Hermas—Shepherd.—“Not hesitating as to whom you are to give or not to give, for God wishes His gifts to be shared by all.”—Comm. 2.
“Rescuing the servants of God from necessities—being hospitable, for in hospitality good-doing finds a field.”—Comm. 8.
Polycarp—Epistle (written early in the second century):
“In love of the brotherhood, kindly affectioned one to another ... when ye are able to do good, defer it not, for pitifulness delivereth from death.”—Epistle, 10.
A short sketch of the practical side of the teaching current at these meetings of the brethren will complete our description of these primitive Christian gatherings. The teaching dwelt on duties for the most part absolutely novel to the Roman world of the first and second centuries of our era. The inescapable duties pressed home to the listeners were duties generally quite unknown to noble, artisan, or slave in Roman society of the first three centuries. If carried out they would essentially change the old view of life current in all grades of the Roman world.
As before, we draw our information exclusively from the remains of very early Christian letters (Epistles) and tractates of well-known and honoured teachers in the Brotherhood which have been preserved to us.
The practical side of the teaching current in the gatherings was very largely based on the strange, beautiful, but perfectly novel saying of the Founder of the religion. It was, in fact, a new language which was used:
“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” The instructions given in the early assemblies defined the term “neighbour,” and explained how the love enjoined was to be especially shown.
Now in all the early Christian writings the persons to be helped in the first place seem invariably to have been “the widows and orphans” of the new Society; for example, S. James, the Lord’s disciple, writes how “pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction,” etc. (i. 27).