In the Catacombs more safely than elsewhere could the Christians celebrate the ordinances of religion, often under cover of the rites of sepulture, which might even yet be sacred in the eyes of their enemies. And next to their funeral purposes this seems to have been their chief use. For this many of their principal chambers and chapels were excavated, supplied with seats, ventilated by _luminari_, and adorned with biblical or symbolical paintings. With what emotions must the primitive believers have held their solemn worship and heard the words of life, surrounded by the dead in Christ! With what power would come the promise of the resurrection of the body, amid the crumbling relics of mortality! How fervent their prayers for their companions in tribulation, when they themselves stood in jeopardy every hour! Their holy ambition was to witness a good confession even unto death. They burned to emulate the zeal of the martyrs of the faith, the plumeless heroes of a nobler chivalry than that of arms, the Christian athletes who won in the bloody conflicts of the arena, or amid the fiery tortures of the stake, not a crown of laurel or of bay, but a crown of life, starry and unwithering, that can never pass away. Their humble graves are grander monuments than the trophied tombs of Rome’s proud conquerors upon the Appian Way. Lightly may we tread beside their ashes; reverently may we mention their names. Though the bodily presence of those conscripts of the tomb--the forlorn hope of the 105 army of Christianity--no longer walked among men, their intrepid spirit animated the heart of each member of that little community of persecuted Christians, “of whom the world was not worthy; who wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth, ... being destitute, afflicted, tormented.”[151]