_The Subject Proposed:_ It now becomes m. melancholy task to trace through the early Christian centuries the decline of the Christian religion. By this phrase I mean that a really unchristian religion was gradually substituted for the beautiful religion of Jesus Christ; that a universal apostasy from the Christian doctrine and the Christian Church took place. So tracing the decline of Christianity, I shall establish the truth of the first great message with which the modern prophet, Joseph Smith, came to the world; and shall also prove the fact that a necessity existed for the establishment of such a work as he claims, under God, to have founded, and which will bring us to the culmination of the ages--to the completion of all the dispensations of the gospel in the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, in which will be "gathered together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and earth, even in him." (Eph. i:10.) _Character of the Early Christians:_ First of all, it should be remarked that the early Christians were not so far removed from the possession of the common weaknesses of humanity as to preclude the possibility of apostatizing from the Christian religion. Owing to our being so far removed from them in time, by which many of their defects are obscured, and the exaggerated celebration of their virtues, extravagant ideas of the sanctity of their lives and the holiness of their natures has very generally obtained; whereas a little inquiry into the character of the early saints will prove that they were very human, and men of like passions with ourselves. _Ambitious Controversies of the Apostles:_ The mother of Zebedee's children exhibited a rather ambitious spirit, and the two brethren themselves gave much offense to their fellow apostles by aspiring to sit the one on the right hand of Jesus and the other on His left when He should come into His Kingdom.[A] Even Peter, the chief Apostle, exhibited his full share of human weakness when he thrice denied his Lord in the presence of his enemies, through fear, and even confirmed that denial by cursing and swearing.[B] It was rather a heated controversy, too, that arose in the early Christian Church as to whether those who accepted the Christian faith were still bound to the observances of the law of Moses, and more especially to the rite of circumcision. Although there seems to have been an amicable and authoritative settlement of that question by the decision of what some learned writers have called the first general council of the Church, held by the Apostles and Elders at Jerusalem,[C] yet the old difficulty broke out again and again, not only between the Jewish saints and the Gentile converts, but even among the Apostles themselves, leading to serious accusations one against another, the straining of friendship between fellow-workmen in the ministry, through criminations and recriminations. [Footnote A: Matt. xx:20-24.] [Footnote B: Matt. xxvi:69-75.]