More briefly is this cardinal doctrine asserted in the following: IVSTVS CVM SCIS XPO MEDIANTE RESVRGET—“Justus, who will arise with the saints through Christ.”
HIC IN PACE REQVIESCIT LAVRENTIA QVAE CREDIDIT RESVRRECTIONEM—“Here reposes in peace Laurentia, who believed in the resurrection.”[707]
The very idea of death seems to have been repudiated by the primitive Christians. “Non mortua sed data somno,” sings Prudentius in paraphrase of the words of Our Lord, “She is not dead but sleepeth.”[708] Hence the Catacomb was designated the cœmeterium,[709] or place of sleeping, and the funeral vault the cubiculum, or sleeping chamber. The dead were not “buried,” as the pagan expressions conditus, compositus, situs, indicate; but depositus, “laid down” in their lowly beds till the everlasting morn should come, and the angel’s trump awake them; consigned as a precious trust to the tender keeping of mother earth, and “lying in wait for the resurrection.”[710] The saints were “fallen asleep” in Jesus, and on the bridal morning of the soul they should awake with his likeness and be satisfied. The primitive Christians believed that the power which called a Lazarus from the tomb could wake to life again the slumbering millions of this valley of dry bones, vaster far
than that of Ezekiel’s vision, till they should stand up upon their feet an exceeding great army.
But this sleep was a sleep of the body only, not of the soul. The ancient Christians were assured, as we have seen, of the immediate happiness of those that died in the faith. They believed that being absent from the body they were present with the Lord; that as soon as they passed from earth’s living death they entered into the undying life and unfading bliss of heaven. Though surrounded by the mouldering bodies of the saints in Christ, the eye of faith beheld their glorified spirits, starry-crowned and palm-bearing, among the white-robed multitude before the throne of God. They admitted no thought of a long and dreary period of forgetfulness, nor probation of purgatorial fires, before the soul could enter into joy and peace.
The sublime reflections with which Cyprian concludes his treatise De Mortalitate nobly express the grand consoling thoughts which sustained the primitive Christians, and which sustain God’s saints in every age. “We are but pilgrims and strangers here below,” he exclaims, “let us then welcome the day that gives to us the joys of heaven. What exile longs not for his native land? Our true native land is paradise. A large and loving company expects us there. O the bliss of those celestial realms where no fear of dying enters! There the glorious choir of the apostles, the exulting company of the prophets, the countless army of the martyrs, await us. To them let us eagerly hasten. Let us long to be with them the sooner, that we may the sooner be with Christ.”
What a striking contrast to these holy hopes is the pagans’ blankness of despair concerning the future. Compared with this assurance of a blissful immortality,
how cold and cheerless is their shadowy elysium, their unsubstantial visions of the spirit-world; how terrible the gloomy Acherontian lake, dark Lethe’s stream, and Styx, and fiery Phlegethon. Like a gleam of heaven’s sunshine in a benighted age are these rude inscriptions of the early Christians. Sublimer is their lofty hope, reaching forward beyond this world, and laying hands of faith upon the eternal verities of the world to come, than the imperishable renown of classic sages, or the Roman poet’s vaunting boast of earthly immortality—Non omnis moriar.
Even the high philosophy of Greece and the noble stoicism of the Roman mind afford no consolation to the soul brought face to face with the solemn mystery of death. A forced and sullen submission to the inevitable is all that they can teach. They shed no light upon the world beyond the grave, DOMVS AETERNA—“An eternal home,”[711] and SOMNO AETERNALI—“In eternal sleep,” are written on their tombs, frequently accompanied by an inverted torch, the emblem of despair. To them death is an unsolved and insoluble problem. Their loftiest reasonings lack authority to satisfy the mind. It is the gospel of Christ alone which dispels the awful shadows of the tomb, plants the flower of hope in the very ashes of the grave, and brings life and immortality to light; which appeases the soul-hunger of mankind, and meets the yearning cry of the human heart.
Even the thoughtful mind of Pliny could extract no comfort from the various theories concerning the future state, but looked forward to annihilation as the universal doom. “To all,” he says, “from the last day of life is there the same lot that there was before the first; nor is there any more consciousness after death than there was before birth.”[712] Of Agricola, the wise and good, the philosophic Tacitus could only say with an incredulous sigh, “Doubtless if there be a place for the departed spirits of the just, if great souls perish not with the body, thou dost calmly repose.”[713] “That the manes are any thing,” says Juvenal, “or that the nether world is any thing, not even boys believe, unless those still in the nursery.”[714] In sullen submission to fate, the pagan submits to the inevitable doom. When the name has issued from the fatal urn he leaves forever his woods, his villa, his pleasant home, and enters the bark which is to bear him into eternal exile.[715] The wisest sages can only fan the embers of their hopes into a flickering flame, and cry, “Ha! we have seen the fire.”