f responsibility
towards children akin to the humane Stoicism of the Antonines, and an
attempt to found, apart from temples or _collegia_, what was in the
nature of a public endowed charity.

PART IV.--JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN CHARITY

With Christianity two elements came into fusion, the Jewish and the
Greco-Roman. To trace this fusion and its results it is necessary to
describe the Jewish system of charity, and to compare it with that of
the early Christian church, to note the theory of love or friendship in
Aristotle as representing Greek thought, and of charity in St Paul as
representing Christian thought, and to mark the Roman influences which
moulded the administration of Ambrose and Gregory and Western
Christianity generally.

Hebrew charity.

In the early history of the Hebrews we find the family, clan-family and
tribe. With the Exodus (probably about 1390 B.C.) comes the law of Moses
(cf. Kittel, _Hist. of the Hebrews_, Eng. trans. i. 244), the central
and permanent element of Jewish thought. We may compare it to the
"commandments" of Hesiod. There is the recognition of the family and its
obligations: "Honour thy father and mother"; and honour included help
and support. There is also the law essential to family unity: "Thou
shalt not commit adultery"; and as to property there is imposed the
regulation of desire: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house."
Maimonides (A.D. 1135), true to the old conception of the family (x.
16), calls the support of adult children, "after one is exempt from
supporting them," and the support of a father or mother by a child,
"great acts of charity; since kindred are entitled to the first
consideration." To relief of the stranger the Decalogue makes no
reference, but in the Hebraic laws it is constantly pressed; and the
Levitical law (xix. 18) goes further. It first applies a new standard to
social life: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." This thought is
the outcome of a deep ethical fervour--the element which the Jews
brought into the work of charity. In Judges and Joshua, the "Homeric"
books of the Old Testament, the Hebrews appear as a passionately fierce
and cruel people. Subsequently against their oppression of the poor the
prophets protested with a vehemence as great as the evil was intense;
and their denunciations remained part of the national literature, a
standing argument that life without charity is nothing worth. Thus
schooled and afterwards tuto