Outline of Christian History

This Outline is designed, primarily, as a manual for class instruction. In its plan it follows rigidly the mechanical form which seems best fitted for such a manual. Indeed, in no other way would it have been possible to include the necessary number and variety of topics within so limited a space. And by this method, it is hoped, an amount of information is brought together and presented with sufficient clearness, which will be of value and interest, not merely to the classes for which it is designed, but for any intelligent reader or student of general history.

As to a plan of study, it is recommended that, in first going over the ground, the twelve chapters should be taken in as many lessons, studying only the part in larger type. The general scheme, or course of events, having thus been set clearly before the mind, it may then be best to select particular divisions, or periods, to be studied in more detail. If, for example, the first four chapters, and the four beginning with the Reformation, should be divided into three lessons each, the whole course would then occupy thirty-six lessons, or about the work of a single year, the rest being essential to the plan, but less important to be learned, and less easily illustrated from other sources.