Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/194

 Rome the words would be often repeated by the believers, with the new striking Christian addition—"when washed in the blood of the Lamb," and the memory of the beautiful saying would ever supply fresh courage for the conflict.

Perhaps the most powerful and sustaining of all the Christian beliefs, the one that never for an instant was absent from their thoughts, was the hope—aye, more than hope, the certainty that bliss indescribable awaited the soul of the happy redeemed the moment it quitted the body—"To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise"—a wonderful promise, indeed, of the Redeemer, which must have brought ineffable sweetness and repose into thousands of storm-tossed hearts,—a promise which must have made up for many a hard and painful struggle. The life so hard and difficult—so full of dangers and perplexities—would soon come to an end, and then at once the beatific vision would be their guerdon, and rest and peace and joy would be the portion of the redeemed souls for ever.

Our picture of the inner life of the Christian in the early Christian centuries would be incomplete were we not to allude to the influence, perhaps scarcely recognised but ever at work, of portions of the "Revelation" of S. John. Holding, of course, in the teaching of the Christian masters a very different position to the Gospels, which, of course, formed the authoritative basis of all Christian instruction, the "Revelation" occupied a peculiar and singularly influential place in the thoughts of the early harassed believers.

Many of the more mystical and obscure sections of that wonderful composition which was very generally accepted as the work of the beloved apostle, we may assume were little dwelt upon either in public teaching or in private meditation; the mystic prophecies of the seer were, comparatively speaking, but little read, and received then as now different interpretations; but interspersed with these prophecies, and not necessarily connected with them, occur passages of surpassing beauty, in which pictures of the heaven-life are painted by no mortal hand. It was these which arrested the imagination, and found a home in many a Christian heart. The passages which