Wine

and milk, are also said to have been sometimes used instead of water, An ancient specimen of Christian art shows us creatures half man half fish swimming about to baptise fish. For Tertullian says: ‘We small fishes, after the example of our Jkhthis (‘tish”), are born in water, and only by continuing in water are we safe.” The Ikhthis was the early monogram signifying “fish” (as shown on Christian seals and buildings, with the text attached), and also meaning “Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Saviour.” Long before Skandinavians knew of Christianity they performed the Ausa Vatni or “water sprinkling” over children whom they intended to let live (Du Chaillu, Viking Age, ii, p. 80). The Hindus have various dedicatory or purifying baptisms, and daily bathings, like Sabians, and E enes, among Christians and Jews. The bath which every Knight “Companion of the Bath” must take, when “dubbed” or “tubbed,” had a baptismal significance—as Dean Stanley reminds us (Christian Institutions, p. 8). Many Catholics look on unbaptised infants as mere animals, and mothers have refused to suckle such as being heathens, while in Ireland they are buried apart in a “ childs’ cemetery.” “Only at the font,” they say, “does natural love arise.” The Frank king Clovis was the first royal fish caught in the Christian net north of the Alps—and this by female wiles. He obtained a supply of chrism from heaven, which lasted 1300 years (longer than the sacred oil of Hebrews described in Exodus xxx, 31, for that perished at the Captivity). Apparently it should have been the same sacred oil, for ‘‘a white dove”—the Holy Ghost—brought it to Clovis in its beak from heaven, in the Ampulla ve el, presenting it to the holy Saint Rémy, It was kept in his tomb at Rheims, and used by all kings of France down to Charles X, in 1825. It is somewhat disrespectfully spoken of as a “gruel thick and _ slab,” which was taken out of the Ampulla on a golden needle, and mixed with oil and balm—some say milk and honey: by this kings were christened and consecrated at coronation, and they had to guard it carefully, for lo or injury would mean death or disease to them (Notes and Queries, 5th April 1890). In 1792 a sceptical revolutionist destroyed the Ampulla; but priests (like those who replaced Buddha’s Jost tooth relic) replaced the oil; for the curé of St Rémy, it appears, had abstracted enough of this heavenly unguent to last down to the time of the later Republic. So great was the mystery of baptism that sponsors became “Go ips ”"—that is God-sib, or spiritually related—and could not marry each other. In later times no office, no public or even private rights, could be claimed by those not baptised, and anointed, communicants. 287