The diffusion of Christianity during the first two centuries and a half of its existence is a subject as full of interest as it is beset with problems and difficulties. Curiously enough, there are few provinces of the Roman Empire concerning which our evidence, in this respect, is more unsatisfactory than Egypt, about which we might expect to be particularly well informed. From Egypt we have not only the usual crop of inscriptions (which, being of a public nature, cannot be expected to be very informative here) but a vast mass of papyri, more abundant for the second century than for any other, and quite plentiful for the third. And these would seem to be precisely the sort of material which we require. They are selected by no official process of sifting but by the mere accidents of preservation and discovery, they include documents of every kind, and they touch all classes of society, in town and country. Official documents and legal contracts are not, indeed, likely to yield much evidence; but on the private letters and perhaps the accounts, possibly even the wills, Christianity should, one would think, have left some trace.

On O. Mich. I, 657 a large, “epigraphic” hand has written five lines, of which three obviously contain the names of Greek gods. The same hand is responsible also for O. Mich. I, 658. Since the editor is inclined to relate these ostraca as parts of a single text, his transcripts of both are repeated here.

By 1800 the Puritan experiment in theocracy was over. It had been a great adventure in Utopianism, like none other in the centuries since Christ, noble in the magnitude of its vision of a Christian State, extraordinary in the accidental circumstance of its situation, the fertile unspoiled wilderness of a new world in which to work, and for a time successful in awakening in men's souls a hunger and a thirst for righteousness.