becomes Divine to those whom he relieves, and is truly the imitator of the Most High." "A marvellous exchange," says Hermas, "is that which is established between the rich and the poor-the rich gives to the poor what he needs, and the poor in return, enriches him by his prayers. Thus the vine embellishes with its branches and enriches with its fruit the elm on which it leans." "O, rich man," adds Clement, of Alexandria," wilt thou not conclude so precious a bargain? Thou, whose salvation is, each day, compromitted by so many creatures, wilt thou not raise for thy safety an inoffensive army of old men, pious orphans and meek widows, select spirits, who conceal their nobility from the eyes of men; wish to be holy without parade, and are here below, as if in exile, waiting for the day which is to unite them to God? Such are the guardians which you need. No one is idle; no one is useless; one will pray for thy salvation; another will sympathise with thy pains; another will sigh for thee in the bosom of God as many poor rerelieved, so many advocates for thee, so many intercessors for thee, before the Sovereign Judge."

Such are short specimens of their eloquent exhortations. And these were not mere words. The agapae, or love-feasts of the early Church might better be called charity feasts. They were not merely symbolical rites. The wants of the body as well as the soul were there provided for. They were much nearer to our Christinas dinners than to a cold collation of bread and water. Not but that the latter may have very good influences, may be very edifying to the Christian's soul, but the ancient Christians intended theirs to be also edifying to the poor man's stomach. With prayers, and thanksgiving, and hearty

singing of psalms of joy they feasted the poor, and the blind, and the maimed, and the lame, and the orphan. They invited not those who should invite them again,but the destitute and the miserable, hoping for no reward on earth, but looking for a sure recompense in heaven. How different is this from the luxurious feast of the epicure, and the sensualist, and the fashionable man of the world! Fancy to yourselves an eccentric rich man of this year of grace, 1860, assembling a goodly company of the poor but stalwart sons of green Erin and their wives, and keen, ragged news boys, and match-sellers, and bright-eyed daughters! Fancy him loading a spacious table with turkey and plumb pudding, and many a good thing which they had never seen, or at least tasted, in the beloved land of St. Patrick! Fancy him passing round among them freely, and helping this poor cripple to a nice bit, and that palsied woman to a draught of good ale. Fancy him then, at proper time, calling upon all to rise to their feet and sing, with heart and voice, one of the songs of Zion! Ah! this would be a realization of the ancient love-feast, of the charity of the second century. It would indeed have some striking resemblance, also, to the old English customs of the goodly season of Christmas. But these latter were too often depraved with profane mummeries, and wassail, and intemperance, and excess. They have found a nearer realization, thank God, in the feasts now in some places given to the Sundayschool children at Christmas, where innocent Christmas carols, and hymns, and flowers, and feasts of good things, and presents, following the religious exercises of the morning, make the hearts of the little ones glad. Thank God that there are men and women now not

brother of the church. There then prevailed in all heathendom the shocking practice of children born in shame, being exposed in lonely places or by the way-side to the mercy of wild beasts, or of men scarcely less wild. Often, too, the children of the hopelessly poor, or the sickly and deformed, for whom the mother of our times yearns with a more intense love, met the same sad fate, and sighed away their tender lives on the cold lap of mother earth, or were torn limb from limb by beasts and birds of prey. Whenever such little unfortunates were discovered, the church became their mother, and not only baptized and taught them the true faith, but cared for all their wants and reared them up in industry and comfort to be useful and happy members of society. The old men and the infirm too, were placed in comfortable asylums-not in miserable alms-houses, such as Dickens has made but too familiar to all imaginations, where a miserable pittance is doled out to sustain a scanty subsistence within damp and cold walls, and the eyes of venal and hard-hearted masters are quick to discover and cut off all means of physical comfort and enjoyment. Alas! that we should know that there are examples of a similar kind even in our own happy country, so abounding in the necessaries of life! But these primitive men, looking upon all these unfortunates as brothers, first fed them abundantly with plain and wholesome food, then covered them decently with clothing suited to their condition, then spoke to them in accents of brotherly kindness, and lastly, led them by the hand to the house of God, and kneeling beside them, lifted up with and for them the voice of prayer and praise. Ancient charity began with gaining over the body, and ended

with gaining the heart to virtue and to God.

Now, we are not going to decry modern charity in the gross, for we have seen too much of it in noble and glorious aspects. But some of it, we think, begins at the wrong point, Some very good people call condescendingly in their carriages at the cottage door of the halfstarved laborer, step daintily on the floor long unused to suffering the hardship of a scrubbing-brush, inquire piously if a Bible can be found in the house, offer a prayer for the conversion of the benighted inmates, and leave on the pine table four ounces of bad tea and six ounces of brown sugar, crowned with a dry controversial tract. Excellent people they are, meaning well, no doubt, but rather narrow. The tea and sugar will not quite fill those importunate inner sacks carried somewhat naturally, though unfortunately, by father and mother and five children, nor will the dry doctrine fill the hearts of the young or the old. What is wanting is the element of true human sympathy, and without this let no man or woman think to do the least possible good in the cottages of the poor.

But let us return to other examples of ancient charity. Cornelius, a bishop of Rome, tells us that, towards the middle of the third century, his church sustained ordinarily, besides a numerous clergy, more than 1,500 poor, such as widows and persons afflicted with different evils. Other churches in the various cities of the empire, doubtless, sustained a proportionate number; and let it be remembered that this was in days of persecution, and long before the new religion had obtained the favor of emperors and kings. In the third century, following the long wars of Gallienus and the famine which ensued, a contagious malady broke out in

Alexandria. Struck repeatedly with so many scourges, the pagans gave themselves up to that blind panic, fear, which excludes all other thought but that of danger. Inhuman by excess of fear, they repelled from their houses those who began to be attacked by it, deserted their most intimate friends, threw the victims still breathing, upon the public square, and gave the dead bodies, without burial, to the dogs. The Christians, on the contrary, forgetful of all care of themselves, attended them day and night, and nursed the sick and dying. Priests, deacons, laymen, among them many distinguished persons, died victims of the contagion, joyfully sacrificing their lives for their friends and brethren. Others pressing in their arms the bodies of those who had just expired, closed their eyes, carried them upon their shoulders, washed them, enveloped them in shrouds, carried them to their burial, till they in their turn received from the survivors the same service.

Does any classical scholar here remember the masterly description of the plague of Athens by Thucydides? If he was not, at college, an over expert Grecian, he may remember it by that same token that he wished the writer and the book had both perished by that same plague. But what a striking parallel does that great master of his tory give us to this! But a parallel, alas! without the alleviation. The charity was wanting. How the heart sickens at the recollection of his awful periods. Gaunt figures stalking from house to house of the dead, staggering under stolen bags of gold and plate; men reeling forth mad with drink, and shouting a horrid chorus of bacchanals in the streets; women lost to shame, and publicly contending to see who should be most vile; gaming, and

quarrels, and theft, and murder, rife on every hand, while the sick and dying languished for a cup of water from a kind hand, or a word of sympathy from a kind heart.

But time fails to speak of examples of charity in the earlier ages of the church. Even in more corrupt times, when faith and practice were greatly depraved, charity was never entirely lost sight of. The monasteries, institutions well suited to the ages in which they were begun, however unsuited to ours, were always seats of learning and charity. The poor received bread at their gates. Their slaves were always the most humanely treated, and their tenants rented their lands on the easiest terms. Even the fierce baron, of the middle ages, though he plundered the company of merchants on the highway, and harried neighbouring towns and castles, like the English outlaw of later times, gave to the poor, what he took from the rich.

But the darkest period of charity was also that known as the least learned in theology, and the coldest in piety. And it is only in recent years that charity has revived from her long slumber, and is beginning to put on her robes of beauty, and array herself in her winning smiles, and deck herself with her jewels of great price. Something had been done before, but coldly, unsystematically, with sparing hand. But men are at last beginning to feel, that charity is a part of morality, a part of patriotism, a part of religion, a means of attaining happiness on earth and glory in heaven. Houses of mercy to receive poor fallen females, and teach them industry and purity, Orphan houses, Asylums for the widow and the indigent female, begin to arise in all our principal cities. Howard societies band themselves together to succour the stranger and the sufferer