which Jesus Holy Spirit, and the Dove on the mast represents the heavenly peace which is giving both to Peter and the ship.

The

Hippolytus glows when speaking of the Church as a ship, tossed by storms but never wrecked, because Christ is with her. He makes the cross her mast, his word her rudder, his precepts her anchor, the sea her laver of regeneration. Spirit breathes into her sails to waft her to her heavenly port, and he gives her an abundant entrance into her desired haven. In the above rude gem from the Catacombs two Apostles are rowing, and a third, Peter, is stretching his hand to Christ in prayer as he meets Jesus on the wave, to save him from sinking. But in the following we have the idea of Hippolytus, where the storm-fiend is endeavoring to wreck the Church by persecution. In the distance is a man swept away by the same waves which dash over the vessel, to represent the children of this world being drowned in the billows of perdition. But with Christ on the deck and the Almighty hand reached forth from above, the cross-ribbed flag rises high in the bow above the threatening sea. Although the rudder is swept away, the outstretched hands of Jesus direct her course in the gale.

NO. 3.-SYMBOL OF THE CHURCH AS A SHIP.

These purely symbolical pictures from the Catacombs may help us to understand their Baptismal Pictures, where we have a large admixture of the real and the symbolic. No. 4 is from the Crypt of St. Lucina at Rome, and is described by Father Garrucci. Its date is in dispute, but it is the oldest painting of Christ's baptism known. Many high authorities assign it to the close of the second or the opening of the third century, amongst them De Rossi. The Saviour is leaving the Jordan after his immersion, and John takes him by the hand to welcome him to the bank. Neither the head of John nor that of Christ is adorned by the nimbus, which was not adopted into Christian art from pagan art to indicate sanctity and authority till the fifth century. But the leaf in the mouth of the dove, which denotes the Holy Spirit, indicates that he brings a message of peace from heaven in honor of Christ's baptism. A passage from Tertullian throws light upon this figure: As after the waters of the deluge, in which the old iniquity was purged away, as after that baptism (so to call it) of the old world, a dove sent out of the ark and returning with the olive-leaf was the herald to announce to the earth peace and the cessation of the wrath of heaven; so, by a similar disposition with reference to matters spiritual, the Dove of the Holy Spirit sent from heaven flies to the earth, to our

BAPTISMAL PICTURES.

259

flesh, as it comes out of the bath of regeneration after its old sins, and brings to us the peace of God.' (De. Bap., c. vii.)

NO. 4.-JESUS BAPTIZED IN THE JORDAN.

No. 5 presents a youth ankle-deep in water, the administrator holding a roll in one hand, and resting the other on the candidate's head to plunge him in the water. The roll in his left hand indicates his authority or commission to baptize, as one 'sent

NO. 5.-A SUPPOSED IMMERSION OF JESUS.

from God;' and also shows that the painter had John in his 'mind's eye,' even if he fell into a double anachronism first as to the extreme youth of Christ, and then in substituting the Roman toga for the Jewish tunic; showing both his Roman taste

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CHRISTIAN ICONOGRAPHY.

and the poverty of his artistic genius by copying the drapery of his every-day life. The Ursian Mosaic at Ravenna clothes John in a robe of similar fullness in which the folds hang differently, the toga being capable of endless adjustments as seen in classic statuary. But is this painting from the Chamber of the Sacraments,' in the Catacomb of Callixtus, a baptism of Christ? The Arian Mosaic of St. Maria, in Cosmedin, is intended for Christ without doubt, in which he looks almost boyish, as also in this fresco. The ablest writers call attention to this fact, as according with the general methods which treat of him in all departments of early Christian art. Didron, in his great work on 'Christian Iconography,' treats at large upon the juvenility of Christ's figure in all early Christian art, but especially of this curious feature in the earliest Catacomb pictures, which constantly represent him as a youth from twelve to fifteen. He remarks: That the figure of Christ, which had at first been youthful, becomes older from century to century, in proportion as the age of Christianity itself progresses. That of the Virgin, on the contrary, becomes more youthful with every succeeding century.' P. 249. This method came neither from mistake nor ignorance; but was chosen as the best mode known to express the meek, lowly and teachable in Jesus. Lord Lindsay says: "He is represented as an abstraction; as the genius, so to speak, of Christianity; a beardless youth, to signify the everlasting prime of eternity.' The nude figure stands in the water only slightly above the ankles; but his undress, as well as the expanse of the water, are in themselves symbols of his immersion without regard to the depth of the sheet; for why should the artist place him in water at all, especially unclothed, in order to pour water on his head? The youth is standing at his full height, and Garrucci writes of this picture: The candidate has only his feet in the water. The water, then, in which one must be immersed, is not, in fact, literally represented, but indicated by sign.' (VI, v, p. 95.)

Nos. 6 and 7 from the Catacomb of Callixtus relate to the same subject; 6 being taken from Garrucci, and 7 from De Rossi. They are symbolical and strikingly illustrate the painter's conception of baptism. These frescoes are on separate walls of the same crypt, and Prof. Mommsen treating them as one continuous picture, says with great clearness :

'We see on the first wall a man striking the rock with his staff; from the spring thus opened a fisherman catches a fish on a hook. Farther on the same spring serves as a baptismal font, out of which the man baptizes the boy standing before him, laying his hand on his head. Without doubt, Christ is here conceived of as the rock, as in the Epistle to the Corinthians: "They drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ;" and the man who strikes the rock is more likely Peter, who is often designated the new Moses, than Moses himself. It is not necessary to speak of the fisherman, Peter, who was called to be a fisher of men.' Here we have that favorite symbol of the fathers, which applies the figure of the fish to Christians as well as to Christ, as Tertullian: 'We smaller fishes,

after the example of our Fish, are born in the waters;' and of Melito, second century, 'fishes are the holy ones of God.' Hilary, Augustine and Optatus in the fourth century do the same, the latter calling the baptismal waters 'piscina,' a fish-pond. By introducing the angler into the picture, the idea is conveyed that another conversion has taken place, and so the newly-immersed candidate is another fish caught, a disciple of Christ drawn out of the waters of baptism which flow from Christ the smitten rock; a purely allegorical idea in exact keeping with the religious literature of the times in which the painter lived.

NO. 6. SUCCESSFUL GOSPEL PREACHING.

NO. 7.-CONVERSION AND BAPTISM.

Here are clearly three distinct and purely allegorical ideas: a wide expanse of baptismal water issuing from a rock and shown to be 'living' water from the fact that it contains large fish; a Gospel minister represented by the fisherman with his hook and line, first acting as a 'fisher of men' and then baptizing the disciple drawn to Christ; after that comes the perfected baptism in the 'laying on of the hand' when the process of conversion is finished and attested. What, then, are we to understand by the profuse, fire-like jets which fall around the candidate as he stands in the water nearly up to the knees? With a singular infatuation this fresco has been eagerly seized upon as the one drawing of antiquity proving the

modern doctrine of affusion with water as baptism, either added to immersion or substituted for it; but used chiefly to justify this substitution, directly in the face of all Church history and literature, for the first thousand years after Christ. Clearly his body has just been raised from the water, and this spray shoots above the head of the candidate to the height of about one-fourth of his person, then falls on one side to a line with his thigh and on the other down to the water. It is the only picture of an ancient baptism in which such a spray is found; and the question to be determined is, whether the artist intended it as a symbol or a realism, while much else in the scene is allegory. It cannot be mistaken for a nimbus nor yet for an aureole, although it compasses the whole person excepting a part of one leg. Certainly the law of gravitation determines that it cannot be intended for water dripping from the body after immersion, for it flies upward more than the length of the head and neck together above the head. Nor can it be water or oil, or any other liquid whatever falling from the baptizer's hand or from a vessel, as his hand rests flatly and firmly on the youth's head. Affusion or aspersion of water are entirely out of the question here, because the spray has no natural or apparent source. Neither the sense of sight nor a stretch of the imagination can call it water without showing where it comes from. Let any man try a thousand times to produce such a fillet of water around any one without the use of the uplifted hand, or of some vessel from which it is poured, and he must fail as often as he tries. More than this, the curves have not the appearance of water. The lines start up from the middle of the head in an arched, forked, wing-like form, which cannot be produced with water excepting when dashed upward in a body and with great force. The strokes of the pointed lines above the head, the flamboyant curve as of flame and its arching over the shoulders at so great a distance from them, do not harmonize with the specific gravity of falling water. But they look more like jets of flame projected upward and outward by the natural force of fire, and they convey the conception which the ancient artists expressed of 'cloven tongues, like as of fire.' No. 8, taken from the Catacombs and photographed from Garrucci (vol. iii, pl. 140, No. 1), expresses the same symbolical idea in association with the resting of cleft flames upon the heads of the Apostles at Pentecost.

The artist has introduced the Virgin Mary in the center of the Apostolic group, possibly because she is mentioned with the 'Twelve,' Acts i, 14; and also to express his idea of her superiority to them, by taking the place of her Son at their head, a notion in keeping with the errors of his day. The 'cloven' or divided appearance of the fire, as well as its flashing form, indicates the same idea in these two painters of different dates. The blaze-like curve in No. 7 suggests that the author intended that fresco to express his idea of the figurative and supernatural baptism of fire in union with baptism in water-a thought in perfect harmony with the religious literature of his times. We have innumerable instances in which the Fathers speak of such a baptism in association with the baptism of water. Tertullian tells us that