This is simply an attempt to suggest some of the main ideas inspiring the common life of early Christians. There are several difficulties in the way of such an attempt. There is, for example, the common temptation to paint a sharp contrast between a golden age of the primitive Church and a cold and dismal present. Such a contrast is unreal. The virtues found in primitive Christian communities can be found in any of our modern parishes. The faults which appear in the modern community have their parallel in our Lord's own days. There were pride and jealousy, lying and treachery, among the Apostles; schism and heresy were a problem before the New Testament was all written. A romantic view is, therefore, unfounded, although we may recognise that pressure of hostile forces probably eliminated from the earliest Christian communities considerable numbers of people who would have existed in more peaceful times as a large body of lukewarm, conventional Christians.