Among the multitudinous and pressing problems faced by the Christian Church during the early medieval centuries one of the greatest was the feeding of the poor. Subjection to war, to famine, to the general anarchy of the times, had doubled the misery of the people and made them even more dependent upon public charity. Quite early it became evident that this must be an organized charity, that the problem was not being met by individual Christian action. A homily of Chrysostom (347–407) deplores the laxity of his contemporaries: “It is with you all that the treasure of the Church should be, and it is your cruelty that causes her to be obliged to possess and to deal in houses and lands.

In history books, in newspapers and in religious journals, and most impressively of all, in ponderous encyclopedias, has been carried down to us for a hundred years, a strange and wondrous story. The story concerns a religious group called Millerites who flourished in America in the early 1840's and who believed that the end of the world would take place on October 22, 1844.

Among the significantly great historical achievements of the American Young Men's Christian Associations has been the planting of Associations in foreign countries. Paralleling the notable missionary outburst of the late nineteenth century among the North American churches, this distinctive program of the YMCA was inaugurated in the last years of the 1880's with the sending of Association secretaries to Japan and to India.1 Nourished in the student Y.M.C.A.'s and particularly evangelized at the pioneer student conferences held under the auspices of Dwight L. Moody in Northfield, Massachusetts, beginning in 1886,2 the missionary fervor aroused significant interest in many Associations. By 1916 there were 157 North American secretaries in 55 foreign countries, 140 of them in Asia.

It has been customary, until quite recently, to regard the Brownist and Barrowist movements in England as the first phase in the history of Congregationalism. The two classic histories of Congregationalism, the one appearing just before and the other just after the turn of the century, both building upon the monumental work of H. M. Dexter, begin the story of Congregational continuity with these Separatist groups. Albert Peel, who devoted much of his life to searching among the literary remains of Elizabethan Separatism, threw Congregational beginnings a bit further back, namely to the Plumber's Hall congregation and Richard Fitz's Privy Church. He came to the conclusion that: “There is no valid reason for moderns to deny to Fitz's congregation, and probably to others contemporary with it, the title of ‘the first Congregational churches’. “However, the first name to be associated with twentieth century Congregational scholarship is Champlin Burrage. His amazing “finds” in English libraries have clarified many obscurities of early Congregational history and led later scholars to a re-evaluation of its beginnings. He was the first to make the distinction between Separatists and Congregationalists although he still saw in Robert Browne the founder of Congregationalism. His terminology was “Barrowist Separatists” and “Congregational Puritans” which was further refined by Perry Miller into “Separatist Congregationalists” and “non-Separatist Congregationalists”.

North American thinking and writing in missions have in general been characterized by immediate practicality. Missionaries, administrators, and professors of missions have been chiefly concerned with strategy and tactics, with methods and techniques, with program promotion and education of the church members. Scholars have devoted their attention principally to the analysis of successive current situations and trends and the interpretation of their significance for the mission. Getting something done well in order to meet a pressing need has appeared more important than a study of the theological presuppositions or implications of the action.

The problem of writing and teaching Church History is being discussed in this journal and elsewhere, and it is obviously related to the more general problem treated by Mr. Harbison in the last number: the “meaning of history” and the writing et history. In the case of Ancient Church History it is especially difficult. “The problem of defining ‘Church’” may seem simpler because of the rigidity of the ecclesiastical organization developed in the early centuries and not broken by the year 800; but, given the fact that it did develop only gradually, how is the historian to treat gnosticism, Montanism, even Arianism? Is he always to say, “the Church was right”? If he says so, how is he to treat the elements of rightness in what came to be regarded as heresies? Or should he make value judgments other than tentative ones? To what extent is his history art and interpretation and to what extent is it science?