The development of the Welfare State has blurred in the minds of many people the imperative personal duty of Christians to be charitable in a material as well a spiritual sense. Fr Riquet describes in this book the growth of practical Christian charity for the first sixteen hundred years of the Church's history. An introductory chapter sketches in the very different conception of charity in the Greco-Roman world, charity in Dynastic Egypt, in Israel and the differences underlying the superficial resemblances between Buddhist and Christian conceptions of charity. Fr Riquet then examines the foundations of Christian charity in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ. Succeding chapter describe charity in action in the early Church, the role of the deacons who organized social service under the bishops, the growth of pilgrim hostels and hospitals for the sick, the aged and refugees from barbarian invasion. Fr Riquet goes on to trace the spread of monastic charity centred on the great abbeys, the rise of religious bodies whose sole purpose was the treatment of the sick and the embodiment of Christian charity in the realism and energy of St Vincent de Paul.