"I remember distinctly the night I saw him in the court of the temple. I knelt beside him; and in the glare of the many lights saw every line and undulation of the golden ringlets that floated down his neck and shoulders. They were not of one color. At the summit they glowed with more than star-like brilliancy, which faded into other dazzling hues reflected from each undulation to their extremities. They talk of the colors of the rainbow; these were all exhausted in the surpassing loveliness of that noble head, above which the air-formed crown rested like a glory. When I saw his face as he rose from his knees, though sad in its expression as fancy in its furthest flight could paint it, it beamed with a beauty such as lover's eye never invested the beloved with, such as I shall never see until I gaze on it again, as I hope, in that kingdom, where, after God's increated beauty, it increases the happiness of the glorified to behold it. Once again I saw him. But, oh! how changed the human beauty of that face divine and those golden ringlets. They were matted in uncombed confusion with dried and drying clots of blood! The face was disfigured and ugly. I could scarcely imagine him the same person I had met in the court of the temple. These different appearances under different circumstances will no doubt account for the varying descriptions of him given by those who saw him." [Footnote 238]
[Footnote 238: Tradition is divided as to our Lord's personal appearance; some of the holy fathers describe him as a specimen of manly beauty; others say the contrary. We have borrowed from the letter of a Roman officer then in Judea.]
During the recital the old man's cheeks were wet with tears and his voice often trembled.
It was now after two o'clock, the hour appointed for the commencement of the celebration.
St. Justin, in his first apology to the Antonines, describes the manner in which the Christians celebrated their Sundays and other feasts. They met before sunrise and sang a hymn in praise of the Redeemer; then lessons from the Old and New Testaments were read, with the addition of prayers for the wants of the faithful and the conversion of the unbelievers; the presiding presbyter, who is a bishop or a priest, addressed the congregation; and finally, taking bread, blessed and brake it, saying, 'This is my body;' and in like manner he blessed and consecrated the chalice, saying, 'This is the cup of my blood.' The saint who was living at the period of which we write states the doctrine of the real presence and of the sacrifice as clearly as words can express them.
Clement, with his assistant deacon and subdeacons, sat in front of the altar. On the seats on each side were Nicodemus, Andronicus, Damianus, and the other clergy and missionaries. Aurelian and Sisinnius were astonished to observe that their acquaintance and friend Clement was the chief in the Christian assemblage; and that his principal minister, in fact, his attendant deacon, was Vitus, the young officer of the imperial household, who had made himself so remarkable the night of the emperor's feast. But their amazement was doubly increased when, after the clergy had taken their seats, a procession of females veiled in black emerged from a side-door and knelt before Clement, opposite the centre of the altar. In front were two matrons, and between them the slender figure of a younger female, whose head and shoulders were concealed by a white veil. Aurelian's breath came thick and fast; Sisinnius, too, was excited. But Zoilus by a significant pressure restrained any open manifestation of their feelings.
The hymn chanted was composed specially by one of the brethren for the time and feast. It was as follows:
Christmas Hymn.
The flocks lay on the midnight plains,
Where Jacob tended his of old, [Footnote 239]
Where David woke his earliest strains
And sang the Lion of Judah's fold,
Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis Deo!
[Footnote 239: The plains of Bethlehem, where Jacob had tended the flocks of his father-in-law, and David those of his father.]
When suddenly the skies grew bright,
And angel choirs in countless throng,
With flashing wings, lit up the night,
And chanted, as they passed along,
Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!
"Now glory be to God on high,
And peace on earth to fallen man;"
With star-like clearness through the sky,
'Twas thus the angel anthem ran,
Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!
We saw them by the new star's light
Above the stable where He lay;
We watched them through the livelong night,
And through the heavens we heard them say,
Gloria, gloria, gloria in excelsis!