credulity and narrowness, such as would to-day seem strange in any one but a child. The epistle of Barnabas illustrates this feature, and, more strikingly, fragments from Papias’s “Oracles of the Lord.” The latter writer held to the grossest of chiliastic or millennial ideas; and yet he doubtless represented a large element in the growing Christian community. As the period advances, we find that Christianity is becoming more and more conscious of its own existence and importance in the great world.