The Epitaph of Abercius.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 6841, 28 June 1889, Page 2

The Epitaph of Abercius.

A SHORT LECTURE.

(By tho Eev.jomes Treadwell.)

It is one of the characteristics of the present day that an unwonted interest is taken in the world's past history. In the individual life when the hist yean are reached, the mind is given to the look backwards: fond memory goes back to bring "the light of other do-ye" around one. And similarly now; the world has grown old, and reflects its glance upon tho past with an eager wistfulness which would, if possible, know all about if. Amid the rush of busy present life there are few men that do not pause to toko now and then a rapid look at what the world in the f reshnbss'of its youth was. Everything interests: the practices punned, the beliefs entertained, the aims sought by the men wh,y lived long ago. Nor is any informant denied audience, who claims to bo able in any degree to lift the veil, and let us see what has been. Hence the historian searches arohives.in which have lain doouments, musty through age,and the honor is not small, if he have been so fortunate as to find in them some bit of paper, some M.S., however small, which shall reveal what was not known before, or mako that more fully known which wasknown. Hence, too, the explorations which have been earned on amongst the tombs of Egypt and tho moundsofMesbpotamia,atspots at which cities lay buried or stood deserted on the open plain, or on the classic ground on which Troy and Argos were situated. Thesfe explorations have been carried On ot the cost of very great toil and expense. And not in vain. To the demand of the patient oxplorer the earth has, given up its dead.

Jn the Antiquarian interest, which is so widely spread, and which may bo taken as the world's testimony to the continuity of its own life, and the oneness of the ages,the Christian scholar shares. The religion, whioli is his, has had lons existence amongst men, and for him in his character as a Christian are there antiquities, which he would like fully to know. It has been so long in the world thut its beginnings lie oven in the remote past, and to that past he turns, desiring both as a Christian and as a scholar to know it as certainly, to see it as .vividly. 'Os may be. lie desires that the more^ociuse there are vital matters of contypvelfilV, whose decision very much'depends o& hii'taowing well what he would like to kniwt -Nor, as he inquires what there has been, is' he limited to one source of knowledge. The writings, other than sacred, which wore produced in. the first centuries of the faith, will be, as they have been, one very special source of information as to the Christianity of these centuries. But discovery is adding light to light. We know what a little whilo ago was not known. Discovery, made by exploration, is adding wonderfully to our knowledge of the first Christian times, and of this discovery — a harvest that has long waited for the sickle— not even the first fruits have as yet been reaped. One of the quarters, in which exploration has been carried on, and discovery made, is that which we now call Asior Minor, rather that whioh lies along the Western sea-board of the Continent, and which in our Bible ia called by the name Asia, which it anciently had. In that quarter, as every one knows, Christianity after it hod passed out of Judea, and, passing, hadstnptoff from itself tho swaddling-cloth of Jewish narrowness, and taken its place amongst the nations as the universal faith — in that quarter Christianity had one of its principal seats. There St. Paul laboured and St. John. There in many a not ignoble city it continuedlong after all theinspired founders had passed away, to, whom under God it owed its establishment in the world. As has beon said in statements of simple and well-known faot, Asiawas " the chief foous of Christian thought and action in the second century ? And, there, as Christianity showed itself, the utmost publioity attended it. It was not as some timid creature, which comes out into tho light to run back into the darkness at the first moment of alarm. It wns the religion of multitudes, by whom theCbristian faith was openly held, and the Christian worship observed. It was consequently to be expected that, if anywhere, then amidst the ruins of that quarter (and it is, like Palestine, a " land of ruins ") there would be found much that bore on the Christianity once so prominent a thing in it. Much has been found. Whilst at the spot or near it, whioh has been made immortally famous by the great Homeric Epic, investigations have been fruitfully carried on by Schliemann, at others in the same region, which have been made for over interesting to evory Christian by the Christianity that unites us to them, Scholars such aa Jtr Wood and Professor Ramsay have prosecuted research with success. It has even been said, of the Asiatic lands where Ephesus and Colossae stood, and which are, thick with the debris of ages, that " every spadeful of soil turned up would reveal some secret of antiquity." Amongst the discoveries, mode /by Professor Bamsay only a few yba'ra ago, was the Epitaph of Abercius. It was one of a dozen such monumental inscriptions, which were given up to his hand during one short exploration, and was found upon an altarshaped tomb at Hieropolis, in Phrygia. It was written in Greek, and in lines (22) which obey tho laws of Greek verse. It may be thus translated:— "Whilst still in life I, a citizen of the olect city, have constructed this (tomb) that I may have in it a place where indue season to lay my body. I am by name Aborcius, and a disciple of the Holy Shepherd, who feeds his flocks of sheep on the (mountains and on the plains (and) who has great eyes, whioh everywhere survey (things); For He has taught me faithful writings, He sept me to royal Borne that I night look (on it), and see ths Queen of the golden robe and of the golden sandals, I saw thero a people wearing a lustrous seal. I have seen, too, the plain of Syria and all its cities, and 1 Nijibis, beyond tho Euphrates. Everywhere I met with (had) brethren. With Paul as my companion, I followed, and faith evorywhere was my guide, and gave me everywhere fish from the fountain to nourish me, great and pure, which a holy virgin hod caught. And this she gave continually to (my} f riends_ to eat, having good wine, presenting a mixed cup with bread. I, Abercius, spake these things standing by that they might be written down here (on the tomb). I have actually lived seventy and two years. This let the whole Synod notice, and let them pray for me, No one shall place any other thing at all on my tomb. But if ho do, he shall pay 2000 golden pieces to the treasury of the Romans and 1000 to the excellent oity of my sires — Heiropolis." Who this Aberoius was we know not, or anything about him beyond the particulars which he gives of himself, to wit, his birthplace inPhrygisj the advanced age which he was when he drew up the inscription to be engraved on the tomb he expected soon to be laid in ; and the place ho occupied in ■ the Christian Church aa a living believer ia Christ Jesus. It may be, too, that the words of the unearthed

epitaph, as I have rendered them, have not soemed very intelligible to you. But the epitaph wears on the face of it the stamp of a groat antiquity : the composition of it is, in faot, placed by tho learned at the end of the second century, or somewhere about ISO, A.D. And as is also evident from even a cursory glance at it, it is the rehearsal by Aborcius of the story of his own life. looking back on a career, that was nearing its close, and that from near the end stretched back to near the beginning of the second century, the saint sketches out the main outlines of it. He does so in language that is figurative and needs to be interpreted. But as the figures he employs, and tho i expressions he uaas are such as were very commonly employed in the first days of the faith, and are frqin" thjir employment, for example, in the Catacombs known to us, there is no great difEoulty ia interpret, ing them so as to get a pretty acourate understanding of the epitaph. For the sake not of what it tells about the dead saint, but for the sake of what it shows through the sketch of his life,whioh it bears, of the ohristianity of his day, let us try to unlock the sooret of it. I would ask you to observe that it shows us <

I. The extont to which the Christian religion had spread through the then world. Abercius, Jived at a time of movement and flux, when,travel was common, and many went to and fro. iTho great tide of human life ebbed and floVcd from one shore to another. Especially did the Imperial City attract to Itself frqra al} quarters, and gather within itaalf so mixed a population that it almost ceased to be Roman. And lite to the many, whp were perpetually passing up and t}°wn Wy 6 world, Aborcius travelled, His native country was, as we hnvo seen, the A^iatio province Phrygia, and the town, in it ap which certainly he died, if he w«s not alsq born there, was th,at eomowhut obscure oijy, Hieroppliß, which, ho nain.es " thp pjty of my sires." . But no,k there did he spend jn unbroken reeldeno.9 the many

years of his long life. , Once and againfa parently, he left it lo return toitiftffl| distant travel, and the considerable interr>lil^ which were oconpiod with travel. He tal^^. to Home and went in answer to some o»ll <£&M Providence, which he received from ,tha-S>! Lord of Proviaenco, or from the" Holy Vl/f Shepherd," whose disciple he was. As inW* the Epitaph he says:— "He cent me to'">ji Boyal Borne that I might look on it, ond,'^ see the queen of the golden robe and of '},% the golden scandals." He went alto "■ t$ JX Mesopotamia, crossing the Euphrates ■oridliffj''' visiting ITisibis. This city lay iv the north f 'f' eastern part of Mesopotamia, and was in the/"** second century " the chief bulwark of the" 1 ;?- Boman power against the Persians,"/ »; ; <J bulwark, that is, on the extreme eaateroi '£; limit of the dominion of Rome. East and,f west he travelled thronghout the extent of {'.Sthe then world, through which travel had s';l been made possible ss a consequence of its ■'•-' ■ subjection to Borne. And wheeever he ,f \ went, he came upon Christianity and the,. professors of it. He found, to. give a natter ='"._, of fact turn to his metaphorical ww^fle, ,-;-;' " the church in the Imperial City land i~?' Christian brethren signed by baptism," and,-; /X as 'he says when speaking of his Eastern:*/' travels—" Everywhere I found associate*," - ;/,' that is, fellbw-Objistiaiis. 'Everywhere,'? V through the spread of the great Brother-Vj'.' hood, Tie found thoie, with whom he couldw fr join in worship of the great God ■ and ' saviour, and with whom he could hold-'T sweet fellowship. Thus the testimony, r '^; which the Epitaph bears as to the extent to, 'f> whioh Christianitr prevailed is, that in the ~< ' short space between the death of thej'-;x Saviour and the day of Abercius, it had '.. spread so as to be everywhere, vt\uCin all parts of the Boman worid.,' T - The testimony is not solitary and' limply, |. najswhat was well-known apart from ivV*J so well-known and certain that all admits •; it. Lot me give you the words of^twd' "*? other witnesses to the fact. The one vi)"\ Pliny, the younger. He was 'the.Govemor '< J of an Asiatic province in "the years 1 03-6/, <| and writing to his N Emperor iay»i— "This-'.^: superstition has spread on all tides ::in'.i{ towns, in villages, and in the country, tHel'J' temples of our Gods stand deserted, and" <Jsacrifices have now for a long time ceased ;■;,* to beoffered." The other is Tertullian;the^ f j father of African Christianity, who, died/?' about 220. Ho aaya:— ",W« are but'.pf^ yeaterday, and yut we have token posjeißioi»|i ; t j of your whole country, towns, islands, the^| camp, the palace, the Senate, the forum j'-;^ we have left you only the temples." Yottji'a will have observed a difference of. tonfin.s% ■ the words these witnesses usfl: ,the testimony is the inevitable admission of -aii-^; enemy s the other j» the triumphant Mier* fftj t tion of a friend. You will have observed^ also from the dates ,1 have given, that; as %*? regards time, the testimony of Aberci^*^ comes between them. Less, explioit, moxe^Jincidental than they, it is not less »il(ej,| relied on, whilst at the same timefrbm' the 1 ;? a indication of the far-separated 1 boundaries ; J* of the Saint's travels, in connoctio^^with^ which it is given, it seems more unqueßtiojirj-f ably and strongly than they to utter M !*>';& the Faith even the word, everywhere, dtto'j% exhibit its universality. < ->."'. -'■rts&r t s& (To be Continued.) ',' ,;; v |i

i> .a™