Lord had chastened even his prophet for his desire for vengeance upon those who had long dwelt in evil ways. It recalled to them the new commandment of love to their enemies, and it bade them welcome with rejoicing even the latest and most reluctant listener to the truth. It repressed spiritual pride, and checked too ready anger. Was not Rome even greater "than Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle"? Such were some, at least, of the meanings which the Christians of the catacombs may have seen in these pictures. It would be long to enter into the more subtile and less satisfactory interpretations of their symbolic meanings which are to be found in the works of some of the later fathers, and which afford, as in many other instances, illustrations of the extravagance of symbolism into which the studies of the cell, the darkness of their age, and the insufficiency of their education often led them. Two subjects are of frequent repetition in the catacombs, which bear a direct reference to the personal circumstances in which the Christians from time to time found themselves. One is that of Daniel in the lions' den,--the other that of the Three Children of Israel in the fiery furnace. Both were types of persecution and of deliverance. "Thy God, whom thou servest continually, he will deliver thee." Daniel is uniformly represented in the attitude of prayer,--the attitude adopted by the early Christians, standing with arms outstretched. Very often single figures with no names attached to them are thus represented above or by the side of graves. They were probably intended as figures of those who lay within them, figures of those who had been constant in prayer; and this conjecture is almost established as a certainty by the existence of a few of these figures with names inscribed above them,--as, for instance, "HILARA IN PACE." Noah in the ark is also one of the repeated subjects from the Old Testament; the ark being represented as a sort of square box, in the middle of which Noah stands, sometimes in prayer, and sometimes with the dove flying towards him, bearing a branch of olive. It was the type of the Church, the whole body of Christians, floating in the midst of storms, but with the promise of peace; or, with wider signification, it was the type of the world saved through the revelation of Christ. It bore reference also to the words of St. Peter, in his First Epistle, concerning the ark, "wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water; the like figure whereunto, even baptism, doth also now save us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." Sometimes, indeed, the act of baptism is represented in a more literal manner, by a naked figure immersed in the water; sometimes, perhaps, by still other types.