I think we all feel that Christianity stood for an ethical stimulus of a very fruitful sort whose effect can hardly be overestimated. Yet, if we wish to gain a proper perspective, we must not neglect to put in the other balance the tendency to dogmatism and the persecuting zeal which accompanied it. There have been other than Christian martyrs. Something was faulty with a movement which contained so much obscurantism and bigotry. There was not enough of sweet reason in its composition, and too much of the old terrors which accompanied primitive ignorance and cruelty. It needed a saner and more wholesome perspective and more trust in human reason. For instance, the differences between the various sects, which have sprung up from period to period with such clamor and death-defying energy, have been differences of stress and of formulation whose importance was grossly exaggerated. To the modern student nothing is more tragic and pitiful than this zeal of ignorance. So much to be done in the world to make it sweeter and more beautiful and more livable, so much need for sanity and charity; and yet so much of human energy wasted and, more than wasted, turned to evil results. The only way to overcome this sectarian mal-adjustment is to know the past as it was and to cherish no distorting and blinding illusions in regard to it. Man is so prone to see the golden age in the past that it is necessary to have a searchlight directed upon it. An historical approach is such a searchlight.