Lord, knowing the native selfishness of the human heart, uses strong and often unqualified language to set before us the claims of our neighbour; but it is manifest that we are not dealing intelligently and honestly with such instructions if we do not carry with us through them all the remembrance that our first and paramount duty is to the Lord our God; that our first care must be the "hallowing of the Divine name,” our second the "coming of the Divine kingdom," our third the "doing of the Divine will;" and if only these be first secured, we may carry our altruism to any length without any injury either to ourselves, our neighbour, or society at large. The best way to answer the objections of modern culture is to hold aloft Christianity according to Christ, to take the Lord's Prayer for our guide, and especially to elevate to its proper place that grand enthusiasm which teaches us to seek, far above all else, the promotion of the Divine glory over all the earth.

Finally, it is no small matter, in view of the change of mind that has come over the majority of Christian people since the days when the entire heathen world was regarded as hopelessly doomed to everlasting misery, to observe that the missionary enthusiasm, which so fills and inspires the Lord's Prayer, is quite independent of any views as to the future condition of the unevangelised heathen. It has been too much the habit of Christian people, in looking abroad upon the heathen world, to regard it not so much in the light of a kingdom to be conquered for Christ, but rather as a great seething sea of drowning men, a few of whom might be rescued from the general wreck by those whom the Church would send out on her gallant lifeboat service; and of course as soon as the idea gained currency that the peril might not be so great or so universal as was once supposed, the enthusiasm which had rested entirely on that view of the case was necessarily affected. But the missionary enthusiasm which finds its inspiration and expression in the Lord's Prayer is liable to no such variation. The idea it sets before us is not the salvation of a few Indians, and Chinamen, and Africans, and South Sea Islanders in the next world it is the salvation here and now of all India, all China, all Africa, all the islands of the sea, all the nations of the earth; and this alone ought to be sufficient to stir the spirits of all right-hearted men, even if there were no impend

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ing danger in the next world, which undoubtedly there is, whatever we may think as to its nature and extent; for to say that the heathen will be judged according to their light is not equivalent to saying that they will not be judged at all.

And this is the conception of the missionary work, not only in the Lord's Prayer, but all through the Bible. What was the Gospel in Eden? Was it the salvation of a certain number of individuals? No. It is the triumph of a great cause-the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent. What was the Gospel as preached to Abraham? "In thy seed shall all nations of the earth be blessed." What was the grandest of all the promises to Moses ? As I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord." When were the prayers of David, the son of Jesse, ended? After he had reached the height of holiest longing in earnest prayer for the fulfilment of that same promise: "Let the whole earth be filled with his glory." How was it in the days of the later prophets? "Thus saith the Lord: It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth." So is it all through the Old Testament. And when Christ came He kept still the same grand ideas, the same far-reaching aims, the same "enthusiasm of humanity," as we may call it, before the minds of men. He "went everywhere preaching the Gospel of the kingdom.” We do find Him on occasion making the solemn appeal, "What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" But for once that He speaks about the saving of the soul, He speaks fifty times about "the kingdom." And then, having begun His ministry with the call, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand,” He closes it with the great commission, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature."

It is not only the Lord's Prayer, but the entire Bible, Old Testament and New, which claims for missionary enthusiasm the first place, the throne, in the renewed heart. Is it, then, too much to say that the great want of the times, so far as the Church of Christ is concerned, is a revival, not of religion in what may be called the popular sense, but of Christianity

according to Christ; a Christianity which shall indeed "seek first the kingdom of God;" a Christianity which shall, in actual fact, begin with the petitions, "Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven;" and, after humbly asking for daily bread, daily pardon, and daily grace, shall be irresistibly impelled, by a Divine attraction, to soar again to its native heavens with these old words of adoring praise," For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen."

J. MONRO GIBSON.

THE

ART. II.-The Catacombs of Rome.1

HE knowledge of the Catacombs of Rome is one of the conquests of that modern erudition which has changed the face of history on so many points. The ideas entertained, only a few years ago, about these monuments of Christian piety were vague or false. It was believed that the early Christians had made use of the quarries, whence were drawn the materials employed in erecting the Roman edifices, to celebrate their worship in secret, and to bury the remains of their martyrs. It was on the faith of this tradition that travellers pushed their curiosity so far as to descend into these vaults. De Brosses does not appear to have had, or cared to have, any knowledge of them, but the painter Hubert Robert ventured down, lost himself, and became the hero of the celebrated episode in the poem "Imagination;"

"Il ne voit que la nuit, n'entend que le silence."

A few savans also, at different epochs, directed their attention to the Catacombs, but without comprehending or vivifying them, so to speak, for want of the broad yet rigorous methods which distinguish the science of our age. The history of these crypts is curious. After having been made use of for several centuries, received millions of corpses, and been honoured to be the burial-place of the witnesses of the faith, they had been forgotten. Their use had naturally diminished, when, in Constantine's time, people began to bury in the cathedrals, and 1 Translated, with the author's permission, from Le Temps, by C. DE FAYE

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it had entirely come to an end at the beginning of the fifth century, when the barbarians invaded Rome.

The Popes, it is true, had continued to care for, restore, ornament them; but they were themselves the cause of the forgetfulness into which the Catacombs fell, by carrying away their most celebrated relics to enrich the churches. As these souvenirs of the heroic times of Christianity formed the principal interest of the crypts, the faithful ceased to descend into them when they ceased to find in them aliment for their piety or their superstition. It came to be only at long intervals of time that these stranger pilgrims were seen, whose names engraved on the walls (grafitti) still give proof of their visits, and whose itineraries have not been useless to modern researches; still, after the tenth and eleventh centuries the neglect becomes even more marked. In order to bring these holy places again into prominence, erudition had to take the place left vacant by piety. Bosio, who has justly been called the Christopher Columbus of the Catacombs, while quite young, seized with enthusiasm on this subject, embraced in his researches all the cemeteries that he could discover; he marked their topography, made a collection of the monuments, had them engraved, and left a posthumous work which forms the starting-point of all posterior labours (1632). Bosio, however, was only an archæologist, and it was simply in the interests of archæology that the eighteenth century took up the epigraphic and chronological study of subterranean tombs. "The historical sense," as M. Roller well remarks, " was not yet born." Indeed such was still almost the case when, in our own day, Séroux d'Agincourt, Raoul Rochette, and Perret pursued the traces of Christian art in the Catacombs. The true founder of the history of subterranean Rome is Jean Baptiste de Rossi. He has renewed this study by the patience, the exactitude, and the sagacity with which he has pursued it. The rigour of his method has been rewarded by the happiest results; the ingenuity of a judgment sharpened by exercise has allowed him to make the most unexpected restitutions. M. de Rossi has extended considerably the number of known cemeteries; he has determined the topography, and reconstructed the dispositions of the monuments. He has thrown upon them all the light which traditional data, gathered with prodigious erudition,

could give; and he has at last deciphered, commented upon, and chronologically classed a host of images and inscriptions. The only reproach which can be made against him is that of tendency," which was natural in treating such a subject, and quite explicable in the case of a savant working under the eye and the patronage of Pius IX. M. de Rossi, without making any real sacrifice of his scientific convictions, is evidently complaisant in his use of the Catholic method. He gives, or seems to give, more confidence than is meet to documents without any value and to legends without authority. In a word, there is too much desire to "solicit the text." But these defects, which were in a measure the very condition of the privileges without which the savant could not have accomplished his work, are redeemed by rare qualities. M. de Rossi, in his regard for ecclesiastical prejudices, appears often voluntarily to have conceded what he could not withhold; the orthodoxy of the conjectures is there, one would affirm, in order that the boldness of his affirmations may pass unchallenged.

1

M. Roller's work is of another character. The author does not pretend to have made discoveries analogous to those of De Rossi; he has neither opened new catacombs nor restored ruined vaults;-to have done so would have required an official position, and the resources which are attached to it. But neither is M. Roller a mere vulgarisateur who confines himself to summing up the researches of others. He has spent ten years at Rome, has made himself familiar with the underground city; has given himself up to long iconographical, epigraphical, and patristic studies. He now appears, with vast and patiently gathered resources, to let us know in what state the exploration of the Catacombs is at present, and he brings to his task all the information necessary to control the results hitherto obtained. This then is the nature of the study to which he invites us. The monuments are there, but they must be interrogated; the stones speak, but their language requires interpretation. In deciphering the wreck of ages there is always room left for conjecture, and in order that the conjecture may be wise, it is not enough to have erudition, nor even

1 Les Catacombes de Rome, Histoire de l'Art et des Croyances religieuses pendant les premiers siècles du Christianisme, par Théophile Roller. 2 vols. in fol., avec cent planches. Paris: A. Morel et Cie. (£10.)