ST. PAUL AND PLAUTILLA.
A legend of the death of St. Paul relates that a certain Roman matron named Plautilla, one of the converts of St. Peter, placed herself on the road by which St. Paul passed to his martyrdom, in order to behold him for the last time; and when she saw him, she wept greatly and besought his blessing. The apostle then, seeing her faith, turned to her, and begged that she would give him her veil to bind his eyes when he should be beheaded, promising to return it to her after his death. The attendants mocked at such a promise; but Plautilla, with a woman’s faith and charity, taking off her veil, presented it to him. After his martyrdom, St. Paul appeared to her, and restored the veil stained with his blood. It is also related that, when he was decapitated, the severed head made three bounds upon the earth, and wherever it touched the ground a fountain sprang forth. This legend is sometimes represented in the pictures of the martyrdom of St. Paul. The church ofSan Paoloat Rome, where the body of St. Paul was interred, rich with mosaics, was consumed by fire in 1823.
ST. PAUL AND THE VIPER.
Not far from the old city of Valetta, in the island of Malta, there is a small church dedicated to St. Paul, and just by the church a miraculous statue of the saint with a viper on his hand, supposed to be placed on the very spot on which he was received after his shipwreck on this island, and where he shook the viper off his hand into the fire without being hurt by it. At that time the Maltese assure us the saint cursed all the venomous animals of the island and banished them for ever, just as St. Patrick banished those of Ireland. Whether this be the cause of it or not, it is said to be a fact that there are no venomous animals in Malta.
THE HISTORY OF JUDAS ISCARIOT.
The “Apocryphal Gospel,” called the “Arabic Gospel of the Infancy,” has the following (chapter xxxv.): “In the same placethere dwelt another woman, whose son was vexed by Satan. He, Judas by name, whenever Satan seized him, bit all who approached him; and if he found no one near him, he bit his own hands and other members. Therefore the mother of this unfortunate youth, hearing the fame of Lady Mary and her Son Jesus, arose and took with her her son Judas to my Lady Mary. Meanwhile, James and Joses had taken away the Child Lord Jesus to play with other children; and after leaving home, they had sat down, and the Lord Jesus with them. Judas the demoniac came nigh, and sat down at the right of Jesus; and then, being assaulted by Satan as he was wont to be, he sought to bite the Lord Jesus, but he could not; yet he struck the right side of Jesus, who for this cause began to weep. Forthwith Satan went forth out of the boy in form like a mad dog. Now, this boy who struck Jesus, and from whom Satan went out in the form of a dog, was Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him to the Jews, and that side of Him on which Judas had smote Him the Jews pierced with a spear” (Matt. x. 4; John xix. 34).
CHRIST’S CONTEMPORARIES—CLIMATE AND SCENERY OF PALESTINE.
THE SAGES OF GREECE AND ROME ON CHRISTIAN PRODIGIES.
Gibbon observes that during the age of Christ, of His Apostles and their first disciples, the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies. The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of Nature were frequently suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing their ordinary occupations, were unconscious of anything extraordinary. Under the reign of Tiberius, the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Yet this miraculous event passed without notice in an age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects or received the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers in a laborious work has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature—earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses—which his indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraordinary nature and unusual duration, but he contents himself with describing the singular defect of light which followed the murder of Cæsar, when during the greatest part of the year the orb of the sun appeared pale and without splendour. This season of obscurity, which cannot surely be compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians of that memorable age.
DEATH OF ZACHARIAS.
Jeremy Taylor says that Herod slew Zacharias between the Temple and the altar “because he refused to betray his son to the fury of that rabid bear,—though some persons, very eminent amongst the stars of the primitive Church, report a tradition that, a place being separated in the Temple for virgins, Zacharias suffered the mother of our Lord to abide there after the birth of her Holy Son, affirming her still to be a virgin; and that for this reason, not Herod, but the scribes and Pharisees, did kill Zacharias. Tertullian reports that the blood of Zacharias had so besmeared the stones of the pavement, which was the altar on which the good old priest was sacrificed, that no art or industry could wash the tincture out, the dye and guilt being both indelible; as if, because God did intend to exact of that nation ‘all the blood of righteous persons, from Abel to Zacharias,’ who was the last of the martyrs of the synagogue, He would leave a character of their guilt in their eyes to upbraid their irreligion, cruelty, and infidelity. Some there are who affirm these words of our Saviour not to relate to any Zacharias who had been already slain, but to be a prophecy of the last of all the martyrs of the Jews who should be slain immediately before the destruction of the last Temple and the dissolution of the nation. Certain it is that such a Zacharias, the son of Baruch (if we may believe Josephus), was slain in the middle of the Temple a little before it was destroyed; and it is agreeable to the nature of the prophecy and reproof here made by our Saviour that ‘from Abel to Zacharias’ should take in ‘all the righteous blood’ from first to last till the iniquity was complete, and it is not imaginable that the blood of our Lord and of St. James their bishop (for whose death many of themselves thought God destroyed their city) should be left out of the account, which certainly would be if any other Zacharias should be meant. In reference to this, Cyprian de Valera expounds that which we read in the past tense to signify the future: ‘Ye slew’—i.e., shall slay.”
CHILDHOOD OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
Elizabeth fled with her son John the Baptist when he was about eighteen months old into the wilderness, where after forty days she died. His father Zacharias, at the time of his ministration, which happened about this time, was killed in the court of the Temple. According to the tradition of the Greeks, God deputed an angel to be his guardian and nourisher, as he had formerly done to Ishmael and Elias.
DEATH OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
The Jews ascribed to the murder of John the Baptist the fate that befell Herod and Salome. Herod, in journeying to Rome four years after Christ’s death, was deprived of his tetrarchate and banished along with Herodias to Gaul, and they died in great misery at Lyons or in Spain. Salome in crossing the ice in winter fell into the water; and the ice, after parting, joined again, and decapitated her. John the Baptist’s disciples honourably buried his body. It was said the Pagans rifled the tomb and burned the body in the reign of Julian the Apostate; but some of the bones were sent to St. Athanasius at Alexandria. In 396 Theodosius built a great church in that city in honour of the Baptist, and there the holy relics were deposited. The head of the Baptist was discovered in 453, and in 800 it was conveyed to Constantinople; in 1203 the lower jaw was taken to France, and is preserved to this day. Part of the head is in St. Sylvester’s Church at Rome.
BURIAL OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
Jeremy Taylor says that John was imprisoned in the castle of Macheruns, where Herod sent for him and caused him to be beheaded. His head Herodias buried in her own palace, thinking to secure it against a reunion, lest it should again disturb her unlawful lusts and disquiet Herod’s conscience. But the body the disciples of John gathered up, and carried it with honour and sorrow, and buried it in Sebaste, in the confines of Samaria, making his grave between the bodies of Elizeus and Abdias the prophets. And about this time was the Passover of the Jews.
CHURCHES DEDICATED TO THE BAPTIST.
Temples were dedicated to John the Baptist in the first ages of Christianity, the earliest and most celebrated being that known at Rome as St. John Lateran. The next most celebrated church dedicated to St. John is the Baptistery at Florence, dedicated by the Princess Theodolunda about 589. In this baptistery every child born in Florence of the Roman Catholic faith must by law be baptised. This renowned church is decorated both inside and without with miracles of art.
PONTIUS PILATE.
Pilate, after ten years of service, was disgraced and called to Rome. One of that cloud of false witnesses who sprang up every year told the people of Samaria that he knew where the sacredvessels lay hid, and fixed a day when they should meet him in thousands on Gerizim to dig them up. Hearing of this movement, Pilate sent troops into the highways and villages round Shechem; and these soldiers, setting upon the people, slew the innocent with the guilty, and put the whole body of Samaritans to flight. A great cry for vengeance arose in Samaria; the Senate sent an embassy to Antioch; and Vitellius, a man of craft and policy, wishing to stand well with the Jews, put the government of Samaria and Judæa into fresh hands, and commanded Pilate to report himself in Rome. Here we lose sight of him. Legends make him a suicide—some in a Roman prison, others in Gaul, and others again near the Lake of Lucerne, on the summit of the mountain which bears the name of Mount Pilatus.
THE DOINGS OF HEROD THE GREAT.
About sixty yearsB.C., Herod, misnamed the Great, had partly by bribery prevailed on Antony and Augustus to make him king of the Jews, and Josephus describes his visit to Rome on that appointment. Herod has always been a monster of cruelty. He married a beautiful woman named Mariamne, whom he put to death after being the mother of several of his children. Then he had a fit of remorse, and frantically called her by name, and ordered his servants to do so. Then he next slew the grandfather and brother of Mariamne, the latter being ordered to be suffocated while his servants were engaged in a bathing frolic. In his old age he was seized with a sudden suspicion against two sons, whom he accused of a plot against him, and after some wavering caused them to be strangled, and some three hundred who sympathised with them to be stoned to death. After these symptoms of madness, a year before his death, being alarmed by the reports of the visits of the Magi, and the prophecies of the birth of Christ, he ordered the massacre of the innocents. He died a year after, at the age of seventy-one, of a disgusting disease, accompanied with horrible tortures, having reigned thirty-five years. In order that he should not die without being lamented, he had ordered a large number of the chief inhabitants of Jerusalem, as soon as he was dead, to be slain by his soldiers. He died enormously rich, and even Horace refers to his vast palm groves. There was a lengthened litigation and appeal to Rome about the division of his estates and governments. The son who succeeded him so misconducted himself that after nine years he was banished by Augustus and his wealth confiscated.
MARY MAGDALENE.
There were three Marys—Mary of Bethania, Mary the sister of Lazarus, and Mary Magdalene; and some think they were all one person. Most of the early writers say that she and Lazarus and Martha left Galilee and settled at Bethany, and there Christ often visited them. The penitent woman and she are by some treated as the same person; but it is at best only a conjecture. It is a popular tradition that Mary and Lazarus, and Martha or Mary their sister, were expelled after the Ascension, and put to sea, and reached Marseilles, and founded a Church there, of which Lazarus was the first bishop. The relics of these saints were alleged to be discovered in Provence in the thirteenth century, and Mary Magdalene’s were at St. Maximius, near Marseilles, where a convent now stands. Her festival is kept July 22nd, and once was a holiday in England.
MARY MAGDALENE PREACHING.
A Provençal legend states that after the Ascension Lazarus, with his two sisters Martha and Mary, Maximius and seventy-two disciples, also Cedon the blind man whom our Saviour restored to sight, and Marcella the handmaiden were put by the heathen in a vessel and set adrift; but, guided by Providence, it landed at Marseilles in France. The people were then Pagans, and refused to give the pilgrims food or shelter, so that they were fain to take refuge under the porch of a temple. And Mary Magdalene preached to the people, reproaching them for their senseless worship of dumb idols. And though at first they refused to listen, yet they were after a time convinced by her eloquence, and by the miracles she and her sister performed; and they were all converted and baptised. These things being accomplished, Mary Magdalene retired to a desert near the city, where there were only rocks and caves, and she devoted herself to solitary penance for thirty years, weeping and bewailing for the past. She fasted rigorously, and must have perished, but the angels came down from heaven every day and carried her up in their arms into regions where her ears were ravished with the sounds of heavenly melody, and where she beheld the glory and the joy prepared for the penitent sinner. One day, a hermit, having wandered near the spot, beheld this wondrous vision of the angels carrying the Magdalene up to heaven in their arms, and singing songs of triumph; and after recovering from his amazement, he returned to the city of Marseilles and reported what he had seen. FraAngelico has a most interesting picture of the Magdalene preaching from the steps of a building to an audience composed mostly of nuns, who are in rapt attention.
ACCOUNT OF ST. MARTHA.
St. Martha, the sister of Lazarus and Mary, was a favourite member of that family whom Christ often visited, staying a night on His visits. On the first visit, Martha attended to the practical details of hospitality, while Mary was intensely absorbed in the spiritual charm of the conversation, and did nothing but listen, and yet was commended for this, as if each was entitled to follow her own way of displaying her affection. The message sent at a later date to Christ by the two sisters was simply this—“He whom Thou lovest is sick”: they knew it was enough to say that one word. On the last visit of Christ, Mary poured costly ointment on Christ’s feet, which Judas Iscariot said was a shocking extravagance. St. Martha seems to have been present at the Crucifixion. After Christ’s ascension, she, as stated under the head of Mary Magdalene, went to Marseilles, and her body is deposited in a vault under the church at Tarascon. King Louis XI. gave a rich bust of gold, in which the saint’s head is kept.
ST. VERONICA AND HER HANDKERCHIEF.
St. Veronica was the woman who was healed by touching the hem of Christ’s garment. She greatly longed for a portrait of Christ, and brought a cloth to Luke, who was a painter, to make one. But he tried three times to make a good portrait and failed. And Veronica being distressed, Christ told her He would help her if she would go home and prepare a meal, which He would take with her. She prepared the meal, and Christ went at the time appointed; and on receiving from her a cloth to wipe His face after washing it, He pressed it to His face, and it received a miraculous portrait of His features. This He gave to her, and it performed afterwards many miracles. The Emperor hearing of these miracles, sent for Veronica to show him the portrait. She went to Rome with it, and was received with great honour, and showed it to the Emperor, who, on seeing it, was immediately cured. Others say that Veronica was a compassionate woman, who, seeing the drops of agony on the brow of Christ, as He was bearing the cross to Calvary, wiped His face with a napkin, or with her veil, and then she found His likeness miraculously stamped upon the cloth. She afterwards came to Europe in thesame vessel with Lazarus and Mary Magdalene, and suffered martyrdom in Provence or Aquitaine.
HILLEL RELATED TO JESUS.
Of the Great College which inspired and guided Jewish thought, the chief luminary had been Hillel, surnamed the Great. Hillel was a Babylonian Jew by birth, though in blood (on his mother’s side at least) he belonged, like Joseph of Bethlehem, to the royal line. Hence he was of kin to Mary and Jesus. Like Joseph, too, he was a craftsman in one of the noble trades. When he left the Farther East for Syria, he was already forty years of age; when he came to Jerusalem and entered himself a student in the school of Menachem the Essene and Shammai the Pharisee, he had to labour for his college fees and daily bread. He sat under Sammias and Pollion. Each of these eminent scholars had risen by his virtues and learning to the high rank of rector of the Great College. Under him the college made a new start for fame. He invented the seven rules. A thousand pupils entered his classes: eighty are said to have become famous as men of letters, doctors, and scribes. He lived to the age of a hundred and twenty, and died when Jesus was fourteen years of age (in the tenth year of our era). He may have been one of the doctors with whom Christ talked in the Temple. Simeon succeeded his father in the rectorship, and was still alive when Jesus began to preach, and died two years after the Crucifixion.
THE SANHEDRIM AT JERUSALEM.
The Sanhedrim’s strength had been reduced first by Herod the Great, afterwards by the Roman governors of Judæa. Herod, on capturing Jerusalem, had seized the whole body of the Sanhedrim, thrown them into prison, and, with two illustrious exceptions, put them all to death. Around Hillel and Shammai, the men whom Herod had spared, a new council had been formed; but the prestige of the Sanhedrim could never be restored. Pilate abridged their rights, taking from them more particularly the power of life and death; yet even after they had lost the right to torture prisoners and stone offenders, they still exercised a vast authority in Jerusalem, and in every other Jewish city. Pilate could not dispute their jurisdiction over Jews, however, in whatever land they dwelt, so long as they did not encroach on the civil powers. The Sanhedrim comprised three classes—priests, Levites, and ordinary Jews. The priestly element was strong. Caiaphas, being the official high priest, had a right to preside. In his absencethe chair was filled by Simeon, rector of the Great College. Whoever filled the chair was considered as sitting in the place of Moses.
THE WORKING MAN IN CHRIST’S TIME.
No handicraft could be followed by a slave, and none but a freeman could learn a trade. Some trades were indeed less eminent than others—to wit, the art of a tanner was condemned as noisome; the arts of a barber, a weaver, a fuller, a perfumer, were all considered mean; and no man following these crafts could be allowed on any pretence to serve in the sacred office. A tanner, like Jose of Sephoris, might become a rabbi; he could never be made high priest. Not so with the craft of carpenter—a craft which had a part of its functions in the synagogue and Temple, which was often adopted as a profession by men of noble birth, and which enjoyed the same sort of repute among the Jews that is given in England to the Church, the Army, and the Bar.
THE PHARISAIC NICETIES.
The Pharisees were so rigid that, according to Buxtorf (“Syn. Judaica”), if an ox or other animal fell into a pit, it was deemed lawful to draw it out only when leaving it till Sabbath would involve risk to life. When delay was not dangerous, the rule was to give the beast food sufficient for the day; and if there were water in the bottom of the pit, to place straw and bolsters below it that it might not be drowned. The same author states that it was a breach of the law to let a cock wear a piece of ribbon round its leg on Sabbath, for it was making it bear something. It was also forbidden to walk through a stream on stilts, because, though the stilts appear to bear you, you really carry the stilts. While scrupulously observing the law which prohibited the cooking of food on Sabbath, they did not by any means make the holy day a day of fasting.
THE SIEGES OF JERUSALEM.
From the time Pompey (63B.C.) captured Jerusalem and subjected the country to the Roman yoke, the Jews were always on the verge of insurrection. In 65A.D., when Florus the Roman procurator robbed the sacred treasury, and brought on an insurrection, Bernice, the wife of Agrippa, rushed with bare feet through the streets to intercede with Florus; but it was in vain. In 69A.D.Titus approached and besieged the city, starved out the inhabitants, and destroyed the Temple. Many Jewish captiveswere afterwards carried to Rome to swell the triumph of Titus, and were thrown to the wild beasts or forced to kill one another. The triumphal arch of Titus, erected soon after his death, remains to this day in Rome. From that date the Jews ceased to be a nation, and were dispersed over the world. There are no clear accounts of what became of the Apostles after the fall of Jerusalem. Some say that they arranged to go into different regions, as Scythia, Asia, Parthia, India. Those writers who profess to give later accounts of the Apostles flourished only in the third or fourth century.
DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM IN 70.
Not long before the outbreak of the Jewish War, seven years before the siege of Jerusalem, a man, by name Jesus, came to the city at the Feast of Tabernacles, and in a fit of abstraction cried continually, “Woe to the city! woe to the Temple!” He alarmed the authorities, who ordered him to be scourged as a madman; but he continued these exclamations, and during the siege he was last seen sitting on the wall, still repeating the same cries, till a missile put an end to him. The Jews rebelled against the Romans in 66. The Christians, remembering our Lord’s admonition (Matt. xxiv. 15), forsook the city, and fled beyond the Jordan. In April 70, when the city was filled with strangers, the siege began, and history records no other instance of such obstinate resistance, such desperate bravery and contempt of death. The Castle of Antonia was surprised and taken by night. The famine was so severe that many swallowed their jewels; a mother even roasted her own child. Titus wished to spare the Temple. But in a fresh assault a soldier, unbidden, hurled a firebrand through the golden door. When the flame arose the Jews raised a hideous yell. The Roman legions vied with each other in feeding the flames. It was burnt on August 10th, 70, the same day of the year on which the first Temple was, according to tradition, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The sight was terrible. The mountain seemed enveloped in one sheet of flame; all was covered with corpses; over these heaps the soldiers pursued the fugitives. Josephus says the number of Jews slain was 1,100,000, and the number sold into slavery was 90,000. The Christian Church was by this event liberated from local influences, and took up an independent position in the world.
ANTIOCH THE FIRST GENTILE CHURCH.
The interest of Antioch consists in certain memorable eventshaving occurred there in the first ages of Christianity. It was situated where the chain of the Lebanon, running north, and the chain of Taurus, running east, meet, and was partly on an island. It was here that the Christians, when dispersed from Jerusalem at the death of Stephen, preached the Gospel. Here was the first Gentile Church founded; here the disciples of Christ were first called Christians; here St. Paul first settled as a minister of the Church and started on his first mission; here St. Paul rebuked St. Peter for conduct into which he had been betrayed through the influence of emissaries from Jerusalem. Jews were from the first settled in Antioch in large numbers. The city was founded in 300B.C., and became prosperous. The citizens were noted for scurrilous wit, and for the nicknames they gave, and perhaps the name of Christian had its origin in this disposition of theirs. The modern place known as Antioch is a small and insignificant town of 6,000 inhabitants, though the ancient city was supposed to have had a population of 200,000. An earthquake destroyed most of the city in 526, and again in 583. The Saracens captured it in 635; the Crusaders stormed it in 1089; and it fell under the Moslem rule in 1286, since which time it has dwindled into insignificance.
PALESTINE EXPLORATIONS.
In modern times the geography of Palestine was chiefly known through the works of Dr. Robinson, Burckhart, and Vande Velde; but in 1864 a society sprang up in England for the purpose of a more systematic exploration. Successive expeditions were sent there for that purpose. In 1868 the Moabite Stone was discovered by the Rev. F. Klein. It is a block of basalt about 3½ feet by 2 feet, and has on its face thirty-four lines of writing in the character known as Phœnician. If it had remained entire, there would have been no great difficulty in reading the inscription; but when the Arabs heard that the Europeans attached great value to its possession, they quarrelled about it and broke it up. About two-thirds of the fragments were afterwards collected and pieced together. And, fortunately, a “squeeze” of the whole had been taken before it was broken, and a translation has been arrived at. The restored monument was preserved in the Louvre at Paris, and a plaster cast is in the British Museum. The inscription is supposed to be a record by Media, King of Moab (nearly nine hundred years before Christ), of the victories and public works he had achieved. Besides the Moabite Stone, the explorers discovered numerous dolmens, being circular terraces3 feet high, some of which were conjectured to be burial-places; also, dolmens being flat, table-like surfaces, probably used as altars by the Canaanite tribes.
THE COURSE OF THE JORDAN TO THE DEAD SEA.
Mr. Macgregor, of theRob Roycanoe, traversed the upper part of the Jordan, and arrived at certain measurements, which have been corrected slightly by the Palestine Survey Commission. From the source to the Dead Sea it is 200 miles long. The source of the tributary of the Hasbany is 1,700 feet above the level of the sea. The Dead Sea is 1,292 feet below the level of the sea. The Lake of Tiberias is 682 feet below the level of the sea. The river at first runs 20 miles, then falls into the basin of Hooleh, 4 miles long; then runs 10 miles, and falls into the basin of Tiberias, or the Lake of Galilee, 12½ miles long and 8 miles wide; then runs 65 miles, and falls into the basin of the Dead Sea, 47 miles long and 10 miles wide. The Dead Sea is 1,278 feet deep at its greatest depth; the Sea of Galilee is 165 feet deep at the greatest; Hooleh about 15 feet deep. The Jordan ranks in size with the Dee of Aberdeenshire, but is rather less rapid. The Jordan has nearly the same rapidity as the Clyde and the Tweed. The Dead Sea, called in the Old Testament the Salt Sea, has no outlet to the south, but gets rid by evaporation from the surface of all the water poured into it. This is said to be the most remarkable depression of the kind on the face of the earth. There is no port, and there are no fish. The waters of lakes which have no outlet, such as the Caspian, the Sea of Aral, Lakes Balkash, Van, Uramiah, and the Dead Sea ultimately become more or less saline. The excessive saltness of the Dead Sea is represented as 24·57 lbs. of salt in 100 lbs. of water; while that of the Atlantic is only 6 lbs. of salt in the same quantity.
THE SEA OF GALILEE.
The Sea of Galilee, or Tiberias, or Gennesaret, is pear-shaped, tapering towards the lower end. In its central part it varies from 60 feet to 165 feet deep. It is 12½ miles long, and its greatest width is 8 miles. Bethsaida, now called Tabiga, is on the upper shore of Galilee, and consists of a few huts and mills. Some hot springs here flow into the lake, and great numbers of fish crowd round that spot, which cormorants and gulls watch and feed upon. Here was the miraculous draught of fishes. Here Christ stood in a ship a little from the shore and addressed the multitude. There was also a Bethsaida on the east of the Jordanat St. Tell, where the five thousand were fed. The site of Capernaum, as related (p. 62), is now doubtful; but Mr. Macgregor thought it was at Khan Minyeh, about a mile west of Bethsaida and on the shore of Galilee. Magdala is on the west shore of the lake near the middle, now called Midgel, and is a poor village without beauty or cleanliness. It gives the name to Mary, who is known over the whole world. Behind Magdala the hills rise abruptly to about 1,000 feet. Tiberias is three miles farther down the west coast than Magdala, and is now a filthy town, especially in the Jews’ quarter. Christ seemed never to have entered this town, and the chief reason given is that it was full of foreigners.
FISHING IN SEA OF GALILEE.
The boats now used on the Sea of Galilee have dwindled to about six, of five oars each; and for half a century travellers seldom have seen more than one or two on the lake. The fish in the lake were said by Macgregor to be the carp and the cat-fish, or coracinus. When Dr. Tristram visited the country in 1869, he found a mode of fishing in vogue which was to scatter poisoned bread crumbs, which caused the fish to die and float on the surface in large shoals. He was told that there were fourteen species of fish in the lake, but only three sorts were eatable. He also saw a man wade in naked to guide his seine net round, and then draw it ashore. The storms or squalls on the Sea of Tiberias are often violent, and this is said to be owing to its depth below the level of the sea, where the air is so rarefied and causes a gap in the continuity of the atmosphere. The steep place where the herd of swine ran down into the Sea of Tiberias is judged to be at Kersa, directly opposite to Magdala.
THE SOURCES OF THE JORDAN.
Mr. Macgregor, with theRob Roycanoe, about the year 1868 explored the sources of the Jordan, which are three. One is the Hasbany, due north, near which is the Pool of Fuarr, which the natives all believed to be 1,000 feet deep, being unapproachable by them; but when sounded it was only 11 feet deep. There is a weir made to form this pool, and to supply a mill near this point, and also a bridge with two arches crosses the stream a little lower down. Two miles to the east of the Hasbany is another source of the Jordan, called the Leddan; and on the east bank is a mound, about 30 feet high and 600 feet wide, said to have been once the town of Dan, where Jeroboam set up the idol(1 Kings xii. 28). Near this spot is an impenetrable thicket, covering a pool 100 feet wide, supplied by a subterranean stream. The natives believed the pool bottomless, but it was found by theRob Royto be only 5 feet deep. This pool also supplies a mill. About fourteen miles farther east is the third source of the Jordan, issuing out of a cavern at the village of Banias, which was once the town of Cæsarea Philippi, where Christ asked His disciples who they thought He was. Near this spot was supposed to be the scene of the Transfiguration. Near this also are the vast ruins of the Castle of Subeibeh, built by the Herods, and held by the Crusaders. It is 1,500 feet above the plain.
THE HOOLEH, OR WATERS OF MEROM.
The three sources of the Jordan—the Hasbany, the Leddan, and the Banias—unite, after running about 12 miles, at a place called Tell Sheik Yusuf. The Banias is about 70 feet wide before it reaches this point, and the banks are 20 feet high and abrupt. The united river is called the Jordan from this point, being then about 100 feet wide, and 8 or 9 feet deep. After running about 6 miles, the river becomes dispersed into small channels, and these are soon lost in a vast morass, called the Hooleh, or Waters of Merom, choked with reeds and papyrus, and swarming with leeches. These obstacles prevent even a canoe passing. The passage being thus blocked for half a mile, the water is again collected in a central pool or lake about 60 yards wide. A clear channel of a 100 feet wide and 10 feet deep flows from this pool, between thick walls of papyrus, which grows to a height of 15 feet above the water. And this is said now to be the largest papyrus ground in the world. Pelicans and water-fowl abound in Hooleh, and Mr. Macgregor killed a pelican which measured 10 feet between the tips of the extended wings. The Hooleh lake, or that part of it which is clear of the papyrus, is about 4 miles wide and 6 miles long, tapering to a point at the lower end, where the Jordan again issues as a river. The lake is not deeper than 15 feet, and is more usually 9 and 10 feet only. The Jordan, on its issuing from Hooleh, is about 60 feet wide; and after running 10 miles very rapidly, falls into the Sea of Tiberias or Galilee, or Lake of Gennesaret.
THE RIVERS OF DAMASCUS.
When Naaman the Syrian went to Elisha to be healed of leprosy, and was told to wash seven times in the Jordan, heexclaimed, “Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel?” In 1868 Mr. Macgregor, with theRob Roycanoe, visited these places. Damascus was picturesque in its situation, but the houses and people exceedingly dirty. It is said to be the oldest inhabited city in the world. Vines and orange trees relieve the mud walls, but there is nothing really beautiful except the scenery surrounding this city. The population is said to be now 150,000. The river rises a little to the east of the source of the Jordan out of the Anti-Lebanon Mountains, and flows due east past Damascus. It is a deep and rapid river about sixty feet wide, with high banks, without trees, and with fruitful plains on each side. Tortoises and land crabs abound. TheRob Roycanoe sailed down to the Tell of Salahiyeh, which is a small green hill like Primrose Hill, near London. There are many canals used for irrigation in the course of the river. The river then divides into three branches, on one of which is the spot known as Abraham’s Well, now called the village of Harran. These three branches become lost in a large morass called Ateibah. TheRob Royexplored this morass, and found it perfectly still water, choked with reeds and osiers about five feet high. The natives never go into it, believing some of the pools to be bottomless. The morass or lake is of a double form, and the whole is about fourteen miles long and four miles wide, seldom visited except for wild ducks and the myriads of other fowl which are the only active inhabitants of the spot, and make the only noise that can be heard. A few villages are dotted over the surrounding plains. The river Pharpar flows parallel to the Abana in a line about twelve miles more to the south. It also runs into a large morass, south of which is the land of Bashan. Here wild boars have their tracks through the reeds. The “bulls of Bashan” are shaggy buffaloes, which stand up to their middle in the marshes enjoying the coolness, till the Arab herdsman with a long stick drives them away, when they bellow and snort, raise their tails and scamper off, spreading terror all round.
POPULOUSNESS OF GALILEE IN CHRIST’S TIME.
According to Josephus, who lived a few years after the Crucifixion, the populousness of Galilee was far before most other regions of the world. He says that in a district of between fifty and sixty miles long, and sixty or seventy miles broad, there were no less than 204 cities and villages, the least of which contained 15,000 souls. If this were true, then, leaving out of viewthe straggling villages, the population of the province would amount to the incredible number of 3,060,000. There were, according to Strabo, many Egyptians, Arabians, and Phœnicians in Galilee about that period.
CLIMATE OF PALESTINE.
Major Conder, engaged in the survey of Palestine about 1874, said that Palestine is still a land of corn, wine, and oil, as of yore, and sheep are still fed in the same pastoral regions; the same vineyards are still famous; the corn of its plains still yields a hundred-fold. Plagues, famines, fever, and leprosy still are common. There are still the former and the latter rains; and the rose of Sharon has not withered; the purple iris is still royally robed. Except in the disappearance of the lion and the wild bull there is no change in the fauna. The deer, the antelope, the fox, the wolf, the hyæna, the jackal, the ostrich, and the crocodile still survive in the wilder part of the land, and the great boar, the leopard, the wild goat, and the wild ass. The corn ripens even in April in the Jordan Valley, and in May on the hills; and the olive harvest and the vintage follow in the early autumn. In January comes the snow, with ice and hail. In one year in Jerusalem there were seven falls of snow.
MOUNT HERMON.
Mount Hermon, the second mountain in Syria, is a range of hills lying east and west, all on the east side of the source of the Jordan, often called the Anti-Lebanon. The highest cone is entirely naked. The snow never disappears from the summit, though in the height of summer it melts here and there, except in the ravines radiating from the top. The parallel range nearest the Mediterranean is called the Lebanon; and Mount Lebanon, the highest part, is snow-capped the greater part of the year. The range decreases in elevation southward. The average height of both ranges, exclusive of the peaks, is 1,500 to 1,800 feet. The range is rugged, consisting of deep fissures, precipices, towering rocks, and ravines. The forests of Lebanon consist of the cedars of Lebanon and a great variety of trees; but the cedars have dwindled to about 1,400. In the lower valleys and plains fig trees cling to the rocks, mulberries are cultivated in rows on step-like terraces, vines also are trained along narrow ledges, and dense groves of olives occupy the lower parts of the glens. The date palm, once abundant, is now almost extinct.
THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.
Considerable variety of opinion has existed as to the precise flower which Christ alluded to in the ever-memorable Sermon on the Mount (Matt. vi. 28). Some have thought it must have been the rose; but the Septuagint translated the same word into lily, and this is considered the standard meaning. Father Souciet laboured to prove it ought to be the crown imperial, a plant common in Persia. Whatever flower was indicated, it was no doubt conspicuous and beautiful, as well as common. There are red or purple and white lilies; and probably the scarlet or purple colour was the one referred to, called the scarlet martagon, which grows in profusion in the Levant, and in the district of Galilee in April and May. The purple flowers of the khob or wild artichoke, which abounds in the plains north of Tabor, are thought by some to be the lilies of the field. A recent traveller also introduces to notice a plant with lilac flowers like the hyacinth, which he thought probably the flower meant. Dean Stanley says the only lilies he saw in Palestine were the large yellow water-lilies near Lake Merom. Mr. Thompson, in “The Land and the Book,” seems to prefer a large species of lily which grows among thorns, and is fed upon by the gazelles. He calls the colour gorgeous, but does not state what the colour is. The anemonecoronariais also noticed by Mr. John Smith, of Kew, with its brilliant colours, growing everywhere, and is abundant on the Mount of Olives. The lily of the valley, as known in England, is not a native of Palestine, and is not the flower of that name mentioned in the Bible.
WAYSIDE CEREALS, FRUITS, AND FLOWERS OF PALESTINE.
The most substantial as well as ordinary corn and fruits of Palestine are, and probably were in our Lord’s time, wheat, maize, lentils, barley, vines, olives, figs, and pomegranates. The land was ploughed by oxen. The fields were not usually separated by hedges, walls, or fences. The plough was a rude and light implement, which did not penetrate deeply into the soil, but merely scratched the surface a little. The threshing floor was merely a smooth and hard place where the corn was piled in a heap in the centre, and the oxen led round the outside to trample out the grains. The usual vegetables in Palestine are beans, peas, beets, turnips, carrots, and radishes. Gourds also abound. The herbs are lettuce, parsley, mint, mustard, lentils, cabbages, onions, and garlic. Melons and cucumbers arerather luxuries, the former being manured from the dove-cotes which abound, and which are often substantial round buildings. The vineyards, which are surrounded by a hedge and ditch, are carefully watched during the ripening season to protect them from thieves, and also from the invasion of foxes, jackals, badgers, bears, and wild boars. The vineyards also have cherry, apple, pear, fig, and nut trees. The olives are planted in rows in the orchards. It is a tradition that the olives still growing at the foot of Mount Olivet were growing in the time of our Lord; but this is highly improbable, and is contradicted by some facts recorded by Josephus. The olives are first salted, then crushed in the olive press by a round stone as a press, run out into stone troughs, and the oil is stored in skin bottles or in stone jars, which are buried in the ground. The date palm abounds in the low and sheltered places. The palm tree consists of a single stem or trunk, rising to sixty or eighty feet without a branch, and with a tuft of leaves on the top. The fig tree, with its short stem and wide lateral branches, with sprigs of little figs growing all round the trunk, is the easiest to climb. The cedar tree was considered the most excellent for size, beauty of form, and for fragrance and durability of its wood. Hence Solomon used it chiefly for the Temple. It attained sometimes 120 feet in height. The wild cypress yielded gopher wood, of which the Ark was made. The oak and the terebinth are sometimes confounded together; but a small kind of the latter produces pistachio nuts. The poplar, evergreen, and sycomore are conspicuous in the jungles near the Jordan, as well as the tamarisk and cane. Of flowers the rose is a favourite. The flower called the rose of Sharon was rather the flower of a bulbous root. The lily of the field referred to in the Sermon on the Mount has been sometimes identified as a red tulip, called by the French a meadow anemone or queen of the meadows. It is remarkable for its great variety of colours, the scarlet abounding especially. There are also buttercups, dandelions, daisies, poppies, white and yellow crocus, mandrake, hyacinth, and sweet-scented stock. Of wild shrubs the oleander grows to a height of twelve to fifteen feet, and with its bright red flowers adorns the banks of the Jordan. The maidenhair fern hangs luxuriant round the fountains.
THE BIRDS OF PALESTINE.
The birds found in modern times in Palestine include the following:—The woodpecker, the robin, the lark, the thrush, the willow wren, and chiff-chaff; the true bulbul, which is the nightingaleof Palestine; the grackle, or orange-winged blackbird, haunting the gorges of the Dead Sea; also rock doves issue from the caverns; the wagtail; rock swallows; the black-headed jay; great spotted cuckoos; the black-shouldered kite; the red-legged partridge; ducks, rails, and coots; the eagle owl, as large as those in Central Europe; also little owls; the bat; the seagull, flamingo, crane, and cormorant; the imperial eagle; the vulture, griffon, and falcon; the hooded crow, the rook, and jackdaw. Of all the birds of Jerusalem the raven is the most conspicuous, one species being the ashy-necked, and smaller than the common sort. These ravens haunt the trees of the Kedron and Mount Olivet.
WILD BEASTS AND ANIMALS OF PALESTINE.
The wild beasts in Palestine include the following:—The ichneumon, which frequents the rocks, being as large as a badger, and of the same colour; the fox, the hedgehog, and the badger; the mole rat, which frequents all ruins, being twice the size of the English mole, and of a pale slate colour; the wild boar, the hyæna, and jackal; hares and gazelles. The bees are of smaller size than the English; butterflies the same as in England. Lizards and snails are common.
JERUSALEM.
The situation of Jerusalem is such that the ancient Jews believed it to be the centre of the world, and yet it was out of the great highways, and so had an immunity from disturbance. It stands on the edge of one of the highest tablelands in the country. Hence its great height used also to be constantly mentioned as a noted feature. Its highest point is about 2,600 feet above the level of the sea; the Mount of Olives overtops the highest part, being 2,724 feet. The situation of Jerusalem was not unlike that of Rome, except that Rome was in a well-watered plain, leading direct from the sea, while Jerusalem was on a bare tableland in the heart of the country. Each had its own cluster of steep hills. One great difficulty was as to supplying water for the gardens on the north side, as no trace of an ancient reservoir is now discovered in the upper parts. The arrangement of streets is now perhaps the same as in early times. A dull, leaden, ashy hue is everywhere on the buildings and ruins. The three great works in Solomon’s time were the Temple, the Palace, and the Wall of Jerusalem. After its destruction in 70, the city disappeared from history for fifty years, and its very namewas almost forgotten, till Constantine built the Martyrion on the site of the Crucifixion. In 326 Constantine’s mother, the Empress Helena, erected magnificent churches in Bethlehem and on the Mount of Olives. In 369 the Emperor Julian the Apostate made an abortive attempt to rebuild the Temple. In the fourth and fifth century pilgrims began to visit it. In 529 the Emperor Justinian built a splendid church in honour of the Virgin. The Christians ceased to have power there when the Khalif Omar in 637 captured it. In 1099 the Crusaders first captured it, and held it till 1187, when Saladin retook it. In 1243 it again came to the hands of the Christians. It again in 1244 was retaken by the Mohammedans, and has remained under the Sultans till modern times. There are various theories of geographers as to the topography of Jerusalem. Some think that the sites of all the chief places were correctly ascertained in the early centuries; while others say there is nothing but guesswork as to the site of the Holy Sepulchre and the Temple.
THE CITY OF NAZARETH.
Nazareth, the city or village where Christ lived after the return from Egypt till manhood, is situated in a basin among the hills just before they sink down into the plain of Esdraelon. The surrounding heights rise about 400 or 500 feet higher, with rounded tops, and they are composed of the glittering limestone, diversified with fig trees and wild shrubs. The hollyhock is one of the gay flowers of the field. The valley, which is about a mile long and a quarter of a mile wide, is rich and well cultivated, having corn-fields and gardens, hedges of cactus, and clusters of fruit-bearing trees. The fruits are pomegranates, oranges, figs, and olives. The village has now about 4,000 population, chiefly Christians, with a few Mohammedans, a mosque, a Franciscan convent, and two or three chapels of other confessions. In the rainy season the streams pour down rapid floods through the hills. The wise man there takes care to build and dig deep down to the rock, and not to trust to the loose soil as a foundation. From the heights extensive views are obtained of the Lebanon, Hebron, Carmel, Gilead, and Gilboa. In this village Christ taught in the synagogue, and was once dragged to a precipice by His fellow-townsmen to be cast down. The origin of the disrepute in which Nazareth was held is not clearly known; but all the inhabitants of Galilee were looked upon with contempt by the people of Judæa, because they spoke a rude dialect, and were more exposedto contact with the heathen. Near the village is shown the Fountain of the Virgin, where the angel’s salutation is said to have taken place, as the Virgin, like the rest of the inhabitants, resorted there for supplies of water. Another place of note is the cliff or precipice, about two miles south-east of the town; but geographers think that a cliff of fifty feet high near the Maronite Church is the locality where the mob wished to precipitate Christ. It is related that no Christians lived in Nazareth till the time of the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, who built the first Church of the Annunciation. The town was all but destroyed by Sultan Bibars in 1263, and it was many ages before it recovered. No Jews reside in Nazareth in modern times.
THE SITE OF CAPERNAUM.
The place where our Lord was so conspicuously occupied, the city of Capernaum, has caused great controversy among the geographers. The doom pronounced against it and the other unbelieving cities has been notably fulfilled, for no one can in the present day pronounce between the two most probable spots. One of these is Khan Minyeh, a mound of ruins close to the shore of Gennesaret, at the north-west extremity of the plain. The other is Tell Hum, three miles north of the last place, where are ruins of walls and foundations, half a mile long by a quarter wide. It also projects into the lake, and is backed by rising ground. Dr. Wilson supports the second, as also do the geographers dating from 1675; while Dr. Robinson, relying on Josephus, supports the first. It is one of the insoluble problems.
EARLY CHURCH CUSTOMS, FASTS, AND FESTIVALS.
CHURCH HISTORY DIVIDED INTO AGES AND PERIODS.
Dr. Schaff, in his “History of the Apostolic Church,” has divided the whole history of the Church as follows:—
First Age.—The Primitive or Universal Church, from its foundation on the day of Pentecost to Gregory the Great, thus embracing the first six centuries (A.D.30-590).
First Period.—The Apostolic Church, from the first Christian Pentecost to the death of the Apostles (A.D.30-100).
Second Period.—The Persecuted Church, to Constantine (A.D.100-311).
Third Period.—The Established Church of the Græco-Roman Empire, and amidst the Barbarian storms, to Gregory the Great. (A.D.311-590).
Second Age.—The Church of the Middle Ages, or Romano-Germanic Catholicism, from Gregory the Great to the Reformation (A.D.590-1517).
Fourth Period.—The commencement of the Middle Ages, the planting of the Church among the Germanic nations, to the time of Hildebrand (A.D.590-1049).
Fifth Period.—The flourishing period of the Middle Ages, the summit of the Papacy, monasticism, and scholastic and mystic theology, to Boniface VIII. (A.D.1049-1303).
Sixth Period.—The dissolution of the Middle Ages and preparation for the Reformation (A.D.1303-1517).
Third Age.—The Modern or Evangelical Protestant Church in conflict with the Roman Catholic Church from the Reformation to the present time.
Seventh Period.—The Reformation, or productive Protestantism and reacting Romanism (A.D.1517-1600).
Eighth Period.—Orthodox Confessional and ScholasticProtestantism in conflict with ultramontane Jesuitism, and this again with semi-Protestant Jansenism (seventeenth century and first part of eighteenth).
Ninth Period.—Subjective and negative Protestantism, Rationalism, and Sectarianism, and positive preparation for a new age in both Churches (middle of eighteenth century to present time).
THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH.
The Apostolic period, fromA.D.30 to 100, or rather 117, the death of John, may be subdivided into three: (1) the founding of the Christian Church among the Jews, chiefly the labours of St. Peter,A.D.30-50; (2) the founding of the Christian Church among the Gentiles, or the labours of St. Paul (A.D.50-64), who made Christianity more and more independent of Jerusalem, and the destruction of Jerusalem completed the severance; (3) the summing-up and organic union of Jewish and Gentile Christianity in one whole, chiefly the work of John. The three important local centres were Jerusalem, the mother Church of Jewish Christianity; Antioch, the starting-point of the heathen missions; Ephesus, the later residence of John. At the same time, Rome, where Peter and Paul spent their last days, was the centre of Western Christianity. The Apostolic period differs essentially from all subsequent periods. In the first place, Christianity comes forth from the bosom of Judaism, and for a long time clothes itself in the forms of that religion. The Apostles are all Jews. In their preaching they all, not excepting Paul, go first to their brethren, preach in the synagogues, visit the Temple at Jerusalem. The Church gradually separates from the home of its birth. The second peculiarity is the unstained purity and primitive freshness of doctrine and life, and its extraordinary spiritual gifts, working harmoniously together, and providing, by their creative and controlling power, for all the wants and relations of the infant Church. Müller called the first century the century of wonders. At the head of the Church were men who enjoyed immediate intercourse with the Saviour of the world, were trained by Him in person, and filled in an extraordinary degree with the Holy Ghost. Such infallible vehicles of Divine revelation, such sanctified and influential persons, are found in no subsequent age. The Apostolic period contained the germs of all subsequent periods, Christian personalities, and tendencies.
EARLY CHURCH AND THE MILLENNIUM.
In the ancient Church of the first three centuries there wasalways an expectation of the millennium, as they counted, according to the Septuagint Version then current, 6,000 years to end soon after the coming of Christ. The primitive Church of Antioch considered the creation of the world took place 6,000 years before Christ. In the fourth century this period was reduced to 5,500, next to 5,200. The authority of the Vulgate and of the Hebrew text, as accepted by the moderns, fixed 4,004 as the period. The joyful Sabbath of 1,000 years was then to begin, and Christ would reign in the New Jerusalem. The assurance of such millennium was inculcated by a succession of Fathers, from Justin Martyr and Irenæus (130), who conversed with the immediate disciples of the Apostles down to Lactantius, who was the preceptor to the son of Constantine (317). The joys of the millennium were to be balanced by a concurrent conflagration and destruction of Rome, as the mystic Babylon. It was affirmed that those who since the death of Christ had obstinately persisted in the worship of demons would be delivered over to eternal torture. And the Christians of that time were said to enjoy a spiritual pride in witnessing the destruction of their enemies. Tertullian, who died in 240, an energetic Father and champion of the truth, thus alluded to the matter: “You are fond of spectacles: expect the greatest of all spectacles, the last and eternal judgment of the universe. How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates who persecuted the name of God liquefying in fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames with their deluded scholars; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of Minos, but of Christ; so many tragedians declaiming their own sufferings; so many dancers,” etc., etc.
EARLY CHRISTIANS AND THE COMMUNITY OF GOODS.
One of the difficulties of the early Christians was to know how to act as regards their worldly goods, seeing that they were all brethren. They acknowledged this brotherhood, and yet were not clear where to draw the line. They used to salute each other with a holy kiss (Rom. xvi. 16); and they held love-feasts (oragapæ), by way of maintaining their fellowship; and these were held especially in connection with the Lord’s Supper. But these feasts were found not to work satisfactorily—chiefly, perhaps, because there was no suitable place of meeting. They were condemned and discontinued even in the time of the Apostles. Inthe first ardour of the Church at Jerusalem, they tried the experiment of community of goods. The Apostles were careful to point out that the surrender was entirely voluntary. Instances of hypocrisy and avarice soon disgusted many, as in the notable case of Ananias (Acts v. 1), and the dissatisfied Hebrew widows (Acts vi. 1). It is not known how long this experiment lasted at Jerusalem. It was an experiment which could not succeed according to the constitution of human nature; for the love of an exclusive proprietorship is inherent, and it has been found in all succeeding ages that individuals, as well as nations, flourish most when each attends to his own business, and is satisfied to make the best of his own opportunities, and to cease to covet the acquisitions of others. It is found most salutary when each seeks only to gain riches by his own exertions, and without undue interference with others. Many dreamers have often looked forward to a community of goods as the most perfect state; but a little practical knowledge soon teaches every one that it is a dream, and nothing more. All the virtues of life are compatible with the exclusive possession of property; and few virtues are possible when there is no security for property as a basis.
FAVOURITE EMBLEMS OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS.
In the early centuries, before paintings and images were introduced in places of worship, and which at first were thought to resemble too closely the Pagan practices, there were some favourite emblems used by the Christians on their walls and drinking vessels and rings. One was the figure of the Good Shepherd, representing Christ carrying a lamb on His shoulders. On rings would be carved a dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit; or an anchor of hope, or a fisherman with a draught of fishes; or a lyre, signifying joy and praise. These were suggested by the subjects that made most impression on their daily thoughts.
CHRISTIAN NAMES OF PEOPLE.
One of the early notions of Christians was to select the name of some apostle or saint as one of the names of their children; and this was deemed, if not an infallible, at least a wise and prudent incentive to worthy actions. Hence it became universal to adopt a Christian name, and to mention it at the time of baptism; and heathen names were, on the other hand, forbidden. It was long thought right that the bishop, if he found some pagan name suggested, should forbid it and alter it into someproper Christian name. Indeed, it was long deemed an accepted custom, if not the law, that the Christian name once given either by a bishop or priest at baptism was indelible, and that some offence was or would be committed by seeking to change it. This, however, in modern times, is known to be a delusion; and whatever may have been the name or names given to a child by parents or priests, it is the right of every one, without anybody’s leave, at any time thereafter, to change his name, both Christian and surname if he thinks fit, into any other; and if he choose to adhere to one name of his own choice, people will seldom trouble themselves to dispute it or to deny him this gratification. The only condition is that this change must not be made for purposes of fraud.
AURICULAR CONFESSION AND PENANCE.
Mr. Roberts, in his “Church Memorials,” says that in 459, which was the last year but one of the eventful pontificate of Leo I., the usage which had long prevailed in the Churches of the West, that there should be a public recital of sins which had been privately confessed, and a committal of the same to writing, was suppressed by the authority of Leo as of dangerous consequence to morals and good government. It seemed to that Pope that the practice of bringing these secret things to light before the congregation was unnecessary and pernicious. He deemed it enough for the penitent to make his confession first to God, and then to the priest who was to make intercession for him and procure the needful remission. And this may be considered as the date of private or auricular confession under the full sanction of ecclesiastical authority. Nor was public confession in general understood to be interdicted by this arbitrary Pope, but only the promulgation in public of such sins as were clandestine and could transpire only by the revelation of the secret by the sinner himself. The Roman Church has, however, always maintained the confession to a priest to be necessary, as a ground for the remission of sins committed after baptism, and essential as a constituent part of the penitential ordinance. It seems but of little importance to investigate the origin of the rite of penance, which lies buried behind the rubbish of superstition and priestcraft, or to travel through the various periodical changes in its forms and ceremonies. It is to the praise of the early Church that none of the Fathers of the apostolical and primitive ages laid stress on auricular confession as an essential part of Christian duty. The Council of Lateran in 1215 declared it necessary tosalvation. And in 1521 the Council of Trent issued a decree making both penance and auricular confession alike necessary.
RELIGIOUS RIOTS ABOUT THE TRISAGION.
The sixth century opened a sanguinary internecine feud between sects of the Church, and the first religious war was said to arise about the correct words of the Trisagion as used in the Church service in Constantinople. The blood of thousands was shed in the streets, squares, and churches; and at last the Emperor had to abdicate to conciliate an insolent mob, principally composed of infuriated monks. Gibbon thus describes it: “In the fever of the times the tense, or rather the sound, of a syllable was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The Trisagion (thrice holy), ‘Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts!’ is supposed by the Greeks to be the identical hymn which the angels and cherubim eternally repeat before the throne of God, and which about the middle of the fifth century was miraculously revealed to the Church of Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon added, ‘who was crucified for us’; and this grateful address, either to Christ alone or to the whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and the West. The Trisagion, with and without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the Cathedral by the two adverse choirs; and when their lungs were exhausted, they had recourse to the more solid arguments of sticks and stones. The aggressors were punished by the Emperor, and defended by the Patriarch, and the crown and the mitre were staked on the event of this momentous quarrel.”
THE ANCIENTS’ PREACHING APPLAUDED ON THE SPOT.
One remarkable feature of the ancient services of the Church was, that the people used to applaud and encourage the preacher with clapping of hands and loud acclamations. St. Jerome, writing to Vigilantius, says, “The time was when he himself had applauded him with his hands and feet, leaping by his side and crying out ‘Orthodox’ for his sermon on the Resurrection.” And George of Alexandria relates that “the people applauded the sermons of St. Chrysostom, some by tossing their thin garments, others moving their plumes, others laying their hands upon their swords, and others waving their handkerchiefs and crying out, ‘Thou art worthy of the priesthood! thou art the thirteenth apostle! Christ hath sent thee to save souls!’” etc. AndGregory in his dream describes how the people during the sermon moved their bodies like the waves of the sea raised by the wind. But the great ambition of the preacher was rather to melt the congregation into tears. St. Jerome says the preacher should labour to excite the groans of the people rather than their applauses. St. Austin says he once preached in Cæsarea, in Mauritania, where a savage custom existed of the citizens engaging in a bloody fight once a year by throwing stones at each other. And he directed all his eloquence against this custom, and was glad to notice the tears shed by many, and he rejoiced at the time of writing that eight years had since passed and the fight had never been there renewed. St. Chrysostom, the most effective of all the ancient preachers, said once, “I have thought of making it a law to forbid such acclamations, and to persuade you to hear in silence.” It was a frequent practice for notaries to take down the sermons of favourite preachers in shorthand, and in that way many have been preserved to the present day.
DRESS AND APPEARANCE OF EARLY CLERGY.
At a very early period the leaders of the Church attributed great importance to the particular dress and appearance of the clergy, and laid down stringent rules on that subject. The Canons said a decent mean must be observed—neither too nice nor too slovenly. In particular the extremes of baldness and long hair were equally objectionable, so that all were obliged to shave the crown of the head and beard. This distinguished them from the priests of pagan deities. So they were to observe a medium in dress, and to wear neither white nor black. But the colours varied in different times and places. It was noticed that these directions as to garb arose after the danger of detection during times of persecution had ceased. One garment, called the caracalla, and since cassock, was adopted after the time of Constantine. It was a long garment, reaching down to the heels, such as the Roman people put on when they went to salute the Emperor.
THE FOPPISH PRIESTS AND DEACONS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.
So early as the fourth century there were very worldly and self-seeking officers in the Church. St. Jerome in his “Treatise on Virginity” says: “There are some of them who aspire to the office of priest or deacon that they may visit women with the greater liberty. Their chief care is to be well dressed, neatlyshod, and perfumed; they curl their hair with irons, they have bright rings on their fingers, and they walk on tiptoe, looking more like bridegrooms than clerks. Some of them make it their only business to find out the names and residences of ladies of quality, and to discover their dispositions. I will describe one of them who is a master in the art. He rises with the sun, the order of his visits is arranged, he finds out the shortest ways, and the troublesome old man enters almost the very chambers in which they rest. If he sees a cushion, a napkin, or any other little article that he likes, he praises it and admires the neatness of it; he takes it in his hand, then complains that he has not something of that kind; and, in short, he snatches it away before it is given to him.” St. Jerome also mentions the avarice of these self-seeking priests, who, under pretence of giving blessings, reach out their hands to receive money. This plain speaking of St. Jerome made him many enemies, who attacked in turn his own reputation and the fascination he exercised over fashionable ladies, so that he had to leave Rome and retreat to Palestine.
THE EARLY BISHOPS.
Great learning has been shown by ecclesiastical historians as to the precise position of early bishops—one side contending that these high officials were appointed by Christ, or at least by His Apostles; and the further inference is then drawn, that therefore this mode of governing the Church is the best possible and the only right and orderly kind of government for a true Church. Both points have been denied, and especially the second, because it is urged that even if there were bishops appointed by the Apostles, it would prove nothing, except that the Apostles thought them the best kind of officers for the time being, and yet that they might not be the best in other and different countries and circumstances. Most of the Christians of all times till the Reformation too hastily overlooked the fundamental principle, that each country and age is necessarily the best judge of the peculiar mode of governing the Church, and should not surrender its better judgment to the views of earlier and less experienced ages as to matters not expressly enjoined by Scripture. The defenders of bishops delight to dwell on some facts, or assumed facts, in favour of their theory. They say that St. John was one of the authors of the order of bishops, and that he went about ordaining for various stations, and especially Polycarp, while St. Peter ordained Clement at Rome and St. Paul ordained Timothy at Ephesus. The list of the first bishops is, however, very obscure. It is saidthat James, the Lord’s brother, was the first Bishop of Jerusalem, and was ordained by the Apostles immediately after the Crucifixion. And hence it is argued that our Lord must have sanctioned this act in some way. One consequence of the theory of bishops was, that the bishop alone had an inherent right to administer the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and also to preach and ordain others; while a presbyter could only do so with his permission express or implied. And, above all, the bishop could call presbyters to account and excommunicate and censure them, thereby implying that the one order of priests was inferior to the other in jurisdiction.