cord as it stirred up these hearts to witness a "good confession," and so to refuse assent to accustomed observances, and old family and religious usages. Suppose the case of a believing wife and an unbelieving husband, which seems to have occurred very frequently. The family ties must have been affected at every point in such a case. The believing wife wishes to attend a prayer-meeting, the unbelieving husband proposes a bath; she is for a fast, he for a dinner-party. She would spend her time in works of charity, he will not allow her. She would rise from her bed to take part in the night-watches, or to celebrate the Easter festival. He has dark suspicions of such nocturnal meetings, and forbids her to resort to them. "He will not consent to her approaching the martyrs in prison, or washing the feet of the saints, or providing food for a sick brother. Perhaps she attempts to conceal the fact of her being a Christian. It is in vain. What can she mean, thinks he, by signing her couch, her person with the cross, by puffing away the fumes of his incense or offering? Is it to practise magic that she rises in the night? Is it simply bread that she tastes before partaking of any other food?" Suppose the case reversed, as in that of Hermas. We have seen how unbelief in the wife would poison the happiness and interfere with the aims of the husband. Effects of a different kind would not be less noticeable where the family was united in Christian profession. Such a family would stand aloof from its neighbours. Whilst the popular cry was, "Give us bread and the games, it is enough," such a family would be noticed as withdrawing from the theatre, the stadium, and the arena.† To all that went on in the great world around them they would seem to maintain an attitude quite different from that of other families. Their meals, their dresses would be different; birth would acquire a new meaning to them; marriage would be consecrated by new sanctions; death would be irradiated by a new light. Both the life "that now is, and that which is to come," would be wholly transfigured; and home manners, business, and pleasures would all take a new colour-a distinguishing shape. It is not easy in all respects to catch and represent the change-to penetrate with in the interior of a Christian household in the early ages, and picture the "better manners, purer laws," that must have followed the reception of Christianity; but we shall endeavour to sketch certain main features of the change as they are indicated in the writings of the period.

1. RELATION TO THE WORLD. From what we have seen of the circumstances attending baptism in the early Church, this solemn rite must have marked off very definitely the Christian, and all the members of the Christian family, from the Pagan world surrounding them. Every catechumen, as he assumed the baptismal robe, and passed within the portal of the Church, became bound to renounce the "pomps of the devil," by which were particularly meant the

Tertullian, Ad. Uxor. II. § 4. Blunt's Church in the First Three Centuries.

+ Itid.

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public spectacles, the gladiatorial shows, the theatres, races, and amusements of the circus. Every one of these public exhibitions was more or less identified with the prevailing idolatrous worship. The heathen multitude were passionately attached to them. They found their chief delight in them. So general was this delight, so universally did it pervade all classes that remained attached to the ancient creed, that it became one of the most notorious distinctions of the Christians that they alone stood aloof. A family was noted as Christian whose members had ceased to attend the public entertainments and the sanguinary excitements of the arena. The Christian teachers were emphatic in their condemnation of all such indulgences. They denounced their immorality and cruelty. If you cast your eyes," says Cyprian,* on the cities, you behold an assembly of men presenting a more melancholy sight than any solitude. A combat of Gladiators is in preparation, that blood may appease the lust of cruel eyes. A man is killed for the amusement of his fellow-men; murder is turned into an art, and crime not only perpetrated, but taught as a profession." The same tone pervades all the writers of the second, and the beginning of the third century. Tertullian, who has left an express treatise, De Spectaculis,† dwells at length upon the necessity of abstinence from all idolatrous shows. How can the Christian spirit, he asks, consist with the spirit engendered by such shows? For no spectacle passes off without virtually agitating the passions. When one goes to the play, one thinks of nothing else than to see and be seen. while listening to the declamation of an actor, think on the sentence of a prophet, or in the midst of the song of an effeminate stage-player, meditate on a psalm? If every species of immodesty is abominable to us, how should we allow ourselves to hear what we cannot feel at liberty to speak?" Some of the arguments of Tertullian show the traces of an extreme ascetic spirit; but, allowing for an element of exaggeration in him corresponding to his well-known character, there can be no doubt that his general strain of argument and exhortation represented the prevailing feeling of the Church on the subject.

Can one,

It is clear how this feeling must have operated to separate the Christian from their Pagan neighbours. While the latter thronged the temples, thronged the amphitheatres, kept the various festivals, disputed before the heathen judges, engaged in all the ordinary professions and recreations of their age, the latter remained apart, a "peculiar people." The temples and altars were an abomination to them; the amphitheatre was a scene of murder, in which too frequently their fellow-worshippers were the victims. The festivals were polluted assemblies, of which the impiety only rivalled the impurity. The heathen judges were to them the "Unjust," going to law before whom the great Apostle had so strongly denounced (1 Cor. vi. 1). Many of the ordinary professions and trades in

friendship through an innocent and chaste familiarity." But while Christian conversation was to be chaste, it might be seasoned with salt. "Let our speech be elegant, and graced with art, but without buffoonery,—and our manners refined, not licentious."

3. DRESS.

There was no precision of dress required nor commended among the early Christians. As their feasts were to be simple, from the impulse of a simple and uncorrupted mind, and not by any formal regulations as to food enjoined upon them, so, in the same manner, their dress was, without any affectation of singularity, to show by its decent proprieties this inward comeliness. The Christian matron and maiden are especially kept in view in all that is said on this subject by the writers of the second and third centuries, just as by the Apostles in their time. Their adorning was not to be the outward "adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel, but the hidden man of the heart, and that which is not corruptible-e e-even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price" (1 Pet. iii. 3, 4). "It is proper that both the woman and the man should come into the church decently dressed, with no studied steps, in silence, and with a mind trained to real benevolence; chaste in body, chaste in heart, fitted to pray to God. Furthermore, it is right that the woman should be veiled, save when she is at home, for this is respectable, and avoids offence."* "It is enough to have the disposition which becomes Christian women, says Tertullian, † God looks on the heart. The outward appearance is nothing. Why make a display of the change that has been wrought in us? Rather are we bound to furnish the heathen no occasion of blaspheming the Christian name and accusing Christianity of being irreconcilable with national customs." Yet he adds, "What reasons can you have for going about in gay apparel, when you are removed from all with whom this is required? You do not go the round of the temples; you ask for no public shows; you have nothing to do with Pagan festivals. You have no other than serious reasons for appearing abroad. It is to visit a sick brother, to be present at the Communion or a sermon; and if offices of courtesy or friendship call you among the Pagans, why not appear in your own peculiar armour, that 80 the difference may be seen between the servants of God and of Satan?"

4. MARRIAGE.

The influence of the gospel penetrating every relation of individual and family life must have soon begun to affect so interesting and important an act as marriage. One of the first consequences arising from it was the interdiction of marriages between Christians and heathens. The Apostle clearly gives his opinion against such marriages (1 Cor. vi. 15), and the same opinion is everywhere expressed by succeeding writers. Second marriages were not prohibited, but they were discountenanced. It would be difficult to say when it

* Ibid. II. c. 11.

De Cultu Fœminarum, II. c. 11.

became customary to invite the sanction of the Church to the marriage ceremony, but this no doubt arose very early. It sprang up as a natural expression of the Christian spirit. Where bride and bridegroom were both Christian, animated by the same faith and love of Christ, they could not but desire that their union should be hallowed by the services of the Church, and the benediction of its ministers. The idea of Divine approval would necessarily enter into the formation of so important a relation. It became customary for them, therefore, to present a common offering to the Church, and in return to receive its blessing. This was generally connected with the Communion, of which both partook on the occasion. It is of such a marriage that Tertullian speaks in his lofty style. "In what language can we express the happiness of that marriage which is concluded by the Church, sealed by the Communion, and consecrated by the benediction-which the angels announce, and God the Father ratifies."*

The wearing of garlands and veils by brides, and the use of the marriage ring, were not primarily Christian practices, but transferred from the forms of the ancient social life, into which Christianity entered as a purifying influence. In the earliest age these ceremonies were consequently repudiated by many Christians, but they had acquired too strong a hold to be displaced; their native propriety commended them, and they soon became invested with new and higher sanctions, and more beautiful and sacred meanings, than they had borne in the old heathen marriages. They remained as memorials of a past social existence; but they became, at the same time, symbols of a holier bond than it recognised, in which two individuals entered into spiritual as well as social union, having, in common, one hope, one desire, one order of life, one service of the Lord." "Both," says Tertullian, "undivided in spirit or body, twain in one flesh; kneel, pray, and fast together; mutually teach, exhort, and bear with each other, unseparated in the Church of God and in its services; sharers of each other's troubles, persecutions, joys.”

5. DEATH AND BURIAL.

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The blessed hope of a better life, which changed everything to the Christian, transfigured more than anything the closing scene, and the last rites, by which the dead passed from sight and memory. To the Pagan, Death was a mere dread, or a wished for annihilation. It was the pursuing shadow of a joyous life, or the last and apathetic gloom of a miserable one. To the Christian, it was a sleep destined to a glorious awakening; a lying down to the end of a rising up again to a new, purified, and celestial existence.

This idea robbed Death of its terrors. It led to a more tender and Instead of reverent disposal of the dead body. being consumed by fire, as commonly by the Romans, it was universally interred by the Christians. The places of burial were called cœmeteriasleeping-places. With prayer and thanks and commemorative service for the departed, their bodies were laid in the dust, "in the hope of a blessed resurrection.” Without superstition or

*Ad Uxor. II. c. 8.

any tincture of later error, "prayers for the dead" "that the merciful God, who has taken the soul of this, our brother, would forgive him all his sins, and receive him into the region of the Just"-seem to have been in early use. The "world beyond" was a clear vision to the Christian as he covered his dear ones from his sight; and, from the grave of his earthly hopes, he saw starting into life the flower of hopes that would never die, and the joys of an "inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading."

In these slight jottings of the change of customs that followed the spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire, we realize but feebly the extent and character of the change. It is not easy to do this, even after long and careful study. The case has been sometimes put in this mannerCould a Greek, nurtured in the palmy days of Athens, have risen from his grave and visited Rome in the age of the first Cæsars, he would, amidst many external differences in the social and national life around him, have been able to understand the forms of civilisation as kindred with those he had known in life. He would have found the edifices of the imperial city an imitation, though an awkward one, of the Greek architecture; the houses, the theatres, the feasts, the philosophy would have all a familiar air. The political institutions, although new, would not be unintelligible; while the religion would have appeared virtually the same in its pomp, its

sacrifice, its pollutions. But, descending three hundred years from the latter date, what a change meets the eye! Suppose a Roman of the age of Tiberius to awaken in the Court of Constantine, and although he might see around him many of the old shapes of things, he would see, at the same time, a wholly new spirit moving the most vigorous forms of social life everywhere. New interests would be found swaying the court, and new figures crowding it. He would see humble men made bold by a new faith; women preserved pure by a new hope. Slaves with their outward condition unchanged, yet recognised no longer as slaves, but as "brethren beloved;" forms of government and worship entirely new; he would hear doctrines and precepts, on all sides, strange to him as an unintelligible celestial language. "A voice had gone forth at whose bidding, though gentle and quiet as the still air, that scarcely stirs the leaf before the storm begins, the whole world was changed."* It is a marvellous transformation from death to life, from corruption to the dawning face of a higher and purer civilisation than the world had yet seen. Can we doubt whose voice had thus called light out of darkness, and from the dissolving chaos of an old world, summoned into form and beauty a new world destined to higher and better issues?

JOHN TULLOCH.

* Small Books on Great Subjects, No. XIV. p. 3, from which the comparison in the text is adapted.

ON the hill by Bethlehem David stood, He and his warriors bold,

Then the three mighty men arose, Adino the Tachmonite,

As in that happy state,

A draught from the well of Bethlehem

That is beside the gate!"

And there they turned and stayed;

And wiping his sword on the bearded grass Adino the Tachmonite said,