Secondly, the obloquy and desertion experienced by the early Christians threw them back upon a double strength of spiritual faith, and opened to them an intensified communion with God. As worldly goods and pleasures were sacrificed, the more powerful became their
5 Eschatologie, oder die Lebre von den Letzten Dingen. Mit besonderer Rucksicht anf die gangbare Irriehre vom Hades. Basel, 1840. De Wette interprets the doctrine of Christ's descent into Hades as a myth derived from the idea that he was the Savior not only of his living followers but also of the heathen and the dead. Bibl. Dogmatik, s. 272.
perception of moral truths and their grasp of invisible treasures. The more fiercely they were assailed, the dearer became the cause for which they suffered, and the more profoundly the moral springs of faith were stirred in their souls. The natural revulsion of their souls was from destitution, contempt, peril, and pain on earth to a more vivid and magnified trust in a great reward laid up for them in heaven.
Thirdly, the unflinching zeal kindled in the early confessors of Christianity, the sublime heroism shown by them amidst the awful tortures inflicted on them by the persecuting Jews and Romans, reacted on their brethren to give profounder firmness and new intensity to their faith in a glorious life beyond the grave. The Christians thrown into the amphitheatre to the lions calmly kneeled in prayer, and to the superstitious bystanders a bright nimbus seemed to play around their brows and heaven to be opened above. As they perished at the stake, amidst brutal jeers and shrivelling flames, serenely maintaining their profession, and calling on Christ, over the lurid vista of smoke and fire broke on their rapt vision the blessed splendors of Paradise; and their joy seemed, to the enthusiastic believers around, no less than a Divine inspiration, confirming their faith, and preaching, through the unquestionable truthfulness of martyrdom, the certainty of immortal life. The survivors celebrated the anniversaries of the martyrs' deaths as their birthdays into the endless life.
Fourthly, another means by which Christianity operated to deepen and spread a belief in the future life was, indirectly, through its influence in calling out and cultivating the affections of the heart. The essence of the gospel in theory, as taught by all its teachers, in fact, as incarnated by Christ, and in practice, as working in history is love. From the first it condemned and tended to destroy all the coldness and hatred of human hearts; and it strove to elicit and foster every kindly sentiment and generous impulse, to draw its disciples together by those yearning ties of sympathy and devotion which instinctively demand and divinely prophesy an eternal union in a better world. The more mightily two human hearts love each other, the stronger will be their spontaneous longing for immortality. The unrivalled revelation of the disinterested love of God made by Christianity, and its effect in refining and increasing the love of men, have contributed in a most important degree to sanction and diffuse the faith in a blessed life reserved for men hereafter. One remarkable specification may be noticed. The only pagan description of children in the future life is that given by some of the classic poets, who picture the infant shades lingering in groups around the dismal gates of the under world, weeping and wailing because they could never find admittance.
"Continuo audita voces, vagitus et ingens, Infantumque animaflentes in limine primo."
Go the long round of the pagan heavens, you will find no trace of a child. Children were withered blossoms blown to oblivion. The soft breezes that fanned the Blessed Isles and played through the perennial summer of Elysium blew upon no infant brows. The grave held all the children very fast. By the memorable words, "Of such is the kingdom of heaven," Christ unbarred the portals of the future world and revealed therein hosts of angelic children. Ever since then children have been seen in heaven. The poet has sung that the angel child is first on the wing to welcome the parent home. Painters have shown us, in their visions of the blessed realms, crowds of cherubs, have shown us
"How at the Almighty Father's hand,
Nearest the throne of living light,
The choirs of infant seraphs stand,
And dazzling shine where all are bright."
Fifthly, the triumphant establishment of Christianity in the world has thrown the prestige of public opinion, the imposing authority of general affirmation and acceptance, around its component doctrines chief among which is the doctrine of immortality and secured in their behalf the resistless influences of current custom and education. From the time the gospel was acknowledged by a nation as the true religion, each generation grew up by habitual tutelage to an implicit belief in the future life. It became a dogma not to be questioned. And the reception of it was made more reasonable and easy by the great superiority of its moral features over those of the relative superstitions embodied in the ethnic religions which Christianity displaced.
Finally, Christianity has exerted no small influence both in expressing and imparting faith in immortality by means of the art to which it has given birth. The Christian ritual and symbolism, which culminated in the Middle Age, from the very first had their vitality and significance in the truth of another life. Every phase and article of them implied, and with mute or vocal articulation proclaimed, the superiority and survival of mind and heart, the truth of the gospel history, the reality of the opened heaven. Who, in the excited atmosphere, amidst the dangers, living traditions, and dramatic enactments of that time, could behold the sacraments of the Church, listen to a mighty chant, kneel beside a holy tomb, or gaze on a painting of a gospel scene, without feeling that the story of Christ's ascent to God was true, being assured that elsewhere than on earth there was a life for the believer, and in rapt imagination seeing visions of the supernatural kingdom unveiled?