INSCRIPTIONS AND DRAWINGS FROM ROMAN CATACOMBS. 109 



Discussion. 



The Chairman said that they had listened to a most delightful 

 lecture and one of absorbing interest. Those who had not had the 

 good fortune to visit Rome owed an especial debt of gratitude to the 

 Lecturer, for he had shown them many things that afternoon, things 

 of the utmost interest, that in probability they would miss if they 

 themselves were to visit that city. He felt sure that all there 

 present would unite in returning their cordial thanks to the 

 Lecturer. 



It would be noticed from what the Lecturer had told them that 

 the favourite representation of our Lord in the Catacombs was as 

 the Good Shepherd. But in the literary remains which had come 

 down to us from the second and third centuries, our Lord was hardly 

 ever mentioned under this figure. He was spoken of as the Son of 

 God, as the future Judge, and in many other relations and offices, 

 but not as the Good Shepherd. For those who wrote books and 

 treatises were the theologians, the literary men, but the inscriptions 

 in the Catacombs gave us the thoughts of the parents, the children, 

 the slaves. The theologian spoke of the Trinity and of the 

 Incarnation ; the child thought of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, 

 Who carried the lambs in His arms. 



It should be further borne in mind that no representation of our 

 Lord found in the Catacombs pretended to be a portrait of 

 Him. They were merely symbolical representations. The Roman 

 Christians had been too recently converted from idolatry to attempt 

 to represent our Lord's Person. 



Mr. Maurice Gregory said that he should like to emphasize 

 the remark of the Chairman as to the symbols in the little chapels 

 in the Catacombs. They were all of a deeply spiritual character, 

 the very frequent " fish," for instance, as a type of feeding on Christ, 

 as the central object of a supper scene, the common food of the 

 slaves who formed such a large proportion of many of the early 

 congregations, with its anagrammatic signification in the Greek 

 "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour," a simple and most inclusive 

 creed. Then there was the frequent symbol of Jonah and the 

 whale, reminding them of the Resurrection, and many others. Few 

 of these early worshippers could read, but they heard the Scrip- 

 tures continuously read from one end of the year to the other, as 



