In the Lateran Museum at Rome perhaps the largest and most interesting collection of ancient Christian sarcophagi in the world has been gathered together. It is hard to say just how many different specimens are represented. At least thirty-eight are more or less complete; and there are, besides, numerous fragments of others, some of which have doubtless been reckoned in the larger estimates sometimes given. A few were found in the various catacombs which like the encampments of a besieging army encircle the walls of Rome. The majority came from the early basilicas, which sprang up so rapidly after Constantine's Edict had proclaimed that the victory of these Christian hosts had indeed been won. It would be difficult to assign an exact date to many of these sarcophagi; but in general it may be said that they represent the fourth and fifth centuries, with a few specimens from still earlier generations, and a few others which reach forward into the sixth century.

What William Pierson Merrill recently said of the Creed of the Presbyterian Church, i.e., that it is “comprehensive,” is true also of the Institutes of Calvin: the work is an inclusive document; it comprehends varying, even conflicting views. Calvin endeavors to press “life and reality” into a system of harmonious thought. In its sixth edition of the Institutes the Presbyterian Board of Publication rightly affirms, that Calvin's great natural abilities, his profound erudition, his well-balanced and discriminating judgment … eminently fitted him to prepare such a work, in which the doctrines of the Gospel are so clearly developed and harmonized.

For the church historian, there is perhaps no more baffling problem than to account for the union that was effected between Christianity and the Roman State. The acceptance of this new religion by a government bound up with the heritages and customs of a thousand years of heathenism would be an astounding phenomenon were it not already so familiar to the historian. Scarcely less perplexing is the corresponding transformation in the attitude of Christians toward the Roman government. It seems almost inconceivable that a religious movement, which began with the conviction that “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” were the proper possession of Satan, should ultimately hail with approval a union of Church and State. There is no need to rehearse the course of events that marked the gradual rapprochement of Christianity and the Roman State. That story has been well and frequently told. But the genetic forces operating in that ancient society to bring about this remarkable result, still await further analysis. It is in this particular field of research that our present study falls.

The generous phraseology of our title may suggest a field of inquiry larger than that covered by the following study. The data to be here considered are derived from the records of life in Protestant settlements formed after the close of the French régime (1763) and within the provinces east of Lake Huron. The accompanying bibliography will indicate the principal sources utilized, and the limitations of these will be noted by expert students. While admittedly incomplete, they have been sufficient to illustrate certain phases of pioneer religious and social life, and the writer feels justified in the hope that the main impressions here given will not be negatived by further investigation.

Included in one of the volumes of the sermons of John Chrysostom in the Patrologia Græca are seven sermons ascribed to one Severiah, Bishop of Gabala. Besides these there are two more sermons ascribed to him in two other volumes of the Patrologia. Bardenhewer names thirteen sermons as genuine, thereby adding four to the list. Accepting these temporarily as genuine, the question to be investigated is whether an examination of these and a comparison with the Spuria attached to the sermons of Chrysostom may not bring further sermons to light.

The poverty of our American libraries in research books is a matter of almost daily observation in research libraries. We are rich in the books for learning and teaching, that is, in all the machinery for spreading common knowledge; but when it comes to the search for new knowledge, those sciences which, like history and philology, find their chief sources in books, are handicapped at every turn. It was estimated three or four years ago that there are at least five million live research books in the world, i.e., books liable to be sought at the reference desk any day. Of these it was said perhaps one million can be found in the great reference libraries, another million exist in America somewhere, if only they could be located, and the rest are only to be found abroad. Since that time it has been found that both the number which can be found and the number, in America which might be found are increasing rapidly, but the problem is still very far from approaching solution. Every few weeks, if not oftener, any one actively engaged in research work runs up against a concrete instance. The writer has already met several during the first month of the academic year. The most recent is as typical as any.

Protestantism and the Ukraine are a combinatino strange to the mind of a Western man. He who has been taught to look on the Ukraine as a province of greater Russia regards the Ukraine as being as much Russian and Orthodox as Moskovia.

To understand the historical work of Dr. Good we shall have to consider certain facts of his early life and training. When he died at the age of seventy-three, he was a notable figure, not only in the Reformed Church in the United States, of which he was a member from childhood, but also among the Protestant Churches of America and Europe. Few men of any Church in this country were more widely known, and, in some respects, more highly esteemed than he. At the meeting of the Alliance of Reformed Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian System, at Pittsburgh, in 1921, Professor M. A. Curtiss of Scotland, in reporting for the Eastern Section, said: “I do not think that since the days of Dr. Schaff, and to go even further back, since the days of John Dury, the old apostle of Church Unity for Scotland, there has been a Presbyterian friend to our weak and threatened churches compared to Professor Good of Philadelphia.”

There was a time when it was customary to divide religion into two simple categories: the true and the false. The true was wholly true, the false was wholly false. There were no other colors but white and black: gradations of greys from black to white did not exist at all. More than that: it was not Christianity as a whole that was true, but generally only the particular denominational brand which the individual in question professed. Christians who differed in almost everything else, were unanimous in dubbing all but their own views false. But since the days of Schleiermacher, who abandoned both the wooden rationalism as well as the ossified orthodoxy of the eighteenth century, and defined religion as the feeling of dependence, it was found increasingly difficult to deny a genuinely religious character to other than the Christian religion. To-day students of comparative religion, and the majority of thoughtful Christians as well, treat Christianity as but one among many other religious developments, conditioned by different historical environments and at different stages of moral and religious evolution. Such pitiful provincialism as was customary a century ago is unthinkable among educated Christians to-day; we are thinking of religion in terms of world-wide, all-embracing, general concepts, in which the faiths of mankind are accorded their due consideration.

The Bellarmine-Jefferson legend dates from the article of Mr. Gaillard Hunt, entitled “Cardinal Bellarmine and the Virginia Bill of Rights,” which appeared in the Catholic Historical Review, October, 1917, pp. 276–289. The article sets forth that Jefferson was indebted to Cardinal Bellarmine for the principles of democratic government embodied in the Declaration of Independence, and also embodied in the Virginia Bill of Rights. The alleged discovery seems now to be accepted in Roman Catholic periodicals as a fixed fact. Mr. Hunt's article, which was also issued in separate form, demands attention from the position which Mr. Hunt occupied as chief of the Division of Manuscripts in the Congressional Library at Washington and for his Life of Madison and other works. He was a convert to the Roman Church. He died in 1924. All subsequent treatments of the Bellarmine-Jefferson theory start with Mr. Hunt's assertions.