In well-nigh all these reliquiæ of the earliest Christian teaching, copious use was made of that wonderful 53rd chapter of Isaiah, in which the Hebrew seer sketched with a startling accuracy of detail some of the leading features of the awful drama of the Divine Atonement for all sin.[61] The scene of this drama was the storied Holy City, and the One who made the great Atonement was He who on earth was known as Jesus Christ and in heaven as the Son of God.
The above “Catena Aurea” (golden chain) of passages is taken from the works we possess of the earliest teachers of Christianity who wrote in the fifty years immediately following the passing of S. John the beloved apostle, and they tell us exactly what was the doctrine pressed home to the Brotherhood in the early assemblies of Christians of which we are here speaking.
There were other dogmas, no doubt, included in the teaching of these early assemblies and meetings, such as the resurrection of the flesh; the great reckoning before the Judge, at which even the just would tremble were it not that the Judge was at the same time their Redeemer and loving Friend. The unspeakable joys of Paradise, the garden of their God and Saviour, were constantly dwelt upon, and the good glad tidings would fall like dew from heaven upon the world-weary, sad-eyed listeners.
But the great doctrine of the “Atonement,” at once simple and sublime, so repeatedly pressed home in the above-quoted words of the earliest teachers, was no doubt the strongest inducement which drew the Christian folk to meet often together—was the link which bound them into one brotherhood, and knit them at the same time to the loving Master.
It was a new preaching, this secret of the great love of God which passeth understanding, and one that excited wonderful and soul-stirring fears and hopes, and which filled the small dark corridors and low-browed chapels of the Roman catacombs which the faithful often used as meeting-homes for teaching and for prayer, with what seemed to the groups of worshippers verily a Divine light; and to these early Christian worshippers, the gloomy rough-hewn sleeping-places of the dead, through which the pilgrim traveller now wanders and wonders, seemed to them the very ante-chambers of heaven.
We have dwelt with some insistence upon the dogmatic teaching which without doubt formed a part, and that by no means an inconsiderable part, of the procedure of the primitive gatherings of Christians; for it is often urged that the great bond which united the brethren of the very early Church was only the beautiful mutual love and charity urged in these gatherings.
There is some truth in this assertion. It was a new life which was preached, and to a certain extent lived, by the Christian Brotherhood. It was a life quite different to anything which had existed before the Redeemer went in and out among men. We shall dwell on it presently; but it must never be forgotten that the mainspring of this new life was the doctrine of the Cross—of the Atonement made by that Divine One who had founded the new religion.
The belief in the supreme Divinity of Jesus, who had come from heaven to redeem men, was the foundation story of the wonderful love and boundless charity which lived in their midst,—a love which charmed the hearts of all sorts and conditions of men, and attracted more and ever more weary and heavy-laden men and women to join the company of Christians.