says Sudre,[1] ’was voluntary abnegation or almsgiving.  But the giving of goods without any hope of compensation, the spontaneous deprivation of oneself, could not exist except under a system of private property ... they were one of the ways of exercising such rights.’  Moreover, as the same author points out, private property was fully recognised under the Jewish dispensation, and Christ would therefore have made use of explicit language if he had intended to alter the old law in this fundamental respect.  ’Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets:  I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’[2] At the time of Christ’s preaching, a Jewish sect, the Essenes, were endeavouring to put into practice the ideals of communism, but there is not a word in the Gospels to suggest that He ever held them up as an example to His followers.  ’Communism was never preached by Christ, although it was practised under His very eyes by the Essenes.  This absolute silence is equivalent to an implicit condemnation.’[3]

[Footnote 1:  Histoire du Communisme, p. 39.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. v. 17.]

[Footnote 3:  Sudre, op. cit., p. 44.  On the Essenes see ’Historic Phases of Socialism,’ by Dr. Hogan, Irish Ecclesiastical Record, vol. xxv. p. 334.  Even Huet discounts the importance of this instance of communism, Le Regne social du Christianisme, p. 38.]

Nor was communism preached as part of Christ’s doctrine as taught by the Apostles.  In Paul’s epistles there is no direction to the congregations addressed that they should abandon their private property; on the contrary, the continued existence of such rights is expressly recognised and approved in his appeals for funds for the Church at Jerusalem.[1] Can it be that, as Roscher says,[2] the experiment in communism had produced a chronic state of poverty in the Church at Jerusalem?  Certain it is the experiment was never repeated in any of the other apostolic congregations.  The communism at Jerusalem, if it ever existed at all, not only failed to spread to other Churches, but failed to continue at Jerusalem itself.  It is universally admitted by competent students of the question that the phenomenon was but temporary and transitory.[3]

[Footnote 1:  e.g. Rom. xv. 26, 1 Cor. xvi. 1.]

[Footnote 2:  Political Economy, vol. i. p. 246.]

[Footnote 3:  Sudre, op. cit.; Salvador, Jesus-Christ et sa Doctrine, vol. ii. p. 221.  See More’s Utopia.]

The utterances of the Fathers of the Church on property are scattered and disconnected.  Nevertheless, there is sufficient cohesion in them to enable us to form an opinion of their teaching on the subject.  It has, as we have said, frequently been asserted that they favoured a system of communism, and disapproved of private ownership.  The supporters of this view base their arguments on a number of isolated texts, taken out of their context, and not interpreted