boy. With the second boy there are dashes of paint around him, which have been interpreted by Romanists and Protestants as teaching pouring or sprinkling with immersion. But there is no vessel from which water is poured; it certainly is not poured from the hand fast on the head. It is just as difficult to see how these dashes could represent sprinkling, for the sprinkling hand is tight on the head, and there is no mention in any Christian authors of sprinkling in baptism for many centuries after this picture is said to have been made. If it represents sprinkling, it forms the single exception in one thousand years of Christian literature and Christian art. Then, what does the companion picture, the boy without the dashes around, represent?

According to this lithograph, the division of the dashes is not on the head, is not above the top of the head, but at the side and away from the head, and as far from the hand. Did any one ever see water poured or sprinkled on the head start off to the right hand on a level with the head and then break up and down? If we follow De Rossi himself, must we not say that these dashes of paint, which he and others say represent affusion, were added by a very poor hand after the picture was finished? If the picture represents pouring or sprinkling, it preaches what Rome for five centuries regarded as a heresy to be utterly condemned. Cyprian in Africa and some later Western councils allowed pouring in case of sickness unto death, but Rome and the orient rejected it. Still, there is no sickness here. This boy with the dashes of paint around him stands up straight and strong. It is the boy without any dashes about him that totters. If there is pouring on the first, it is pouring in flat contradiction of Cyprian.

When we remember that these catacombs were, for centuries until the later Middle Ages, places of pilgrimage as thronged as Lourdes, is it not the plain teaching of this

lithograph that, centuries after this boy was painted, and when pouring and sprinkling were no longer heresy, some poor limner thought to do the church service by adding these dashes to only one of two precisely similar pictures? That seems the only possible point where literature, history, art, and archæology can meet with agreement over this lithograph.

There is another point of view in judging these exceptional enigmas in single monuments. The Adriatic Sea separates Western Christian churches from the Eastern. West of the Adriatic, by the testimony of all historians and of the early rituals of Rome itself,1 the earlier practice, immersion, has been superseded by sprinkling for baptism. Romanists and Protestants, except Baptists, sprinkle. It is natural that those who now sprinkle should seek for proofs of it at an early day. But in Eastern Europe, in Asia and Egypt, sprinkling or pouring has never been acknowledged as baptism, except in late centuries by the few parties in impoverished Eastern churches who had sought protection under the ægis of Rome,-Maronites, Jacobites, Armenians, etc.

There are very learned and scientific students of early Christian art in the Greek Church at present. Their works are authorities in their specialties. What would well-informed and fair-minded scholars like Kondakoff, Pokrovskij, the writers in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift, and others, see in these dashes around that boy? What would Ephraem the Syrian, or Origen and Eusebius and Cyril of Palestine, or Basil and Gregory of Asia Minor, or Chrysostom of Syria and Constantinople, or Athanasius and Cyril of Egypt, or Tertullian and Augustine of Africa, or Ambrose of Milan and the bishops of Ravenna, see in those streaks of paint? They with united voice taught that there was one only baptism, which was trine immersion. Personal

1 1 Daniel, Codex Liturgicus, Vol. i. p. 178 ff.

exceptions there always have been, and always will be, in all churches, as to doctrine and practice; but the exceptions only make the universal rule and custom stand out the clearer. When we consider how far these churches, in many matters of doctrine and practice, and especially as to the miracle-working power of baptism, had veered from the New Testament, it is really astonishing that for so many centuries they preserved the original manner of baptism.

In the picture spoken of, the boy stands in this widespreading river, and the Teaching's exception is brought in to prove that this boy is sprinkled. For the Teaching allows "pouring thrice" (not sprinkling), but only when there is a scarcity of water. The boy stands in the river of the water of life from Christ the Rock, and there is abundant water for great fishes to swim and for the immersion of all who would come. If these streaks of paint mean pouring, then there is pouring where the Teaching positively enjoins immersion. There is a still greater contradiction. The Teaching commands immersion in living (flowing) water, and here is the true, illimitable, living water; and where there is this living water, this picture, if it means pouring, sets before us the flat contradiction of the Teaching. Was there ever a greater series of contradictions cited as proofs? We receive the Teaching and similar works, and the pictures of the catacombs, as valuable historical testimonies, to be examined and used for all they can teach us of their times. But we are very far from bowing down to them as our masters or putting our necks in their ill-made yokes. There is another yoke that is easy and another burden that is light.

The only other exception to the universal inculcation and practice of baptism in the first five centuries is found in the pouring water on Novatian, when in the jaws of death, and in Cyprian's letter to Magnus justifying that

course. Cyprian with most writers of his day believed that baptism conveyed salvation, and that without baptism there was no salvation for any one. Hence the anxiety in desperate cases to perform some ceremony as the equivalent of baptism. A few minor councils helped on this view. But this view had not the slightest influence upon the great teachers of the following fourth century, who taught that the only baptism was trine immersion.

The Baptists of the present day believe that none should be immersed, baptized, but those who are already believers in Christ. Hence baptism, immersion, is for them only a speaking type of a union already effected with Christ in his death and resurrection. Still so difficult of eradication from the mind of man is the opus operatum view, that, within a few years, in one of the oldest and richest of the Baptist churches of New York city, a Baptist father told how he had poured water upon a dying child to satisfy his wish to be baptized. Here was the case of Novatian over again. While the feelings of the mistaken father were respected, there was, happily, no Cyprian there to darken counsel by words without knowledge, and endeavor to exalt the exception into a custom.

THE MOSAIC OF THE BAPTISTERY.

The last of the series of permanent quotations for the archæological proof of sprinkling or pouring in the early Christian centuries, i.e. before A.D. 500, is found in Ravenna in Italy, in what is known as San Giovanni in Fonte, the baptistery attached to the cathedral.

On the death of Theodosius the Great (A.D. 394), the empire was divided, his ten-year-old son Honorius receiving as his portion the western half, with his capital not Rome but Milan. Ten years after this, Alaric and his Visegoths swept Honorius out of Milan, and he finally took