Note.—The author of the foregoing essay is aware that brevity makes it unsatisfactory. No two centuries can be separated from history, especially centuries which have left such slight records as those included in the essay. That which precedes, and that which follows, must enter into the consideration of such comparatively unknown years. All who have attempted a critical examination of the period agree that influences outside of Judaism, and of the earliest Christianity, conspired to determine the character of much that is called Christian doctrine. To supplement the brevity of the essay, the author adds a partial list of books which have been examined in gathering the material from which it has been deduced. Every examination should begin with Patristic literature, and with the standard Church histories of all schools. So little has been written upon the specific theme, that a wide range of reading is demanded, if one would reach the ultimate facts. The investigator must also avoid the common error of judging the first two centuries in the light of the nineteenth. It will not do to read the facts of the present, into the history of the past; neither can we safely supply the gaps in history by our ideas of what ought to have been. First of all, the essayist desires to record his special obligations to Prof. Adolph Harnack, of Berlin, Germany, for the favor of personal consultation concerning the theme of the essay; and to commend his “Dogmengeschichte” as most valuable in showing the influence of Greek paganism on early Christianity. The greater part of the works named were examined in the British Museum; they are given without chronological arrangement:

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