Cyprian the saintly, the martyr Bishop of Carthage, well voices the feelings of Christians in the matter of death the friend:[90] “Let us think what we mean when we speak of the presence of Christ (after death), of the increasing hosts of our friends, the loved, the reverenced, the sainted who are there. Cyprian cannot even mourn the departed—he only misses them as friends gone on a long journey. He is unable to bear the putting on black garments of mourning, in memory of those who wear the fadeless white.” “Put the terror of death quite away—think only of the deathlessness beyond.” “Let us greet the day which gives to each of us his own country ... which restores us to paradise. Who that has lived in foreign lands would not hasten to go back to his own country?... We look on paradise as our country.”
The wondrous joy which came to the Christian in the assemblies we have been picturing—the fact of the new Brotherhood—the feeling of the presence of the Master in their midst, watching over them—has been already dwelt upon at some length.
The blessed consciousness of the forgiveness of all sin, the knowledge that in repentance and in prayer they could ever wash anew their scarred robes white in the blood of the Lamb, was a source of perpetual and ever-recurring joy to the earnest Christian. The doctrine of the atonement ever would give them constant comfort and confidence in all the difficulties and dangers of common everyday life—“Though their sins were as scarlet they would become white as snow,” was an ancient Hebrew saying of Isaiah. It was one of the precious treasures inherited by the Christian from the Jewish Church. And in the sorely harassed and tempted life of the world of Rome the words would be often repeated by the believers, with the new striking Christian addition—“when washed in the blood of the Lamb,” and the memory of the beautiful saying would ever supply fresh courage for the conflict.
Perhaps the most powerful and sustaining of all the Christian beliefs, the one that never for an instant was absent from their thoughts, was the hope—aye, more than hope, the certainty that bliss indescribable awaited the soul of the happy redeemed the moment it quitted the body—“To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”—a wonderful promise, indeed, of the Redeemer, which must have brought ineffable sweetness and repose into thousands of storm-tossed hearts,—a promise which must have made up for many a hard and painful struggle. The life so hard and difficult—so full of dangers and perplexities—would soon come to an end, and then at once the beatific vision would be their guerdon, and rest and peace and joy would be the portion of the redeemed souls for ever.
Our picture of the inner life of the Christian in the early Christian centuries would be incomplete were we not to allude to the influence, perhaps scarcely recognised but ever at work, of portions of the “Revelation” of S. John. Holding, of course, in the teaching of the Christian masters a very different position to the Gospels, which, of course, formed the authoritative basis of all Christian instruction, the “Revelation” occupied a peculiar and singularly influential place in the thoughts of the early harassed believers.
Many of the more mystical and obscure sections of that wonderful composition which was very generally accepted as the work of the beloved apostle, we may assume were little dwelt upon either in public teaching or in private meditation; the mystic prophecies of the seer were, comparatively speaking, but little read, and received then as now different interpretations; but interspersed with these prophecies, and not necessarily connected with them, occur passages of surpassing beauty, in which pictures of the heaven-life are painted by no mortal hand. It was these which arrested the imagination, and found a home in many a Christian heart. The passages which contained these pictures were no doubt repeated again and again by lonely harassed men and women in the silent watches of the night, in the public worship, in the study chamber, especially in the hour of danger and trial.
The hope of a glorious eternity was vividly painted in several remarkable passages of S. John’s great Vision of Heaven and the future things. The disciples of the sterner school, who were trained so to speak for martyrdom, felt themselves specially addressed when the Seer told his vision of the thrones and of those who sat on them,—they would occupy the place of the souls of those who had been slain for the witness of Jesus (Rev. xx. 4); and again they would call to mind that when the Seer asked who were these arrayed in white robes, and whence came they? he was told that these were they which came out of great tribulation, and who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb; and that therefore were they before the throne of God, and that from their eyes God would wipe away all tears (Rev. vii. 13–17).
To the disciples of the gentler school, too, words of immortal hope were spoken often in the same Book which spoke as no writing of earth had ever spoken before of the heaven-life. The Seer heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and said how blessed they were which are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb; and the same Seer heard how there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying; and again repeated the glorious promise that His servants (all His servants) should see His face, and that they should reign for ever and ever (Rev. xix. 6, 9, xxi. 4, xxii. 4, 5).
Moreover, they read and pondered over that most beautiful, most exhaustive promise made to all His faithful servants,—not only to the martyr band,—“Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have the right to come to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city (of God).” (Rev. xxii. 14, REVISED VERSION).