Seek to live with the saints, seek to receive life,
Seek to escape the fire.
Hold the hope that thou hast learnt. The day that
the master has appointed for thee is known to no man.
. . .
Tell the glad tidings unto children saying: the poor
have received the kingdom, the children are the inheritors.[78]
The Amherst papyrus is a part of the new store of knowledge from antiquity which has been opened up within recent years by the discovery and study of papyri. This branch of archaeology and palaeography has made available new fields of research in the study of early Christianity hitherto unfamiliar. In 1920, among the Oxyrhynchus papyri was discovered a fragment of a Christian hymn. It appears on the back of a strip which records a grain account of the first half of the third century. The hymn has a musical setting, the earliest example of Christian church music extant. The fragment consists of the conclusion only, so that the length and subject matter of the hymn as a whole are unknown. Creation is enjoined to praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost, in the form of a doxology. The meter is anapestic and purely quantitative.[79]
The Hymn of Thekla, Ἄνωθεν παρθένοι, appears in the Banquet of the Ten Virgins, a work of Methodius, Bishop of Olympus and Patara in Lydia, who was martyred at Chalcis in 312. It is a hymn of twenty-four stanzas sung by Thekla, each followed by a refrain sung by the chorus,
I keep myself pure for Thee, O Bridegroom, and holding a lighted torch I go to meet Thee.[80]