The Martyr of the Catacombs by James De Mille (trending books to read txt) 📕

is the Lord God who judgeth her.
The kings of the earth
Shall bewail and lament,
Seeing the smoke of her burning,
Standing afar off for fear of her torment,
Crying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon,
That mighty city Babylon,
For in one hour is thy judgment come.
The merchants of the earth,
Standing afar off for fear of her torment,
Shall weep and wail.
Crying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon,
That was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet.
And decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls.
For in one hour so great riches is come to naught!
And every shipmaster, and the company in ships,
And sailors and traders by sea,
Shall cry when they see the smoke of her burning,
Standing afar off for fear of her torment.
'What city is like unto that great city!'
And casting dust on their head they shall cry,
Weeping and wailing,
Alas, alas, that great city,
Wherein were made rich all that had ships at sea,
For in one hour is she brought to naught.
Rejoice over her thou heaven!
And ye holy apostles and prophets,
For God hath avenged you on her!"

A vast crowd collected around him in amazement, but scarcely had he ceased when some soldiers appeared and led him away.

"Doubtless it is some poor Christian whose brain has been turned by suffering," thought Marcellus. As the man was led away he still shouted out his terrific denunciations, and a great crowd followed, yelling and deriding. Soon the noise died away in the distance.

"There is no time to lose. I must go," said Marcellus; and he turned away.

CHAPTER VIII.

LIFE IN THE CATACOMBS.

"O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon.
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse,
Without all hope of day!"

Upon his return to the Catacombs he was welcomed with tears of joy. Most eagerly they listened to the account of his interview with his superiors; and while they sympathized with his troubles, they rejoiced that he had been found worthy to suffer for Christ.

Amid these new scenes he learned more of the truth every day, and saw what its followers endured. Life in the Catacombs opened around him with all its wondrous variety.

The vast numbers who dwelt below were supplied with provisions by constant communication with the city above. This was done at night. The most resolute and daring of the men volunteered for this dangerous task. Sometimes also women, and even boys, went forth upon this errand, and the lad Pollio was the most acute and successful of all these. Amid the vast population of Rome it was not difficult to pass unnoticed, and consequently the supply was well kept up. Yet sometimes the journey met with a fatal termination, and the bold adventurers never returned.

Of water there was a plentiful supply in the passage ways of the lowermost tier. Wells and fountains here supplied sufficient for all their wants.

At night, too, were made the most mournful expeditions of all. These were in search of the dead which had been torn by the wild beasts or burned at the stake. These loved remains were obtained at the greatest risk, and brought down amid a thousand dangers. Then the friends of the lost would perform the funeral service and hold the burial feast. After this they would deposit their remains in the narrow cell, and close the place up with a marble tablet graven with the name of the occupant.

The ancient Christian, inspired by the glorious doctrine of the resurrection, looked forward with ardent hope to the time when corruption should put on incorruption, and the mortal, immortality. He was unwilling that the body which so sublime a destiny awaited should be reduced to ashes, and thought that even the sacred funeral flames were a dishonor to that temple of God which had been so highly favored of heaven. So the cherished bodies of the dead were brought here out of the sight of man, where no irreverent hand might disturb the solemn stillness of their last repose, to lie until the last trump should give that summons for which the primitive Church waited so eagerly, in daily expectation. In the city above the Christian religion had been increasing for successive generations, and during all this time the dead had been coming here in ever-increasing numbers, so that now the Catacombs formed a vast city of the dead, whose silent population slumbered in endless ranges, rank above rank, waiting till

"The wakeful trump of doom should thunder through the deep."

In many places the arches had been knocked away and the roof heightened so as to form rooms. None of them were of very great size, but they formed areas where the fugitives might meet in larger companies and breathe more freely. Here they passed much of the time, and here, too, they had their religious services.

The nature of the times in which they lived will explain their situation. The simple virtues of the old republic had passed away, and freedom had taken her everlasting flight. Corruption had moved over the empire and subdued every thing beneath its numbing influence. Plots, rebellions, and treasons cursed the state by turns, but the fallen people stood by in silence. They saw their bravest suffer, their noblest die, all unmoved. The generous heart, the soul of fire, awaked no more. Only the basest passions aroused their degenerate feelings.

Into such a state as this the truth came boldly, and through such enemies as these it had to fight its way over such obstacles to make its slow but sure progress. They who enlisted under her banner had no life of ease before them. Her trumpet gave forth no uncertain sound. The conflict was stern, and involved name, and fame, and fortune, and friends, and life, all that was most dear to man. Ages rolled on. If the followers of truth increased in number, so also did vice intensify her power and her malignity; the people sank into deeper corruption, the state drifted on to more certain ruin.

Then arose those terrible persecutions which aimed to obliterate from the earth the last vestige of Christianity. A terrible ordeal awaited the Christian if he resisted the imperial decree; to those who followed her, the order of Truth was inexorable; and when a decision was made, it was a final one. To make that decision for Christianity was often to accept instant death, or else to be driven from the city, banished from the joys of home and from the light of day.

The hearts of the Romans were hardened and their eyes blinded. Neither childhood's innocence, nor womanly purity, nor noble manhood, nor the reverend hairs of age, nor faith immovable, nor love triumphant over death, could touch them or move them to pity. They did not see the black cloud of desolation that hovered over the doomed empire, nor know that from its fury those whom they persecuted alone could save them.

Yet in that reign of terror the Catacombs opened before the Christian like a city of refuge. Here lay the bones of their fathers who from generation to generation had fought for the truth, and their worn bodies waited here for the resurrection morn. Here they brought their relatives, as one by one they had left them and gone on high. Here the son had borne the body of his aged mother, and the parent had seen his child committed to the tomb. Here they had carried the mangled remains of those who had been torn to pieces by the wild beasts of the arena; the blackened corpses of those who had been given to the flames; or the wasted bodies of those most wretched who had sighed out their lives amid the lingering agonies of death by crucifixion. Every Christian had some friend or relative lying here in death. The very ground was sanctified, the very air hallowed. It was not strange that they should seek for safety in such a place.

Moreover, in these subterranean abodes, they found their only place of refuge from persecution. They could not seek foreign countries nor fly beyond the sea, because for them there were no countries of refuge, and no lands beyond the sea held out a hope. The imperial power of Rome grasped the civilized world in its mighty embrace; her tremendous police system extended through all lands, and none might escape her wrath. So resistless was this power, that from the highest noble down to the meanest slave, all were subject to it. The dethroned emperor could not escape her vengeance, nor was such an escape even hoped for. When Nero fell, he could only go and kill himself in a neighboring villa. Yet here, amid these infinite labyrinths, even the power of Rome was unavailing, and her baffled emissaries faltered at the very entrance.

Here, then, the persecuted Christians tarried, and their great numbers peopled these paths and grottoes, by day assembling to exchange words of cheer and comfort, or to bewail the death of some new martyr; by night sending forth the boldest among them, like a forlorn hope, to learn tidings of the upper world, or to bring down the blood-stained bodies of some new victims. Through the different persecutions, they lived here so secure that although millions perished throughout the empire, the power of Christianity at Rome was but slightly shaken.

Their safety was secured and life preserved, but on what terms? For what is life without light, or what is the safety of the body in gloom that depresses the soul? The physical nature of man shrinks from such a fate, and his delicate organization is speedily aware of the lack of that subtle renovating principle which is connected with light only. One by one the functions of the body lose their tone and energy. This weakening of the body affects the mind, predisposing it to gloom, apprehension, doubt, and despair. It is greater honor for a man to be true and steadfast under such circumstances than to have died a heroic death in the arena or to have perished unflinchingly at the stake. Here, where there closed around these captives the thickest shades of darkness, they encountered their sorest trial. Fortitude under the persecution itself was admirable; but against the persecution, blended with such horrors as these, it became sublime.

The cold blast that forever drifted through these labyrinths chilled them, but brought no pure air from above; the floors, the walls, the roofs, were covered over with the foul deposits of damp vapors that forever hung around; the atmosphere was thick with impure exhalations and poisonous miasma; the dense smoke from the ever-burning torches might have mitigated the noxious gases, but it oppressed the dwellers here with its blinding and suffocating influence. Yet amid all these accumulated horrors the soul of the martyr stood up unconquered. The Roman spirit that endured all this rises up to grander proportions than were ever attained in the proudest days of the old republic. The fortitude of Regulus, the devotion of Curtius, the constancy of Brutus, were here surpassed, not by the strong man, but by the tender virgin and the weak child. Thus, scorning to yield to the fiercest power of persecution, these men went forth, the good, the pure in heart, the brave, the noble. For then death had no terrors, nor that appalling life in death which they were compelled to endure here in the dismal regions of the dead. They knew what was before them, and they accepted it all. Willingly they descended here, carrying with them all that was most precious to the soul of man, and they endured all this for the great love wherewith they were loved.

The constant efforts which they made to diminish the gloom of their abodes were visible all around. In the ancient world art was cultivated more universally than in the modern. Wherever any large number of men was collected a large proportion had the taste and the talent for art. When the Christians peopled the Catacombs the artist was here too, and his art was not unemployed. In these chapels, which to the population here were like what public