ancient Doclea in Dalmatia) a singular glass vase of the fourth century was discovered some years ago. It is now in the museum of M. Basilewski at Paris. this vase the usual scenes of the Catacombs are drawn, but their Christian meaning is made clear, in a way which was not possible during the years of persecution, by explanatory legends attached to each scene. scene of Moses striking the rock is thus commented On The |