_AMONG THE CHRISTIANS_
Αὐτίκα οἱ εἰς Χριστὸν πεπιστευκότες χρηστοί τέ εἰσι καὶ
λέγονται.--CLEM. ALEX. _Strom._ ii. 4.
Aulus Plautius, without any pretence to be a philosopher or a
republican, prided himself on retaining the antique fashion of Roman
simplicity. His house was in every way a contrast to that of Otho.
It excited the laughter of the dandies of the new school, with its
old rude statuary, its hard couches, its plain tables, its floor of
simple black and white marble, the limited number of faithful and
sober slaves, among whom but few were Greeks, and not one resembled
the pampered pages who were the pride of more modern establishments.
The whole service of the house was modest and yet stately; and the
conqueror of Britain, so far from blushing at the moderate fortune
and Roman surroundings which showed that he at least had not
plundered the provinces which he had governed, was, on the contrary,
pleased that men should see this example of honesty and justice.
Pudens was in command of the escort of the Empress; and it was on
his return from the Palace to his own house that the rencontre with
Nero occurred which has been already narrated. Caractacus, too, and
Claudia were present, though the guests were few; and young Flavius
Clemens had been invited to meet the children of Claudius. After
the modest supper was over, the Empress and her brother enjoyed
a conversation with their noble hostess, and learnt from her that
in one of the outer offices of the house of Plautius the Christian
assembly was that night to be held. It would have been too dangerous
for Octavia to be present, but Pomponia had many Christian slaves
and some freedmen who shared her secret, and were men and women of
unquestioned fidelity. Britannicus had now heard from her a great
deal about the elementary doctrines of the new faith. There seemed
to be no reason why she should any longer refuse his desire to be an
eye-witness of Christian worship. She had spoken on the subject to
Linus, the bishop of the Gentile community; and, without revealing
any name, had told him that a young stranger, for whom she could
vouch as one who would not be guilty of any treachery, would be
entrusted with the watchword, and would be present at the evening
prayers. Flavius Clemens was also to be present as a companion to
Britannicus. Pomponia’s own son, a bright boy, named Aulus Plautius
after his father, had not yet been taught any of the truths of
Christianity. His mother had trained him in all high and noble
things; but the general, who knew that she had ‘taken up unusual
religious views,’ had laid on her his injunctions not to teach them
without his permission to their son.
So retired had been the life of the young prince, and so intentional
the seclusion in which he had been brought up, that few knew him
by sight. But to prevent the danger of his being recognised by any
chance informer, Pomponia so altered his appearance that even Octavia
might have failed to recognise him. The Flavian boy was at that time
a person of little or no importance, and it was not necessary that
he should be disguised. Pomponius, who stayed with the Empress,
entrusted Britannicus to the charge of Pudens, who, though not yet
baptised, was now a recognised catechumen. He had been at Christian
gatherings before, and was all the more glad to go this evening,
because Claudia also was to be present, in whom the soul of the
centurion was more and more bound up. But to avoid all possibility
of suspicion he placed his faithful Nereus in charge of the young
stranger, while he himself stood a little apart, and watched.
The heart of the noble boy beat fast as he entered that unwonted
scene. The room in which the Christians met was a large granary in
which Plautius stored the corn which came from his Sicilian estates.
It was as well lighted as circumstances admitted, but chiefly by the
torches and lanterns of those who had come from all parts of the city
to be present at this winter evening assembly.
Britannicus was astonished at their numbers. He was quite unaware
that a religion so strange--a religion of yesterday, whose founder
had perished in Palestine little more than twenty years before--
already numbered such a multitude of adherents in the imperial city.
Clemens whispered to him that this was but one congregation, and
represented only a fraction of the entire number of believers in Rome,
who formed a multitude which no single room could have accommodated.
He told him, further, that though the Jewish and the Roman--or, as
they call them, the Gentile--converts formed a common brotherhood,
only separated from each other by a few national observances, they
usually worshipped at Rome in separate communities.
If Britannicus was surprised by the numbers of the Christians, he was
still more surprised by their countenances. The majority were slaves,
whose native home was Greece or Asia. Their faces bore the stamp
which had been fixed on them by years of toil and hardship; but even
on the worn features of the aged there was something of the splendour
and surprise of the divine secret. The young prince saw that they
were in possession of something more divine than the world could
understand. For the first time he beheld not one or two only, but
a blessed company of faithful people who had felt the peace of God
which passeth all understanding.
The children also filled him with admiration. He had seen lovely
slaves in multitudes; there were throngs of them in the Palace and
in the houses of men like Otho and Petronius. But their beauty was
the beauty of the flesh alone. How little did it resemble the sweet
and sacred innocence which brightened the eyes of these boys and
girls who had been brought up in the shelter of Christian homes!
But he was struck most of all with the youths. How many Roman youths
had he seen who had been trained in wealthy households, in whom had
been fostered from childhood every evil impulse of pride and passion!
He daily saw the young men who were the special favourites of his
brother Nero. Many of them had inherited the haughty beauty of
patrician generations; but luxury and wine had left their marks
upon them, and if they had been set side by side with these, whose
features glowed with health and purity and self-control, how would
the pallid faces of those dandies have looked like a fulfilment of
the forebodings which even Horace had expressed!
Nothing could have been more simple than the order of worship. The
Christians had ended the Agape, the common meal of brotherly love,
consisting of bread and fish and wine. They had exchanged the kiss
of peace. The tables had now been removed by the young and smiling
acolytes, and the seats arranged in front of the low wooden desk at
which Linus and the elders and deacons stood. They had no distinctive
dress, but wore the ordinary tunic or cloak of daily life, though
evidently the best and neatest that they could procure. In such a
community, so poor, so despised, there could be no pomp of ritual,
but the lack of it was more than compensated by the reverent
demeanour which made each Christian feel that, for the time being,
this poor granary was the house of God and the gate of heaven. They
knelt or stood in prayer as though the mud floor were sacred as the
rocks of Sinai, and every look and gesture was happy as of those who
felt that not only angels and archangels were among them, but the
invisible presence of their Lord Himself.
First they prayed;--and Britannicus had never before heard real
prayers. But here were men and women, the young and the old, to
whom prayer evidently meant direct communion with the Infinite and
the Unseen; to whom the solitude of private supplication, and the
community of worship, were alike admissions into the audience-chamber
of the Divine. Never had he heard such outpourings of the soul,
in all the rapture of trust, to a Heavenly Father. How different
seemed such intercourse with the Eternal from the vague conventional
aspirations of the Stoics towards an incomprehensible Soul of the
Universe, which had no heart for pity and no arm to save!
But a new and yet more powerful sensation was kindled in his mind,
when at the close of the prayers they sang a hymn. It was a hymn to
Christ, beginning--
‘Faithful the saying,
Great the mystery--Christ!
Manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the spirit;
Seen of angels;
Preached among the nations;
Believed on in the world;
Received up in glory!’
Britannicus listened entranced to the mingled voices as they rose
and fell in exquisite cadence. He had heard in theatres all the
most famous singers of Rome; he had heard the chosen youths and the
maidens chanting in the temple processions; he had heard the wailing
over the dead, and the Thalassio-chorus of the bridal song. But he
had heard nothing which distantly resembled this melody and harmony
of voices wedded to holy thoughts; and, although there were no
instruments, the ‘angelical soft trembling voices’ seemed to him
like echoes from some new and purer region of existence. He rejoiced,
therefore, when they began yet another hymn, of which the first verse
was--
‘Awake thee, O thou sleeper,
And from the dead arise,
And Christ shall dawn upon thee,
To light thy slumbering eyes.’[52]
When the hymn was over they sat down, and Linus rose to speak to
them a few words of exhortation. He reminded them that they had
been called from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto
God. He told them that they had fled to the rock of Christ amid a
weltering sea of human wickedness, and though the darkness was around
them he bade them to walk in the light, since they were the children
of light. Many of them had lived of old in the vices and sins of
heathendom, but they were washed, they were justified, they were
sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of their
God. Were not their bodies temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelt in
them, except they were reprobates? Since, then, they were in the
Spirit, let them bring forth the fruits of the Spirit--love, joy,
peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, charity--
against which there was no law. The world was passing away and the
fashion of it; their own lives were but as the withering grass and
the fading flower; and was not the day of the Lord at hand? Would He
not speedily return to judge His people? Would not that day come as
a thief in the night, and how should they stand its probatory fire
unless they were safe in the love of their Redeeming Lord?
So far had he proceeded when a mighty answering ‘MARANATHA’ of the
deeply-moved assembly smote the air, and immediately afterwards
Britannicus stood transfixed and thrilled to the very depths of his
whole being.
For now a voice such as he had never heard--a sound unearthly and
unaccountable--seemed not only to strike his ears but to grasp his
very heart. It was awful in its range, its tone, its modulations,
its startling, penetrating, appalling power; and although he was
unable to understand its utterance, it seemed to convey the loftiest
eloquence of religious transport, thrilling with rapture and
conviction. And, in a moment or two, other voices joined it. The
words they spoke were exalted, intense, impassioned, full of mystic
significance. They did not speak in their ordinary familiar tongue,
but in what seemed to be as it were the essence and idea of all
languages, though none could tell whether it was Hebrew, or Greek,
or Latin, or Persian. It resembled now one and now the other, as some
overpowering and unconscious impulse of the moment might direct. The
burden of the thoughts of the speakers seemed to be the ejaculation
of ecstasy, of amazement, of thanksgiving, of supplication, of
passionate dithyramb or psalm. They spoke not to each other, or
to the congregation, but seemed to be addressing their inspired
soliloquy to God. And among these strange sounds of many voices, all
raised in sweet accord of entranced devotion, there were some which
no one could rightly interpret. The other voices seemed to interpret
themselves. They needed no translation into significant language,
but spontaneously awoke in the hearts of the hearers the echo of the
impulse from which they sprang. There were others which rang on the
air more sharply, more tumultuously, like the clang of a cymbal or
the booming of hollow brass, and they conveyed no meaning to any but
the speakers, who, in producing these barbarous tones, felt carried
out of themselves. But there was no disorderly tumult in the various
voices. They were reverberations of one and the same supernatural
ecstasy--echoes awakened in different consciousnesses by one and the
same intense emotion.
Britannicus had heard the Glossolalia--the gift of the tongue. He
had been a witness of the Pentecostal marvel, a phenomenon which
heathendom had never known.
Nor had he only heard it, or witnessed it. For as the voices began
to grow fainter, as the whole assembly sat listening in the hush
of awful expectation, the young prince himself felt as if a spirit
passed before him, and the hair of his flesh stood up; he felt as
if a Power and a Presence stronger than his own dominated his being;
annihilated his inmost self; dealt with him as a player does who
sweeps the strings of an instrument into concord or discord at his
will. He felt ashamed of the impulse; he felt terrified by it; but it
breathed all over and around and through him, like the mighty wind;
it filled his soul as with ethereal fire; it seemed to inspire, to
uplift, to dilate his very soul; and finally it swept him onward as
with numberless rushings of congregated wings. The passion within
him was burning into irresistible utterance, and, in another
moment, through that humble throng of Christians would have rung
in impassioned music the young voice of the last of the Claudii
pouring forth things unutterable, had not the struggle ended by his
uttering one cry, and then sinking into a faint. Before that unwonted
cry from the voice of a boy the assembly sank into silence, and after
two or three moments the impulse left him. Panting, unconscious,
not knowing where he was, or whether he had spoken or not, or how
to explain or account for the heart-shaking inspiration which had
seemed to carry him out of himself beyond all mountain barriers and
over unfathomable seas, the boy sank back into the arms of Pudens,
who, alarmed and amazed and half ashamed, had sprung forward to catch
him as he fell.
As he seemed to be in a swoon, one of the young acolytes came to him,
and gently bathed his face with cold water. And meanwhile as the hour
was late, and they all had to get home in safety through the dark
streets and lanes through which they had come--some of them from
considerable distances--Linus rose, and with uplifted hand dismissed
the congregation with the words of blessing in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Pudens and Nereus carried back the still half-unconscious boy into
the house of Pomponia, where his sister awaited him. Octavia was
alarmed at the wildness of his look, but the fresh air had already
revived him. ‘I am quite well,’ he said, as the Empress bent
anxiously over him, ‘but I am tired, and should like to be silent.
Let us go home, Octavia.’
‘The escort is waiting,’ said Pudens.
So they bade farewell to Pomponia, and the soldiers saw them safely
to the Palace.
When they had started, Claudia said: ‘Oh, Pomponia, while he was at
the gathering the Power came upon him; he seemed scarcely able to
resist it; but for his fainting I believe that he would have spoken
with the tongue!’
Pomponia clasped her hands, and bowed her head in silent prayer.