The scientific study of history reveals the norm by which ideas, creeds, movements,
and methods are to be tested. Such a standard, when contrasted with the speculations
of philosophy, is granite, compared with sand. God’s universal law, enunciated by Christ,
is: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”
The efforts of partisans to manipulate early history in the interest of
special views and narrow conceptions, have been a fruitful source of error.
Equally dangerous has been the assumption that the Christianity of the third,
fourth, and fifth centuries was identical with that of the New Testament, or was a fair
representative of it. The constant development of new facts shows that at the point where
the average student takes up the history of Western Christianity,
it was already fundamentally corrupted by pagan theories and practices.
Its unfolding, from that time to the present, must be studied in the
light of this fact. The rise, development, present status,
and future[vii] history of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism,
cannot be justly considered, apart from this fact. The fundamental principles,
and the underlying philosophy of these divisions of Christendom originated in
the paganizing of early Christianity. This fact makes the re-study of the beginnings
of Christianity of supreme importance. The pagan systems which ante-dated Christ,
exercised a controlling influence on the development of the first five centuries of
Western Christianity, and hence, of all subsequent times. This field has been
too nearly “an unknown land,” to the average student, and therefore correct answers
have been wanting to many questions which arise, when we leave Semitic soil,
and consider Christianity in its relation to Greek and Roman thought.
“Early Christianity” cannot be understood except in the light of these
powerful, pre-Christian currents of influence; and present history cannot
be separated from them.