The passing of Apollonius in Crete is too long a story to be repeated here. I have followed Flinders Petrie, though those who want to jump into the controversy over Apollonius would do well to read Phillimore’s acrid comments and the Theosophists’ who are a modern and divided edition of the ancient Gnostics. The Theosophists say Apollonius is the riddle of riddles of the first century. “No one knows where he came from or where he went.” By Empire and Church, “every means were used to sweep his memory from men’s minds,” because he would conform to neither Empire nor Church. Whether he died in Crete, or Ephesus, about 96 A.D., the modern Gnostics do not say. He remained always the aristocrat, the scorner of all outward show of piety or power. The churches of Asia actually prayed to Apollonius after his death, so one sees another reason why the church discouraged his cult, just as Paul had to stop Asiatic Greeks from worshiping him. He was lecturing in Ephesus at the time Domitian was murdered in Rome—and suddenly stopped in the middle of his lectures and described the far-off crime in the Imperial City, crying out to the assassins to strike home to the tyrant’s heart. Then he described the wild joy in the Roman city streets over the news of Domitian’s death. A descendant of Trefina’s of the Thecla legend built him a fane in Asia Minor. In those days, they called it a Temple to a new god, Apollonius. In our day, we would probably call it a memorial church. With these hints, any one feeling it a personal mission to settle the disputes on which the flashlight has been cast by the five stories of the apostolic ages—can do the settling for his own conscience and let his fellow readers do the same. The day has passed when youth will be bludgeoned into belief. It wants facts, or as close as it can get to facts—then it will do its own believing or disbelieving; and as Malden says, Christianity takes its stand on the ground of historic truth. Let us get the flashlight on the essential truths. FINALE At a time when our own modern world seems to be passing through a welter similar to the apostolic ages, it may not be amiss to close by quoting from Bishop Solomon at Lake Van, Armenia, who officiated between the Tigris and Euphrates about 1222 A.D. His _Book of the Bee_, translated by Wallis Budge, the great orientalist, in 1886 (Oxford), reflects many of the ancient church traditions among the religious communities founded by the Apostles. The old scholar gives his work the name of _the Bee_ because the bee culls its pure honey from all flowers; and so he attempts to cull the best from the old records of the early church.