Springfield Weekly Republican

EARLY CHRISTIANS IN ENGLAND.

Though we have the first records of Christianity before us, they receive a comment by the manner in which they are weekly set forth, which biases our opinions while yet in the process of formation. If, therefore, we could have reproduced before us the simple lives of the early Christians, their modes of thought and forms of expression, if we could have laid before us what they hailed as new or important in the ideas then dawning upon the world, something of the freshness of the Gospel morning might be breathed into our hearts. To call up the primitive emotions and events of those early days is a task requiring not only patient research, but fine imagination, correct taste, and unusual candor and devotion. These qualities are met in a good degree in the author of the widely read "Schonberg-Cotta Family," and the deserved popularity of that graphic reproduction of medieval Christianity has brought to notice other volumes from the same accomplished pen. One of these, with the title of The Early Dawn, is composed of detached sketches of Christian life in England, varying in date from the second century to the seventeenth. These sketches are in the narrative form, and are marked by the truthful coloring, lucid style and admirable spirit which gave such a charm to the works already before us. This set of books form a novelty in literature, at once instructive and delightful. The writers who could produce them are few, but they will be welcomed by millions of readers.