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How much is fact and how much is fiction in the narrative told here of the early struggles against fearful odds in the lives of the Disciples? And why could the life of each Disciple not be given in direct historic record?

For readers to whom these questions present themselves, answer can be given in few words.

The most cursory reading of the Gospels and Epistles makes self-evident that the writers were very much more concerned with the message than the messenger; and this was natural in an age when zealous partisans were much more eager to rally round political and religious leaders than to demonstrate the truth of the message in better living and good works and pure beliefs. It is as if the early evangelists of the Faith were determined to let the cause rest on its eternal truths rather than on the merits or frailties of the human medium through whom the truths were transmitted to humanity. It is as if the records seem to say—don’t judge the message by the frail human vessel from whom you take it. Judge it by its own effects.

Of the human events in the lives of all the Disciples and Apostles—the former, the first followers of the Living Visible Christ; the latter, evangelists, who later became followers—very little, almost nothing, is told. One finds some of the early followers first with John, the Baptist, on the Dead Sea at Jordan Ford; then with Christ in Galilee, then after the Crucifixion, in Jerusalem, in Antioch, in Babylonia, in Rome, in the cities of the Roman Road in Asia Minor, in Greece, in Thrace, in Macedonia. Connected narrative of their movements, there is none except a few chapters in the Acts on Paul’s travels from Damascus to Rome; and even in this, there are long gaps. Paul speaks of hopes to go to Spain. Did he go? We do not know, for if he did, Luke his historian, leaves no record of that trip. Peter writes a letter from Babylonia. Was he in the region of the Euphrates; or was he in Rome, writing in cypher because of the perils to the Faith from the time Rome set up Emperor Worship in all the pagan temples? Again, we do not know; for consecutive narrative from year to year, there is none; so that any attempt to give a connected life of the leaders of early Christianity would fall down from sheer lack of data; but the facts, which we possess authenticated beyond controversy by contemporary sacred and profane writers, and by recent and ancient archæological and linguistic research covering from Egypt to Ethiopia, from Ephesus to Mesopotamia—throw so much light on the early struggles of the New Faith that by taking what the modern scenario writer would call—“the spot-lights” of their activities—we can reconstruct the early lives of the leaders of the purest Faith the world has ever known.

And now how much is fact and how much is fiction in these narratives? Very little of the essential is fiction. The fiction is only the string for the jewels of Truth. A semi-secular figure, who is absolutely historic, has been chosen as the actor. The actor’s experiences are taken from real life and actual fact. The reaction of the experiences on the actor’s personality may be called imaginary; but they are such as similar experiences would have been on you, or me to-day; and each action is chosen to throw a flash light on some era in the Disciples’ and Apostles’ lives, which is known and proved and authenticated in history, archæology and the documents now coming so richly to light, owing to better mastery of ancient script. In this way, we can get a picture of the heroes and heroines of the early days, who kept the Faith for us. We can get a picture of them as living, struggling, heroic, dauntless men and women, and not the shadowy figures of half myth, half fairy stories, with which we have too often enveloped the keepers of the ark of the covenant of the Faith.

I have referred to youth seeking light, where many of the old school accuse them of thoughtlessly seeking only pleasure. I consider this a libel on modern youth.

It is in the hope of showing the verity of the heroic lives in the early days of the Faith, that I have planned these records. It is in the hope of showing the keeping of that Faith as the supremely best vocation for youth that I have tried to dig out the unknown, historic facts bringing us the Faith and clothe them in flesh and blood. If the stories send back with fresh eyes readers to the old records, their aim is fulfilled, and all the errors, I pre-claim as my own. The truths, themselves, are eternally old as they are eternally young.

A. C. L.

Wassaic, Harlem Road

New York