No field of theological study surpasses in interest or in importance the history of the Christian Church. Here is a great complex of institutions and beliefs. Where have these come from? What was it that gave them birth? What is the secret of their persistence and power? What are they worth to mankind? Is there to be found beneath the variant, shifting forms of institution and life, of organization and creed, as they appear in Christian history, any underlying, unifying principle, which can account for their rise and explain their right to be? These questions must be answered. They involve the fundamental problems of the unity of Christian history and of the rationality and worth of institutions and confessions and rituals, which, unless they can thus justify themselves, cannot permanently survive.

It is the purpose of this article to show that there is such a unifying principle of interpretation, and that this principle is to be found in the reality of the Christian experience itself. Behind every movement in the history of the church, behind every institution which she has developed for the expression and perpetuation of her life, behind every doctrine and creed, there stands a human soul which has met God, and in the great silence, unbroken save by the cry of penitence or the exultant note of spiritual conquest, has found the path to peace.