of the Dead. It was often graved upon chalices used in the holy Eucharist. It was traced in gold upon glass, it was moulded upon lamps, it was carved upon rings. But it is to the catacombs that we must go to find it in its most varied and pathetic forms—now painted in fresco upon the walls of the corridors and chambers where the dead lie so thickly; now roughly, now more carefully carved on countless tablets; now sculptured upon the more costly sarcophagi.
Sometimes the Shepherd is represented with one sheep, at times with several; some listening to His voice—some turning listlessly away. We come upon it in a thousand places on the tombs themselves—in the little chapels or oratories leading out of the corridors where the more distinguished among the dead sleep. It is the favourite symbol of the Christian life and faith.
This constantly recurring figure of the Good Shepherd with His sheep in the catacombs throws much light on this deeply interesting and at the same time important question—What were the thoughts of that early Church in Rome respecting Christ and His teaching?
We must remember they lived very near the times when the greatest figure in history lived on earth, and talked with men. We shall do well to bear in mind that the first generation of these Roman Christians were taught by Peter and by Paul, and that through most of the second century men lived whose fathers must have seen and listened to these great servants of the Divine Master, certainly to their immediate disciples.
The form in which they loved best to think of this Almighty Saviour was as "the great Shepherd of the sheep"—the Shepherd of the First Epistle of S. Peter—the Shepherd of S. Luke and of S. John.[1]
A great and eloquent writer[2] in one of his most suggestive works does not hesitate to speak of what he terms the popular religion of the first Christians as the religion of "the Good
