Saint Augustine's ten homilies on the "First Epistle of John" are among his greatest and most influential works. John and Augustine both develop the same central theme - love - and in these homilies Augustine uses John's epistle as a point of departure for exploring the meaning and implications of love with his customary profundity, passion and analytic rigour. As with John, a context of dissension and conflict within the Christian community (the Donatist breakaway from Catholic unity), gives his preaching a tone of urgency and poignancy. Anyone who reads these homilies, universally viewed as classics, cannot fail to be moved and challenged both intellectually and emotionally.