176 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



arriving at a sure conclusion as to these matters, from the Sermon 

 on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, or any other data offered by the 

 synoptic Gospels (and a fortiori from the fourth Gospel) are insu- 

 perable. Every one of these records is colored by the preposses- 

 sions of those among whom the primitive traditions arose and of 

 those by whom they were collected and edited ; and the difficulty 

 of making allowance for these prepossessions is enhanced by our 

 ignorance of the exact dates at which the documents were first 

 put together ; of the extent to which they have been subsequently 

 worked over and interpolated ; and of the historical sense, or want 

 of sense, and the dogmatic tendencies, of their compilers and edit- 

 ors. Let us see if there is any other road which will take us into 

 something better than negation. 



There is a wide-spread notion that the "primitive Church/' 

 while under the guidance of the apostles and their immediate 

 successors, was a sort of dogmatic dove-cote, pervaded by the most 

 loving unity and doctrinal harmony. Protestants, especially, are 

 fond of attributing to themselves the merit of being nearer " the 

 Church of the apostles " than their neighbors ; and they are the 

 less to be excused for their strange delusion because they are great 

 readers of the documents which prove the exact contrary. The 

 fact is that, in the course of the first three centuries of its exist- 

 ence, the Church rapidly underwent a process of evolution of the 

 most remarkable character, the final stage of which is far more 

 different from the first than Anglicanism is from Quakerism. 

 The key to the comprehension of the problem of the origin of 

 that which is now called " Christianity," and its relation to Jesus 

 of Nazareth, lies here. Nor can we arrive at any sound conclusion 

 as to what it is probable that Jesus actually said and did without 

 being clear on this head. By far the most important and subse- 

 quently influential steps in the evolution of Christianity took 

 place in the course of the century, more or less, which followed 

 upon the crucifixion. It is almost the darkest period of Church 

 history, but, most fortunately, the beginning and the end of the 

 period are brightly illuminated by the contemporary evidence of 

 two writers of whose historical existence there is no doubt,* and 

 against the genuineness of whose most important works there is 

 no widely admitted objection. These are Justin, the philosopher 

 and martyr, and Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. I shall call 

 upon these witnesses only to testify to the condition of opinion 

 among those who called themselves disciples of Jesus in their 

 time. 



Justin, in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, which was written 

 somewhere about the middle of the second century, enumerates 



* True for Justin ; but there is a school of theological critics, who more or less question 

 the historical reality of Paul and the genuineness of even the four cardinal epistles. 



