Our freer, but yet far from freed, land is the asylum, if asylum there be, for the hope of man; and, there, if anywhere, is the second Eden to be planted in which the divine seed is to bruise the head of Evil and restore Man to his rightful communion with God in the Paradise of Good.

One of the more fascinating problems connected with the history of the early Middle Ages is the persistence of similarities and the emergence of differences in the ideas and institutions of the eastern and western remnants of the Roman Empire. Equally intriguing is the related problem of the origins and the nature of the differences which characterize the Slavic and Germanic groups that fell under the influence of the Greeks and the Latins during the early Middle Ages. This paper will attempt to throw some light, on these problems by examining the field of missionary history. It will try to compare the methods employed by the eastern and western missionaries to convert the Slavic and Germanic groups living on the borders of Christendom in the period from about A.D. 600 to 900. Such a comparison might be revealing. It will permit one to see wherein the Greeks and the Latins acted alike or differently as each attacked the same problem. It will also allow one to detect some of the formative forces implanted in the Slavic and Germanic worlds as each underwent the fundamental experience of adopting a new religion.

Two problems are involved in the analysis of gnosticism. First comes the criticism of the sources. Since most of our information about gnosis still comes from the church fathers, we must try to determine how reliably such writers as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, and Epiphanius have reproduced their sources. In this connection Sagnard's La gnose valentinienne et le témoignage de saint Irénée (Paris, 1947), is especially useful since it establishes Irenaeus' essential trustworthiness. Second comes the interpretation of the gnostic text once it has been established. At this point there is much disagreement among modern scholars. In general the older way of looking at gnosticism, set forth by such scholars as De Faye, Leisegang, Casey, Nock, and most recently Sagnard, is based on description and historical investigation, with emphasis laid on the search for sources and interrelations. Ideally, proof of the existence of these sources and interrelations is offered, and the proof is based on historical probabilities.

The news of the accession of Suleiman the Magnificent to the throne of the Ottoman Empire in 1520 did not seriously alarm contemporary European rulers for he was generally considered to be a weakling completely devoid of initiative. Surprisingly, however, this supposedly weak son of a strong father (Selim I) took the initiative within one year of becoming Sultan. Eager to strengthen the position of the Ottoman Empire in Europe, Suleiman temporarily abandoned his father's policy of conquest in the Middle East and launched a series of powerful attacks against South Eastern Europe: Belgrade fell in 1521 after it had withstood Turkish attacks for over half a century; Rhodes, the main Christian stronghold in the Eastern Mediterranean, suffered a similar fate the following year. The pressure on Hungary, which was increased after the fall of Belgrade, discouraged the Eastern Europeans from an optimistic view of their future. Indeed, the outlook for Eastern Europe was by no means bright.

In terms of the number of missionaries, financial contributions, and amount of home front propaganda, the missionary movement reached its peak in the United States in the years from 1890 to 1917. Only during this period did the foreign missions of the Protestant churches enjoy sufficient popular support to warrant use of the term “crusade.”

This raises the question as to why Christian missions should have had such a strong appeal to the generation which elected Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency, embarked on a crusade to liberate the Cubans, and later sent its sons to Europe allegedly to defend the moral principles of democracy. Nothing could have been more quixotic than the slogan adopted by the Student Volunteers: “The Evangelization of the World in this Generation.” This motto expressed the vision of the thousands of college and seminary students who joined the Student Volunteers. It was also the goal of the hosts of women's missionary societies and the Laymen's Movement, the organization which marshaled the support of more than 100,000 men in the churches in behalf of foreign missions.