roducing monographs upon some particular subject, in
which, at the most, they may hope to embody all that is known as to some
specific question.

We spoke above of the new conception of the relation of the canonical
literature of the New Testament to the extracanonical. We alluded to the
new sense of the continuity of the history of the apostolic churches
with that of the Church of the succeeding age. The influence of these
ideas has been to set all problems here involved in a new light. Until
1886 it might have been said with truth that we had no good history of
the apostolic age. In that year Weizsaecker's book, _Das Apostolische
Zeitalter der Christlichen Kirche_, admirably filled the place. A part
of the problem of the historian of the apostolic age is difficult for
the same reason which was given when we were speaking of the biography
of Jesus. Our materials are inadequate. First with the beginning of the
activities of Paul have we sources of the first rank. The relation of
statements in the Pauline letters to data in the book of the Acts was
one of the earliest problems which the Tuebingen school set itself. An
attempt to write the biography of Paul reminds us sharply of our
limitations. We know almost nothing of Paul prior to his conversion, or
subsequent to the enigmatical breaking off of the account of the
beginnings of his work at Rome. Harnack's _Mission und Ausbreitung des
Christenthums_, 1902 (translated, Moffatt, 1908), takes up the work of
Paul's successors in that cardinal activity. It offers, strange as it
may seem, the first discussion of the dissemination of Christianity
which has dealt adequately with the sources. It gives also a picture of
the world into which the Christian movement went. It emphasises anew the
truth which has for a generation past grown in men's apprehension that
there is no possibility of understanding Christianity, except against
the background of the religious life and thought of the world into which
it came. Christianity had vital relation, at every step of its progress,
to the religious movements and impulses of the ancient world, especially
in those centres of civilisation which Paul singled out for his
endeavour and which remained the centres of the Christian growth. It was
an age which has often been summarily described as corrupt. Despite its
corruption, or possibly because it was corrupt, it gives evidence,
however, of religious stirring, of strong ethical reaction, of spi