how this could be, we must study a little Greek, which may be easily apprehended, however, even by those who are not scholars, if they will fix their attention for a few moments on the accompanying plan:— Ι ΗϹΟΥϹ = JESUS Χ ΡΙϹΤΟϹ = CHRIST Θ ΕΟΥ = OF GOD Υ ΙΟϹ = SON Ϲ ΩΤΗΡ = SAVIOUR The Greek for fish is here written perpendicularly, one letter above another, ΙΧΘΥϹ; and it is seen that these five letters are the initial letters of five words, which, together, contain a tolerably complete account of what Christ is. He is JESUS CHRIST, SON OF GOD, SAVIOUR. Thus, this one word, ιχθυς, or fish, read in this way, tells a great deal about our Lord’s name and titles; it is almost a miniature creed, or, as one of the Fathers expresses it, “it contains in one name a whole multitude of holy names.” It would take us too long to enquire into the origin of this device for expressing our Lord’s name and titles in so compendious and secret a form. Clearly, whoever may have invented it, it was very ingenious, and specially convenient at those times and places where men dared not speak of Him freely and openly. We cannot say when it began, but it was in universal use throughout the Church during the first three hundred years of her life, and then, when she was in the enjoyment of peace and liberty, it gradually dropped, first out of sight in Christian monuments, and then out of mind also in Christian literature. But, during the ages of persecution, it had sunk deep into the habits of Christian thought and language; it became, as it were, a part of the very Catechism,—every baptized Christian seems to have been familiar with it, whether he lived on the banks of the Tiber or of the Po, of the Loire, of the Euphrates, or of the Nile. In all these parts of the world, writers in books, poets in hymns, preachers in sermons, artists in painting, the very masons themselves on gravestones, made use of it without a word of explanation, in a way that would utterly mystify any modern Christian community. Who would now dream of carving or painting a fish upon a gravestone in a Christian churchyard? yet scores of graves in the Catacombs were so marked, and some of them with hardly a word or an emblem upon them besides. Or what meaning could we attach to the picture of a dove or a lamb standing on a fish’s back, if we did not understand that the fish represented Christ, and the dove or the lamb a Christian, so that the whole symbol stood for a Christian soul supported by Christ through the waves and storms of life? Or again, only imagine a Christian in these days having buried with him, or wearing round his neck during life, a little figure of a fish cut in ivory, or crystal, or mother of pearl, or some still more costly material? Yet a number of those who were buried in the Catacombs did this; and some of these fish even bear an inscription, calling upon the fish to be a Saviour!