And as we read, we feel that these writers were evidently intensely persuaded of the truth of such sublime and soul-stirring assertions; we know, too, that these writers and teachers lived the beautiful life they taught,—that they died, many of them, with a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts.
But what of the People—the common folk, the ordinary everyday citizen; the slave and the little trader of the thousand cities of the Empire, the soldier of Rome, and the patrician of Rome—what did they think of all this?—these new strange words, these sunlit hopes, these glorious golden promises of the great teachers of Christianity?
The catacombs give us the answer. In quite late years, slowly, painfully, the antiquary and the scholar have opened out the secrets of the long-hidden City of the Dead which lies all round immemorial Rome, and, thanks to their labours, from words and pictures graven and painted on a million graves, comes to us, across the many centuries, the answer with no uncertain voice.
Yes, the People—the slave and the trader, the soldier and the noble—believed the words of the New Testament writings, and accepted the teaching of the early Christian teachers, and believing, struggled to lead the life the Master loved. None for a moment would dare to doubt the mighty power of this strange weird testimony of a million tombs; it is indeed a voice from a thousand graves.
Then, too, what may be termed the terminology, that is the words and expressions used in these vast cemeteries for all that is connected with death and burial, teaches the same truth—that for a believer in the Name, all the gloom and dread and horror usually associated with death are absent in these short epitaphs.
The catacomb inscriptions and pictures, besides their overwhelming testimony to the belief of the early Christians in the continuance of life after death, in the immortality of the soul, a testimony expressed in a countless number of ways, bear their witness to some of the more important dogmas of the Christian faith.
The extreme brevity of the inscriptions and the necessarily small space allotted to the pictures and emblems graven and painted on the sepulchral slabs, for the most part very small, of course preclude anything like any complete enunciation even of the principal Articles of the Christian faith: still what we find on these slabs tells us with no uncertain voice in whom these early congregations believed, and to whom these fervent prayers were addressed. Each of the Persons of the ever-blessed Trinity are named in many of these epitaphs.
We find many instances of the formula of the ancient creeds, “In God and in Christ.” This distinct enumeration of the two first Persons of the Blessed Trinity bears witness to the Catholic faith of the composers of the epitaphs.