Page:The early Christians in Rome (1911).djvu/170

 of strangers and the poor," adding that the noblest pagan teachers of virtue and justice had never touched at all upon this inescapable duty. These had left this, he adds, quite out, because they were unable to see any advantage in it.

Some of these pagan teachers, he goes on to say, even esteemed burial as superfluous, adding that it was no evil to lie unburied and neglected.

The great fourth century writer proceeds at some length to give some of the reasons which had influenced Christians so tenderly to care for their brethren who had fallen asleep: "We will not suffer the image and workmanship of God to lie exposed as a prey to beasts and birds, but we will restore it to earth from which it was taken; and although it be in the case of an unknown person, we will supply the place of relatives, whose place, since they are wanting, let benevolence take."—Lactantius, Inst. vi. 12.

Aristides—middle years of second century—thus dwells upon the tender solicitude of the Christian folk for their dead: "When one of their poor passes away from the world, one of them (the brethren) looks after him, and sees to his burial according to his means."—Apol. xv.

Aristides is here referring to the private charity of individual members of the community, which was often very lavish in the early centuries. Tertullian, on the other hand, writing on the same duty of caring for the brethren, includes the cost of "burying the poor" as coming out of the common fund made up of the money contributed at the public meetings of the Brotherhood.—Apol. xxxix.

As the amount required for these burials and the subsequent care bestowed on the places of Christian sepulture was very considerable, the public collections made in the assemblies were necessarily often largely supplemented by private alms.

All this loving care for the remains of the deceased went home to numberless hearts among the survivors of the loved, and evidently ranked high among the reasons which attracted many into the ranks of the Christian Brotherhood.

In our little picture of very early Christian life, Rome and its powerful Church has been generally selected as the scene of the life in question. In this primitive custom of reverent care