We recall here the mention of John, Patriarch of Alexandria, who asked of his clergy a register of all the poor and destitute in that city. "Go," said he, "and get me a full list of my masters."
From the Theodosian code, it appears that the church owned large vessels, employed either in bringing to some dioceses provisions for their own flocks, or in sending help to the most afflicted communities, from Egypt even unto Gaul.
"The Cenobites, or Monks of the Desert," says St. Augustine, "used to freight these ships of charity with grain, obtained by them in exchange for the mats and baskets which they manufactured." The vast hospital, founded by St. Basil, of Cappadocia, near Caesarea, is called by St. Gregory" a new city built for the sick and poor."
Hospitals were so great an innovation on the customs of the ancient classic world, that the Emperor Julian, surnamed "The Apostate," tried in vain to introduce them. Repelling the Christian doctrine, he was sensible of the influence of Christian charity, and would fain have engrafted on the pagan stock this fruit of another dispensation.
Why are the poor and afflicted especially given in charge to the church, and why does the Christian see them with quite other eyes than those of mere benevolence? Why is Christ identified, in his birth and companionship, with the poor? Why are the most suffering classes the first objects of his care and mediation?
If it is written that "He who shall give to one of my disciples only so much as a cup of cold water in my name, shall not lose his reward," it is also written that the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, the prisoner, are all our brethren in Christ. It is by virtue of that susceptibility, which the exercise of charity develops in us, that we become consciously "members one of another in the body of Christ."
Jesus Christ came to awaken in humanity a conscience including our neighbor, a conservative instinct embracing the relations of the individual with the species, unlimited by family, clan, or nation; and which transcends the analysis of a Malthus, a Locke, or a La Rochefoucauld. [Footnote 275]
[Footnote 275: That Sister of the Poor, whom you pass in the street with her basket, and perhaps look down upon as on a creature of inferior grade, is living closer to the heart of universal love, is deeper in celestial wisdom than the proud philosopher; leads a life more heroic in its abnegation and humility than the general with his bloody laurels. This is so, because the divine influx of life moulds the will and the affections, and moves the bowels of compassion long before the brain matures its schemes of action.]
The suffering persons or classes are the atoms, the organs, or the local points where the life of humanity is threatened or compromised; thither, with unwonted energy, must its vital resources be directed; and how directed? Here we find the contrast between the spirit of Christ and that of pagan or schismatic countries. Ignoring the true unity of man, paganism merely suppressed the effects of misery by suppressing the person of the miserable. It did not consider that the spirit of cruelty, developed or encouraged in this elimination, is itself a living cause and propagator of human misery. Religious sympathy alone could quicken the intelligence to this perception, and find something precious in the life of the wretch rescued from his wretchedness; find beneath the rags, the dirt, and the chains, beneath ignorance, the vices, and diseases, that "a man's a man for a' that." Again, Christianity discerned precious discipline of virtue in the exercise of charity, and practised it no less for the sake of the giver than that of the receiver. This is a practical commentary on the axiom of human unity or solidarity, anticipating the fuller light which may be expected from a knowledge of our ulterior destinies.