As a dogmatic teacher the writer of the Shepherd is of little or no value; Hermas emphatically was no theologian, but he was a close and evidently an accurate observer of men and things. Earnest and devout, while sadly deploring the weakness in the hour of trial of some, the failure of others in the ordinary course of things to keep on the narrow way leading to life—he rejoices with an unfeigned joy over the many noble men and women who, in all their sore danger and temptation, kept the Faith untarnished and undimmed.
Hermas of the Shepherd is a witness, to whose voice none can refuse to listen, of the sore and sleepless persecution which, from the days of Nero, with rare and brief pauses ever harassed the Christian sect in Rome.[1]
Composed as this book evidently was directly under the veiled shadow of persecution—a state of things which colours well-nigh every page of the writing—it is difficult out of so many testimonies here to select any special passage telling of this perpetual harrying of the sect; a very few passages will be quoted where this restless state of persecution is painted with vivid colouring.
"Happy ye who endure the great tribulation that is coming on, and happy they who shall not deny their own life" (Hermas, Vision, ii. 2).
"The place to the right is for others who have pleased God, and have suffered for His Name's sake" (Hermas, Vision, iii. 1).
"What have they borne? Listen: Scourges, prisons, great tribulations, crosses, wild beasts for God's Name's sake—to them is assigned the division of sanctification on the right hand—to every one who shall suffer for God's Name" (Hermas, Vision, iii. 2).
"But who are the stones that were dragged from the depths and which were laid in the building, and fitted in with the rest of the stones before placed in the Tower? These are they who suffered for the Lord's sake" (Hermas, Vision, iii. 5).
- ↑ What Hermas wrote specially of Rome, no doubt in a very large degree was the state of things in the provinces of the Empire. This is clear from the great and general popularity enjoyed by the Shepherd in the first two centuries. The picture of Christian life in Rome was recognized as an accurate picture of their own life, by the citizens of Corinth and Alexandria, by the dwellers in Ephesus and Antioch.
