It is always good in any age to go back to these first Christian luminaries as closely as our researches can take us and to get some of their light and to know that we are not disadvantaged by the distances of time separating their day from ours. In walking with John and Simon on the one hand and with Barnabas and Paul on the other, we realise that the guidance they give is valid to reach into the gloom of any period in the human history, that their ladders reach furthest into the well. The long trial of history continues but the Christianity of the 1st century is brilliantly good and sufficient to meet any changing need.