Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/59

1858.] saddened soul uttered the words of the Psalm: "I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments"! And as if to afford still more direct assurance of the patience and long-suffering tenderness of the Lord, the Good Shepherd is sometimes represented in the catacombs as bearing, not a sheep, but a goat upon his shoulders. It was as if to declare that his forgiveness and his love knew no limit, but were waiting to receive and to embrace even those who had turned farthest from him. In a picture of very early date in the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, the Good Shepherd stands between a goat and a sheep, "as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left." But in this picture the order is reversed,—the goat is on his right hand and the sheep on his left. It was the strongest type that could be given of the mercy of God. Sometimes the Good Shepherd is represented, not bearing the sheep on his shoulders, but leaning on his crook, and with a pipe in his hands, while his flock stand in various attitudes around him. Here again the reference to Scripture is plain: "He calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice." Thus, under various forms and with various meanings, full of spiritual significance, and suggesting the most invigorating and consoling thoughts, the Good Shepherd appears oftener than any other single figure on the vaults and the walls of the catacombs. It is impossible to look at these paintings, poor in execution and in external expression as they are, without experiencing some sense, faint it may be, of the force with which they must have appealed to the hearts and consciences of those who first looked upon them. It is as if the inmost thoughts and deepest feeling of the Christians of those early times had become dimly visible upon the walls of their graves. The effect is undoubtedly increased by the manner in which these paintings are seen, by the unsteady light of wax tapers, in the solitude of long-deserted passages and chapels. In such a place the dullest imagination is roused, troop on troop of associations and memories pass in review before it, and the fading colors and faint outlines of the paintings possess more power over it than the glow of Titian's canvas, or the firm outline of Michel Angelo's frescoes.

Another symbol of the Saviour which is frequently found in the works of the first three centuries, and which soon afterwards seems to have fallen almost entirely into disuse, is that of the Fish. It is not derived, like that of the Good Shepherd, immediately from the words of Scripture; though its use undoubtedly recalled several familiar narratives. It seems to have been early associated with the well-known Greek formula, Ίησοῦς Χριστὸς Θεοῦ Υίὸς Σωτὴρ, Jesus Christ the Saviour Son of God, arranged acrostically, so that the first letters of its words formed the word ἰχζὺς, fish. The first association that its use would suggest was that of Christ's call to Peter and Andrew, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,"—and thus we find, among the early Christian writers, the name of "little fish," pisciculi, applied to the Christian disciples of their times. But it would serve also to bring to memory the miracle that the multitude had witnessed, of the multiplication of the fishes; and it would recall that last solemn and tender farewell meeting between the Apostles and their Lord on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, in the early morning, when their nets were filled with fish,—and "Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise." And with this association was connected, as we learn from the pictures in the catacombs, a still deeper symbolic meaning, in which it represented the body of our Lord as given to his apostles at the Last Supper. In the Cemetery of Callixtus, very near the recently discovered crypt of Pope Cornelius, are two square sepulchral chambers, adorned with pictures of an early date. Those of the first chamber have almost utterly perished, but on the wall of the second may be seen the image