hich were to be consecrated were taken. They also brought
gifts of money, which was used for the relief of the poor, for the
support of the clergy, and for other good and religious purposes. Either
before or after the sacrament, there was a meal called the _Love-feast_,
for which all the members of the congregation brought provisions,
according as they could afford. All of them sat down to it as equals, in
token of their being alike in Christ's brotherhood; and it ended with
psalm-singing and prayer. But even in very early days (as St. Paul shows
us in his first epistle to the Corinthians, xi. 21, 22), there was sad
misbehaviour at these meals; and besides this, such religious feasts
gave the heathen an excuse for their stories that the Christians met to
feed on human flesh and to commit other abominations in secret.[19] For
these reasons, after a time, the love-feast was separated from the holy
Communion, and at length it was entirely given up.

[19] See page 7.

In the second century, the administration of the Lord's Supper, instead
of being in the evening as at first, was added on to the morning
service, and then a difference was made between the two parts of the
service. At the earlier part of it the catechumens and penitents might
be present, but when the Communion office was going to begin, a deacon
called out, "Let no one of the catechumens or of the hearers stay."
After this none were allowed to remain except those who were entitled to
communicate, which all baptized Christians did in those days, unless
they were shut out from the Church on account of their misdeeds. The
"breaking of bread" in the Lord's Supper was at first daily, as we know
from the early chapters of the Acts (ii. 46); but this practice does not
seem to have lasted beyond the time when the faith of the Christians was
in its first warmth, and it became usual to celebrate the holy Communion
on the Lord's day only. When Christianity became the religion of the
empire, and there was now no fear of persecution, the earlier part of
the service was open not only to catechumens and penitents, but to Jews
and heathens; and in the fifth century, when the Church was mostly made
up of persons who had been baptized and trained in Christianity from
their infancy, the distinction between the "service of the catechumens"
and the "service of the faithful" was no longer kept up.

The length of time during which converts were obliged to be catechumens
before bei