But there was one department in the novel teaching pressed home by the early Christian teachers which seems at once to have riveted the attention of the listeners, and its universal acceptance at once won extraordinary, possibly an undreamed of popularity in the Christian ranks. It was an entirely new departure from any custom prevalent in the world of Rome--the injunction reverently to care for _the bodies of the dead poor_. The Emperor Julian in his summary of what he considered the chief points in the hated Christian system which had won them so many hearts, especially calls attention to this. He wrote this remarkable comment here: “This godlessness (_i.e._ Christianity) is mainly furthered by its charity towards strangers, and its _careful attention to the bestowal of the dead_.”--_Letter to Arsacius_, in Soz. v. 15. Lactantius in his review of the Christian virtues urged by the great teachers of the new religion, and to a great extent practised in the early centuries, gives a prominent and detailed notice of this pious and loving custom, and strikingly writes as follows: “The last and greatest office of piety is the burying of strangers and the poor,” adding that the noblest pagan teachers of virtue and justice had never touched at all upon this inescapable duty. These had left this, he adds, quite out, because they were unable to see any advantage in it. Some of these pagan teachers, he goes on to say, even esteemed burial as superfluous, adding that it was no evil to lie unburied and neglected. The great fourth century writer proceeds at some length to give some of the reasons which had influenced Christians so tenderly to care for their brethren who had fallen asleep: “We will not suffer the image and workmanship of God to lie exposed as a prey to beasts and birds, but we will restore it to earth from which it was taken; and although it be in the case of an unknown person, we will supply the place of relatives, whose place, since they are wanting, let benevolence take.”--Lactantius, _Inst._ vi. 12. Aristides--middle years of second century--thus dwells upon the tender solicitude of the Christian folk for their dead: “When one of their poor passes away from the world, one of them (the brethren) looks after him, and sees to his burial according to his means.”--_Apol._ xv. Aristides is here referring to the private charity of individual members of the community, which was often very lavish in the early centuries. Tertullian, on the other hand, writing on the same duty of caring for the brethren, includes the cost of “burying the poor” as coming out of the common fund made up of the money contributed at the public meetings of the Brotherhood.--_Apol._ xxxix. As the amount required for these burials and the subsequent care bestowed on the places of Christian sepulture was very considerable, the public collections made in the assemblies were necessarily often largely supplemented by private alms.