A STAR RISING

The fathers live in their voluminous works; the lower orders are only represented by these simple records, form which, with scarcely an exception, sorrow and complaint are banished; the boast of suffering, or an appeal to the revengeful passions is nowhere to be found. One expresses faith, another hope, a third charity. The genius of primitive Christianity to believe, to love and to suffer has never been better illustrated. "These sermons in stones" are addressed to the heart and not to the head - to the feelings rather than to the taste. * * * In all the pictures and scriptures of our Lord's history no reference is ever found to his sufferings or death. No gloomy subjects occur in the cycle of Christian art. Maitland. Chrysostom says: For this cause, too, the place itself is called a cemetery; that you may know that the dead laid there are not dead, but at rest and asleep. For before the coming of Christ death used to be called death, and not only so, but Hades, but after his coming and dying for the life of the world, death came to be called death no longer, but sleep and repose. The word cemeteries, dormitories, shows us that death was regarded as a state of repose and thus a condition of hope. In fact, in the auspicious word, now for the first time applied to the tomb there is manifest a sense of hope and immortality, the result of a new religion. A star had arisen on the borders of the grave, dispelling the horror of darkness which had hitherto reigned there; the prospect beyond was now cleared up, and so dazzling was the view of an eternal city sculptured in the sky, that numbers were found eager to rush through the gate of martyrdom, for the hope of entering its starry portals.