indexes, and exhaustive monographs, where he cannot examine all the primary sources in detail.
Only he should always carefully indicate his authorities and verify facts, dates, and quotations. A
want of accuracy is fatal to the reputation of an historical work.- Then comes the composition. This is an art. It must not simply recount events, but
reproduce the development of the church in living process. History is not a heap of skeletons, but
an organism filled and ruled by a reasonable soul.
One of the greatest difficulties here lies in arranging the material. The best method is to
combine judiciously the chronological and topical principles of division; presenting at once the
succession of events and the several parallel (and, indeed, interwoven) departments of the history
in due proportion. Accordingly, we first divide the whole history into periods, not arbitrary, but
determined by the actual course of events; and then we present each of these periods in as many
parallel sections or chapters as the material itself requires. As to the number of the periods and
chapters, and as to the arrangement of the chapters, there are indeed conflicting opinions, and in
the application of our principle, as in our whole representation, we can only make approaches to
perfection. But the principle itself is, nevertheless, the only true one.
The ancient classical historians, and most of the English and French, generally present their
subject in one homogeneous composition of successive books or chapters, without rubrical division.
This method might seem to bring out better the living unity and variety of the history at every point.
Yet it really does not. Language, unlike the pencil and the chisel, can exhibit only the succession
in time, not the local concomitance. And then this method, rigidly pursued, never gives a complete
view of any one subject, of doctrine, worship, or practical life. It constantly mixes the various
topics, breaking off from one to bring up another, even by the most sudden transitions, till the
alternation is exhausted. The German method of periodical and rubrical arrangement has great
practical advantages for the student, in bringing to view the order of subjects as well as the order
of time. But it should not be made a uniform and monotonous mechanism, as is done in the
Magdeburg Centuries and many subsequent works. For, while history has its order, both of subject
and of time, it is yet, like all life, full of variety. The period of the Reformation requires a very
different arrangement from the middle age; and in modern history the rubrical division must be
combined with and made subject to a division by confessions and countries, as the Roman Catholic,
Lutheran, Reformed churches in Germany, France, England, and America.
The historian should aim then to reproduce both the unity and the variety of history,
presenting the different topics in their separate completeness, without overlooking their organic
connection. The scheme must not be arbitrarily made, and then pedantically applied, as a Procrustean
framework, to the history; but it must be deduced from the history itself, and varied as the facts
require.
Another difficulty even greater than the arrangement of the material consists in the
combination of brevity and fulness. A general church history should give a complete view of the
progress of Christ’s kingdom in all its departments. But the material is so vast and constantly
increasing, that the utmost condensation should be studied by a judicious selection of the salient
points, which really make up the main body of history. There is no use in writing books unless they
are read. But who has time in this busy age to weary through the forty folios of Baronius and his
continuators, or the thirteen folios of Flacius, or the forty-five octaves of Schroeckh? The student
of ecclesiastical history, it is true, wants not miniature pictures only (as in Hase’s admirable
compend), but full-length portraits. Yet much space may be gained by omitting the processes and
A.D. 1-100.