He who judges the first century by the nineteenth will fall into countless errors.
He who thinks that the Christianity of the fourth century was identical with that
of the New-Testament period, will go widely astray. He who does not look carefully
into the history of religions before the time of Christ, and into the pagan influences
which surrounded infant Christianity, cannot understand its subsequent history. He who
cannot rise above denominational limitations and credal restrictions cannot become a
successful student of early Church history, nor of present tendencies, nor of future
developments. History is a series of results, not a medley of happenings. It is the
story of the struggle between right and wrong; the record of God’s dealing with men.
The “historic argument” is invaluable, because history preserves God’s verdicts concerning
human choices and actions. Events and epochs, transitions and culminations, are the organized
causes and effects which create the never-ceasing movement, and the organic unity called history.
Hence we learn that[vi] ideas and principles, like apples, have their time for development and
ripening; that the stains of sin, the weakness of error, and the influence of truth commingle and
perdure through the centuries; that good and evil, sin and righteousness, persist,
or are eliminated, in proportion as men heed God’s voice, and listen to His verdicts.