The
QUENCHLESS LIGHT
BY
AGNES C. LAUT
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK :: LONDON :: MCMXXIV
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1923, 1924, by The Pictorial Review Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOREWORD
How much is fact and how much is fiction inthe narrative told here of the early strugglesagainst fearful odds in the lives of the Disciples?And why could the life of each Disciple not begiven in direct historic record?
For readers to whom these questions presentthemselves, answer can be given in few words.
The most cursory reading of the Gospels andEpistles makes self-evident that the writers werevery much more concerned with the message thanthe messenger; and this was natural in an agewhen zealous partisans were much more eager torally round political and religious leaders than todemonstrate the truth of the message in betterliving and good works and pure beliefs. It is asif the early evangelists of the Faith were determinedto let the cause rest on its eternal truthsrather than on the merits or frailties of the humanmedium through whom the truths were transmittedto humanity. It is as if the records seemto say—don’t judge the message by the frailhuman vessel from whom you take it. Judge itby its own effects.
Of the human events in the lives of all theDisciples and Apostles—the former, the first followersof the Living Visible Christ; the latter,evangelists, who later became followers—verylittle, almost nothing, is told. One finds some ofthe early followers first with John, the Baptist,on the Dead Sea at Jordan Ford; then with Christin Galilee, then after the Crucifixion, in Jerusalem,in Antioch, in Babylonia, in Rome, in thecities of the Roman Road in Asia Minor, inGreece, in Thrace, in Macedonia. Connectednarrative of their movements, there is none excepta few chapters in the Acts on Paul’s travels fromDamascus to Rome; and even in this, there arelong gaps. Paul speaks of hopes to go to Spain.Did he go? We do not know, for if he did, Lukehis historian, leaves no record of that trip. Peterwrites a letter from Babylonia. Was he in theregion of the Euphrates; or was he in Rome, writin