“Come down, Hermas, come down! The night is past. It is time to be
stirring. Christ is born today. Peace be with you in His name. Make
haste and come down!”
A little group of young men were standing in a street of
Antioch, in the dusk of early morning, fifteen hundred years ago--a
class of candidates who had nearly finished their years of training for
the Christian church. They had come to call their fellow-student Hermas
from his lodging.
Their voices rang out cheerily through the cool air. They were full of
that glad sense of life which the young feel when they have risen
early and come to rouse one who is still sleeping. There was a note of
friendly triumph in their call, as if they were exulting unconsciously
in having begun the adventure of the new day before their comrade.
But Hermas was not asleep. He had been waking for hours, and the walls
of his narrow lodging had been a prison to his heart. A nameless sorrow
and discontent had fallen upon him, and he could find no escape from the
heaviness of his own thoughts.
There is a sadness of youth into which the old cannot enter. It seems
unreal and causeless. But it is even more bitter and burdensome than the
sadness of age. There is a sting of resentment in it, a fever of angry
surprise that the world should so soon be a disappointment, and life
so early take on the look of a failure. It has little reason in it,
perhaps, but it has all the more weariness and gloom, because the man
who is oppressed by it feels dimly that it is an unnatural thing that he
should be tired of living before he has fairly begun to live.
Hermas had fallen into the very depths of this strange self-pity. He was
out of tune with everything around him. He had been thinking, through
the dead night, of all that he had given up when he left the house of
his father, the wealthy pagan Demetrius, to join the company of the
Christians. Only two years ago he had been one of the richest young men
in Antioch. Now he was one of the poorest. The worst of it was that,
though he had made the choice willingly and with a kind of enthusiasm,
he was already dissatisfied with it.
The new life was no happier than the old. He was weary of vigils and
fasts, weary of studies and penances, weary of prayers and sermons.
He felt like a slave in a treadmill. He knew that he must go on. His
honour, his conscience, his sense of duty, bound him. He could not go
back to the old careless pagan life again; for something had happened
within him which made a return impossible. Doubtless he had found the
true religion, but he had found it only as a task and a burden; its joy
and peace had slipped away from him.
He felt disillusioned and robbed. He sat beside his hard couch, waiting
without expectancy for the gray dawn of another empty day, and hardly
lifting his head at the shouts of his friends.
“Come down, Hermas, you sluggard! Come down! It is Christmas morn.
Awake, and be glad with us!”
“I am coming,” he answered listlessly; “only have patience a moment. I
have been awake since midnight, and waiting for the day.”
“You hear him!” said his friends one to another. “How he puts us all to
shame! He is more watchful, more eager, than any of us. Our master, John
the Presbyter, does well to be proud of him. He is the best man in our
class.”
While they were talking the door opened and Hermas stepped out. He was
a figure to be remarked in any company--tall, broad-shouldered,
straight-hipped, with a head proudly poised on the firm column of the
neck, and short brown curls clustering over the square forehead. It was
the perpetual type of vigorous and intelligent young manhood, such as
may be found in every century among the throngs of ordinary men, as if
to show what the flower of the race should be. But the light in his
eyes was clouded and uncertain; his smooth cheeks were leaner than they
should have been at twenty; and there were downward lines about his
mouth which spoke of desires unsatisfied and ambitions repressed. He
joined his companions with brief greetings,--a nod to one, a word to
another,--and they passed together down the steep street.
Overhead the mystery of daybreak was silently transfiguring the sky. The
curtain of darkness had lifted along the edge of the horizon. The ragged
crests of Mount Silpius were outlined with pale saffron light. In the
central vault of heaven a few large stars twinkled drowsily. The great
city, still chiefly pagan, lay more than half-asleep. But multitudes of
the Christians, dressed in white and carrying lighted torches in their
hands, were hurrying toward the Basilica of Constantine to keep the new
holy-day of the church, the festival of the birthday of their Master.
The vast, bare building was soon crowded, and the younger converts, who
were not yet permitted to stand among the baptised, found it difficult
to come to their appointed place between the first two pillars of the
house, just within the threshold. There was some good-humoured pressing
and jostling about the door; but the candidates pushed steadily forward.
“By your leave, friends, our station is beyond you. Will you let us
pass? Many thanks.”
A touch here, a courteous nod there, a little patience, a little
persistence, and at last they stood in their place. Hermas was taller
than his companions; he could look easily over their heads and survey
the sea of people stretching away through the columns, under the shadows
of the high roof, as the tide spreads on a calm day into the pillared
cavern of Staffa, quiet as if the ocean hardly dared to breathe. The
light of many flambeaux fell, in flickering, uncertain rays, over
the assembly. At the end of the vista there was a circle of clearer,
steadier radiance. Hermas could see the bishop in his great chair,
surrounded by the presbyters, the lofty desks on either side for the
readers of the Scripture, the communion-table and the table of offerings
in the middle of the church.
The call to prayer sounded down the long aisle. Thousands of hands were
joyously lifted in the air, as if the sea had blossomed into waving
lilies, and the “Amen” was like the murmur of countless ripples in an
echoing place.
Then the singing began, led by the choir of a hundred trained voices
which the Bishop Paul had founded in Antioch. Timidly, at first, the
music felt its way, as the people joined with a broken and uncertain
cadence: the mingling of many little waves not yet gathered into rhythm
and harmony. Soon the longer, stronger billows of song rolled in,
sweeping from side to side as the men and the women answered in the
clear antiphony.