That beneficence in the Roman Empire during the latter half of the first century and the first half of the second was fitful, formal, limited, and unimpassioned, as compared with the charities of Christians in their communities, need not be said; of course it was. The Christians succeeded to the legacies of kindness left by the pagans; they were comparatively few in number, and were bound to one another by peculiar ties; they were themselves of the great family of the poor; they were obliged to help one another in the only way they could, by personal effort and sacrifice. Their traditions, too, of beneficence were oriental. The difference in spirit between Roman and Christian charity cannot be fairly described as a difference between heathen charity and christian; it is more just to call it a difference between Eastern charity and Western. The Orientals, including the Jews, made beneficence in its various forms, an individual duty. Kindness to the sick, the unfortunate, the poor, compassion with the sorrowful, almsgiving to the destitute, hospitality to the stranger, are virtues characteristic of all eastern people. The New Testament chiefly echoes the sentiment of the Old on this matter, and the Old Testament chimes in with the voices of eastern teachers. In the West, government undertook responsibilities which in oriental lands, were assumed by individuals; people were to a much greater degree massed in orders and classes; the distance was wider between the governors and the governed, and considerations of state more gravely affected the actions which elsewhere seemed to concern only the private conscience and heart. The question of advantage between these two systems is still an open one. In every generation there have been some, christians too, who preferred the western method to the eastern, as being less costly, and more methodical; the debate on the relative advantages and disadvantages of the personal and the impersonal methods still goes on in modern communities; neither system prevails exclusively in any christian land; the Latin races still, as a rule, prefer the Roman way, France for example, where charity is a matter of public rather than of private concern.