Page:Early Christianity outside the Roman empire.djvu/74

64 defend myself for investing an admittedly fabulous narrative with so much importance. It is not so very long ago since students of Church history might be divided into the credulous folk who wholly or partly believed these tales, and the wise who neglected them altogether. But the present generation is too much accustomed to the serious religious novel not to be in sympathy with a doctrinal work cast in narrative form. That the Acts of Thomas is the work of a man very much in earnest there can be no manner of doubt. The style is simple, as becomes the narrative setting, but it is as truly a book of religious philosophy as the Pilgrim's Progress, and it demands from us serious study.

Before indicating the main grounds upon which I regard these Acts as a Syriac work it may be not superfluous to give a short abstract of the story which forms the framework of the book.

I. At the beginning we are told how the