deacons of the congregations are among the classes with whom he finds grave fault. In spite, however, of his earnest and touching remonstrances with those who, in hours of trial and persecution, in the many daily temptations of common life, had left their first love, Hermas acknowledges that in the Church of Rome the numbers of the just and upright are greater than the numbers of those who have fallen away. It is true that he sternly rebukes the unfaithful priests and deacons and other members of the hierarchy, but he recognizes here, too, men worthy of the highest commendation; he dwells on their love, their charity, their hospitality, and even assigns to these faithful ministers of religion a place among the glorious company of apostles.
The general impression which a careful study of Hermas' portraiture of the Christian congregations in Rome leaves on the reader's mind in those far-back days, roughly from the days of Nero to the times of Trajan and even Hadrian, is that that great and sorely tried Church was far from being composed entirely of saints, but that the righteous and God-fearing—the men and women who had washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb, as true disciples of the Master, were after all decidedly in the majority.
Closely connected with his picture of the sins and errors of the Roman Christians—sins largely connected with the falling away of many in the dread hour of persecution—is his assurance that these sins are capable of pardon here, even if committed after baptism. No sin, no falling away, in Hermas' teaching is inexpiable; no truly penitent one is ever to be excluded from pardon and reconciliation. It was this generous and broad view of the goodness and the divine pity of God that was so misliked by the stern and pitiless teachers of the powerful school to which men like Tertullian belonged, a school which soon arose in the Church. Of the genuine written remains of the earliest period we have nothing comparable to the Shepherd of Hermas, when we look for a picture of the inner life of the Church of Rome in that far-back time when the echoes of the voices of the disciples who had been with Jesus were still ringing in men's ears.
