we find in the churches of Asia Minor a sad deflection from their
primitive condition. The church at Ephesus had left its first love
(Rev. 2:4); the church at Pergamos was tolerating false teachers and
being ruined by false doctrines (2:14, 15); Thyatira had lost the
spirit of holy judgment against wrong-doing and was therefore affected
by a shocking degree of immorality (2: 20-23); the message to Sardis
was, "Thou hast a name that thou livest, _and art dead_ (3:1);
Laodicea had become so lukewarm that the Lord said, "I will spew thee
out of my mouth" (3:15, 16).

[Sidenote: The apostolic fathers]

The transition from the apostles to the age of the early church
fathers is involved in considerable darkness. Not until the middle of
the second century, when Justin Martyr appears on the scene, does the
church emerge from its obscurity into the clear light of history. The
apostolic fathers--Clement of Rome, Ignatius, the Pastor of Hermas,
Papias, and the unknown author of the Epistle to Diognetus--all these
lived and wrote during that transitional period, and they could have
told us much, but they have told us little. We can not but admire the
beautiful spirit in which they wrote, and their style is earnest and
vital. Nevertheless, we discern in these works two leading tendencies
which stand, so to speak, as prophecies of what was to predominate in
the ecclesiastical thought of succeeding centuries.

In the mind of the author of the Epistle to Diognetus, the grand
central thought is the incarnation and the spiritual presence of
Christ in redeemed humanity, by which they are led to the "free
imitation of God," as a result of which they become to the world
what the soul is to the body--its life and the means of holding it