A.D. 135) for the first time clearly saw what a great and powerful society had grown up in the heart of the Empire.
What a weighty group of words are those we are about to quote! They were written by men who lived in the heart of that little Society who with a love stronger than death loved Jesus of Nazareth as their friend and their God. They are words which are embedded in their letters—their devotional works—their histories—their pleading treatises and apologies for the faith, the faith which they esteemed of greater price than life.
Intensely real, they tell us of the life they and theirs were leading: reading them we seem to breathe the air they breathed; the simple unvarnished story tells us what daily, hourly perils were theirs,—what awful trials, what unspeakable dangers ever surrounded them; they show how hard it was to be a Christian in those early days in the first hundred years which followed the "passing" of S. John.
Nothing we can say now—write now—can give us a picture, a living picture, of the life of these first generations of believers in the Name, as do these words gathered from the fragments of contemporary writings which have come down to us across the long ages of storm and stress and change.
In the first group we will briefly examine the following:—The Epistle to the Hebrews, circa A.D. 65-6; the First Epistle of S. Peter, circa A.D. 65-7; the Apocalypse of S. John (the Revelation), circa A.D. 90; the 1st Epistle of S. Clement of Rome, circa A.D. 95. To this little selection we would add The Seven Epistles of S. Ignatius, A.D. 107-10, now generally received as undoubtedly genuine.
