risy. It gave to the brave the most daring heroism, and inspired
the fainthearted with the courage of despair. They lived in a time when
to be a Christian was to risk one's life. They did not shrink, but
boldly proclaimed their faith and accepted the consequences. They drew a
broad line between themselves and the heathen, and stood manfully on
their own side. To utter a few words, to perform a simple act, could
often save from death; but the tongue refused to speak the formula, and
the stubborn hand refused to pour the libation. The vital doctrines of
Christianity met from them far more than a mere intellectual response.
Christ himself was not to them an idea, a thought, but a real existence.
The life of Jesus upon earth was to them a living truth. They accepted
it as a proper example for every man. His gentleness, humility,
patience, and meekness they believed were offered for imitation, nor did
they ever separate the ideal Christian from the real. They thought that
a man's religion consisted as much in the life as in the sentiment, and
had not learned to separate experimental from practical Christianity. To
them the death of Christ was a great event to which all others were but
secondary. That he died in very deed, and for the sons of men, none
could understand better than they. Among their own brethren they could
think of many a one who had hung upon the cross for his brethren or died
at the stake for his God. They took up the cross and followed Christ,
bearing the reproach. That cross and that reproach were not figurative.
Witness these gloomy labyrinths, fit home for the dead only, which
nevertheless for years opened to shelter the living. Witness these names
of martyrs, those words of despair. The walls carry down to later ages
the words of grief, of lamentation, and of ever-changing feeling which
were marked upon them during successive ages by those who were banished
to these Catacombs. They carry down their mournful story to future
times, and bring to imagination the forms, the feelings and the deeds of
those who were imprisoned here. As the forms of life are taken upon the
plates of the camera, so has the great voice once forced out by
suffering from the very soul of the martyr become stamped upon the wall.

Humble witnesses of the truth; poor, dispised, forsaken; in vain their
calls for mercy went forth to the ears of man; they were stifled in the
blood of the slaughtered and the smoke of the sacrifice! Yet wher