Voice of History

[Page 13]

     "Having thus glanced at the obstacles which Christianity encountered in the ancient world, and also at the points of contact which it found with the men of that age, we shall proceed to examine the mode of operation, and the means employed in the propagation of the Gospel. We observe, first, that the work was not done through any fixed organization. We shall not find in the Church of the second and third centuries, any of those great missionary associations which form so important a part of the modern Christian agency, for the simple reason that the whole Church was then essentially a missionary society.... A new mission generally arose out of some incidental circumstance, and wherever a Christian set his foot, however barren the soil, there he planted the Cross, and gathered about him the nucleus of a Church" --The Early Years of Christianity by De Pressense.