Darkness and Dawn; Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero. An Historic Tale

by F. W. Farrar

  CHAPTER XXI

  _AMONG THE CHRISTIANS_

  ?????? ?? ??? ??????? ????????????? ??????? ?? ???? ??? ????????.--CLEM. ALEX. _Strom._ ii. 4.

  Aulus Plautius, without any pretence to be a philosopher or arepublican, prided himself on retaining the antique fashion of Romansimplicity. His house was in every way a contrast to that of Otho.It excited the laughter of the dandies of the new school, with itsold rude statuary, its hard couches, its plain tables, its floor ofsimple black and white marble, the limited number of faithful andsober slaves, among whom but few were Greeks, and not one resembledthe pampered pages who were the pride of more modern establishments.The whole service of the house was modest and yet stately; and theconqueror of Britain, so far from blushing at the moderate fortuneand Roman surroundings which showed that he at least had notplundered the provinces which he had governed, was, on the contrary,pleased that men should see this example of honesty and justice.

  Pudens was in command of the escort of the Empress; and it was onhis return from the Palace to his own house that the rencontre withNero occurred which has been already narrated. Caractacus, too, andClaudia were present, though the guests were few; and young FlaviusClemens had been invited to meet the children of Claudius. Afterthe modest supper was over, the Empress and her brother enjoyeda conversation with their noble hostess, and learnt from her thatin one of the outer offices of the house of Plautius the Christianassembly was that night to be held. It would have been too dangerousfor Octavia to be present, but Pomponia had many Christian slavesand some freedmen who shared her secret, and were men and women ofunquestioned fidelity. Britannicus had now heard from her a greatdeal about the elementary doctrines of the new faith. There seemedto be no reason why she should any longer refuse his desire to be aneye-witness of Christian worship. She had spoken on the subject toLinus, the bishop of the Gentile community; and, without revealingany name, had told him that a young stranger, for whom she couldvouch as one who would not be guilty of any treachery, would beentrusted with the watchword, and would be present at the eveningprayers. Flavius Clemens was also to be present as a companion toBritannicus. Pomponia’s own son, a bright boy, named Aulus Plautiusafter his father, had not yet been taught any of the truths ofChristianity. His mother had trained him in all high and noblethings; but the general, who knew that she had ‘taken up unusualreligious views,’ had laid on her his injunctions not to teach themwithout his permission to their son.

  So retired had been the life of the young prince, and so intentionalthe seclusion in which he had been brought up, that few knew himby sight. But to prevent the danger of his being recognised by anychance informer, Pomponia so altered his appearance that even Octaviamight have failed to recognise him. The Flavian boy was at that timea person of little or no importance, and it was not necessary thathe should be disguised. Pomponius, who stayed with the Empress,entrusted Britannicus to the charge of Pudens, who, though not yetbaptised, was now a recognised catechumen. He had been at Christiangatherings before, and was all the more glad to go this evening,because Claudia also was to be present, in whom the soul of thecenturion was more and more bound up. But to avoid all possibilityof suspicion he placed his faithful Nereus in charge of the youngstranger, while he himself stood a little apart, and watched.

  The heart of the noble boy beat fast as he entered that unwontedscene. The room in which the Christians met was a large granary inwhich Plautius stored the corn which came from his Sicilian estates.It was as well lighted as circumstances admitted, but chiefly by thetorches and lanterns of those who had come from all parts of the cityto be present at this winter evening assembly.

  Britannicus was astonished at their numbers. He was quite unawarethat a religion so strange--a religion of yesterday, whose founderhad perished in Palestine little more than twenty years before--already numbered such a multitude of adherents in the imperial city.Clemens whispered to him that this was but one congregation, andrepresented only a fraction of the entire number of believers in Rome,who formed a multitude which no single room could have accommodated.He told him, further, that though the Jewish and the Roman--or, asthey call them, the Gentile--converts formed a common brotherhood,only separated from each other by a few national observances, theyusually worshipped at Rome in separate communities.

  If Britannicus was surprised by the numbers of the Christians, he wasstill more surprised by their countenances. The majority were slaves,whose native home was Greece or Asia. Their faces bore the stampwhich had been fixed on them by years of toil and hardship; but evenon the worn features of the aged there was something of the splendourand surprise of the divine secret. The young prince saw that theywere in possession of something more divine than the world couldunderstand. For the first time he beheld not one or two only, buta blessed company of faithful people who had felt the peace of Godwhich passeth all understanding.

  The children also filled him with admiration. He had seen lovelyslaves in multitudes; there were throngs of them in the Palace andin the houses of men like Otho and Petronius. But their beauty wasthe beauty of the flesh alone. How little did it resemble the sweetand sacred innocence which brightened the eyes of these boys andgirls who had been brought up in the shelter of Christian homes!

  But he was struck most of all with the youths. How many Roman youthshad he seen who had been trained in wealthy households, in whom hadbeen fostered from childhood every evil impulse of pride and passion!He daily saw the young men who were the special favourites of hisbrother Nero. Many of them had inherited the haughty beauty ofpatrician generations; but luxury and wine had left their marksupon them, and if they had been set side by side with these, whosefeatures glowed with health and purity and self-control, how wouldthe pallid faces of those dandies have looked like a fulfilment ofthe forebodings which even Horace had expressed!

  Nothing could have been more simple than the order of worship. TheChristians had ended the Agape, the common meal of brotherly love,consisting of bread and fish and wine. They had exchanged the kissof peace. The tables had now been removed by the young and smilingacolytes, and the seats arranged in front of the low wooden desk atwhich Linus and the elders and deacons stood. They had no distinctivedress, but wore the ordinary tunic or cloak of daily life, thoughevidently the best and neatest that they could procure. In such acommunity, so poor, so despised, there could be no pomp of ritual,but the lack of it was more than compensated by the reverentdemeanour which made each Christian feel that, for the time being,this poor granary was the house of God and the gate of heaven. Theyknelt or stood in prayer as though the mud floor were sacred as therocks of Sinai, and every look and gesture was happy as of those whofelt that not only angels and archangels were among them, but theinvisible presence of their Lord Himself.

  First they prayed;--and Britannicus had never before heard realprayers. But here were men and women, the young and the old, towhom prayer evidently meant direct communion with the Infinite andthe Unseen; to whom the solitude of private supplication, and thecommunity of worship, were alike admissions into the audience-chamberof the Divine. Never had he heard such outpourings of the soul,in all the rapture of trust, to a Heavenly Father. How differentseemed such intercourse with the Eternal from the vague conventionalaspirations of the Stoics towards an incomprehensible Soul of theUniverse, which had no heart for pity and no arm to save!

  But a new and yet more powerful sensation was kindled in his mind,when at the close of the prayers they sang a hymn. It was a hymn toChrist, beginning--

  ‘Faithful the saying, Great the mystery--Christ! Manifested in the flesh, Justified in the spirit; Seen of angels; Preached among the nations; Believed on in the world; Received up in glory!’

  Britannicus listened entranced to the mingled voices as they roseand fell in exquisite cadence. He had heard in theatres all themost famous singers of Rome; he had heard the chosen youths and themaidens chanting in the temple processions; he had heard the wailingover the dead, and the Thalassio-chorus
of the bridal song. But hehad heard nothing which distantly resembled this melody and harmonyof voices wedded to holy thoughts; and, although there were noinstruments, the ‘angelical soft trembling voices’ seemed to himlike echoes from some new and purer region of existence. He rejoiced,therefore, when they began yet another hymn, of which the first versewas--

  ‘Awake thee, O thou sleeper, And from the dead arise, And Christ shall dawn upon thee, To light thy slumbering eyes.’[52]

  When the hymn was over they sat down, and Linus rose to speak tothem a few words of exhortation. He reminded them that they hadbeen called from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan untoGod. He told them that they had fled to the rock of Christ amid aweltering sea of human wickedness, and though the darkness was aroundthem he bade them to walk in the light, since they were the childrenof light. Many of them had lived of old in the vices and sins ofheathendom, but they were washed, they were justified, they weresanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and in the Spirit of theirGod. Were not their bodies temples of the Holy Ghost which dwelt inthem, except they were reprobates? Since, then, they were in theSpirit, let them bring forth the fruits of the Spirit--love, joy,peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, goodness, charity--against which there was no law. The world was passing away and thefashion of it; their own lives were but as the withering grass andthe fading flower; and was not the day of the Lord at hand? Would Henot speedily return to judge His people? Would not that day come asa thief in the night, and how should they stand its probatory fireunless they were safe in the love of their Redeeming Lord?

  So far had he proceeded when a mighty answering ‘MARANATHA’ of thedeeply-moved assembly smote the air, and immediately afterwardsBritannicus stood transfixed and thrilled to the very depths of hiswhole being.

  For now a voice such as he had never heard--a sound unearthly andunaccountable--seemed not only to strike his ears but to grasp hisvery heart. It was awful in its range, its tone, its modulations,its startling, penetrating, appalling power; and although he wasunable to understand its utterance, it seemed to convey the loftiesteloquence of religious transport, thrilling with rapture andconviction. And, in a moment or two, other voices joined it. Thewords they spoke were exalted, intense, impassioned, full of mysticsignificance. They did not speak in their ordinary familiar tongue,but in what seemed to be as it were the essence and idea of alllanguages, though none could tell whether it was Hebrew, or Greek,or Latin, or Persian. It resembled now one and now the other, as someoverpowering and unconscious impulse of the moment might direct. Theburden of the thoughts of the speakers seemed to be the ejaculationof ecstasy, of amazement, of thanksgiving, of supplication, ofpassionate dithyramb or psalm. They spoke not to each other, orto the congregation, but seemed to be addressing their inspiredsoliloquy to God. And among these strange sounds of many voices, allraised in sweet accord of entranced devotion, there were some whichno one could rightly interpret. The other voices seemed to interpretthemselves. They needed no translation into significant language,but spontaneously awoke in the hearts of the hearers the echo of theimpulse from which they sprang. There were others which rang on theair more sharply, more tumultuously, like the clang of a cymbal orthe booming of hollow brass, and they conveyed no meaning to any butthe speakers, who, in producing these barbarous tones, felt carriedout of themselves. But there was no disorderly tumult in the variousvoices. They were reverberations of one and the same supernaturalecstasy--echoes awakened in different consciousnesses by one and thesame intense emotion.

  Britannicus had heard the Glossolalia--the gift of the tongue. Hehad been a witness of the Pentecostal marvel, a phenomenon whichheathendom had never known.

  Nor had he only heard it, or witnessed it. For as the voices beganto grow fainter, as the whole assembly sat listening in the hushof awful expectation, the young prince himself felt as if a spiritpassed before him, and the hair of his flesh stood up; he felt asif a Power and a Presence stronger than his own dominated his being;annihilated his inmost self; dealt with him as a player does whosweeps the strings of an instrument into concord or discord at hiswill. He felt ashamed of the impulse; he felt terrified by it; but itbreathed all over and around and through him, like the mighty wind;it filled his soul as with ethereal fire; it seemed to inspire, touplift, to dilate his very soul; and finally it swept him onward aswith numberless rushings of congregated wings. The passion withinhim was burning into irresistible utterance, and, in anothermoment, through that humble throng of Christians would have rungin impassioned music the young voice of the last of the Claudiipouring forth things unutterable, had not the struggle ended by hisuttering one cry, and then sinking into a faint. Before that unwontedcry from the voice of a boy the assembly sank into silence, and aftertwo or three moments the impulse left him. Panting, unconscious,not knowing where he was, or whether he had spoken or not, or howto explain or account for the heart-shaking inspiration which hadseemed to carry him out of himself beyond all mountain barriers andover unfathomable seas, the boy sank back into the arms of Pudens,who, alarmed and amazed and half ashamed, had sprung forward to catchhim as he fell.

  As he seemed to be in a swoon, one of the young acolytes came to him,and gently bathed his face with cold water. And meanwhile as the hourwas late, and they all had to get home in safety through the darkstreets and lanes through which they had come--some of them fromconsiderable distances--Linus rose, and with uplifted hand dismissedthe congregation with the words of blessing in the name of theFather, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

  Pudens and Nereus carried back the still half-unconscious boy intothe house of Pomponia, where his sister awaited him. Octavia wasalarmed at the wildness of his look, but the fresh air had alreadyrevived him. ‘I am quite well,’ he said, as the Empress bentanxiously over him, ‘but I am tired, and should like to be silent.Let us go home, Octavia.’

  ‘The escort is waiting,’ said Pudens.

  So they bade farewell to Pomponia, and the soldiers saw them safelyto the Palace.

  When they had started, Claudia said: ‘Oh, Pomponia, while he was atthe gathering the Power came upon him; he seemed scarcely able toresist it; but for his fainting I believe that he would have spokenwith the tongue!’

  Pomponia clasped her hands, and bowed her head in silent prayer.