It is sometimes asked: "When and where did the Baptists originate? Who were their founders? What is their history?" These are questions of interest; but a more important one would be: "Are they right? Is their faith according to the teachings of the New Testament?" Many things which are old are not true. Creeds and sects may boast a venerable antiquity, while the Word of God utterly condemns them. Any organization that cannot reasonably claim Christ for its founder has small right to the name of a Christian church, no matter how old it may be. Baptists claim to be built on the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief Corner-Stone. If this claim be well founded, whether they have a written history of one century or of twenty, matters little. Yet whatever of the past belongs to any, it may be well to know. Any Baptist history constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the records of Christianity. During the Apostolic age even, the doctrines of the Gospel became corrupted, and its ordinances soon after. Both Jewish and Gentile converts brought into the churches many of their old religious notions, and incorporated them with the faith of Christ. These, together with the many philosophical ideas of the times and the perversions to which the truth is always exposed from the ignorance and selfishness of men, very early turned the churches aside from the faith once delivered to the saints. Still there were many who in simplicity and humility maintained the doctrines and customs in their original purity. Those churches which were strongest and most prosperous were most exposed to corruption by alliances with the world. When at length the period of martyrdom and persecution terminated; when a nominal Christianity took possession of a throne, and Church and State became united, then religion, in its prevailing forms, lost its simplicity, its spirituality, and its power, and a temporal hierarchy took the place of the church of Christ. This was the great apostasy of the early times. But all the churches and all disciples did not follow in the wake of this sad departure from the truth. Many congregations and communities of true worshipers kept the doctrines of the Gospel, and practiced its ordinances, nearly, or quite in their primitive purity. And this they continued to do through all the ages of darkness and corruption which followed. They were never identified with the Roman or Greek churches; they never were in alliance with States; never formed hierarchies. As independent congregations, or small communities, with no other bond of union than a common faith, fellowship, and sympathy, often obscure and unobtrusive, taking the Word of God as their guide, they sought to realize the idea, not of a temporal, but a spiritual kingdom in the Gospel dispensation.