The collection contains a number of short works by N.; it is opened with his speech ‘Religion as a Research Object’ made on October 30, 1922, at the special meeting of the Belorussian State University. The author argues for the liberation of religious studies of the fetters of theological approaches and spiritual censorship. On his point of view, the main danger for the young research discipline was in the tendency of scholars to mix some outdated theological approaches based on the belief in the reality of the other world to the research. According to N., even if a researcher uses some scholarly methods and arguments, but keeps apologetic and dogmatic interests, he uses these scholarly reasoning “not for opening of the unknown truth, but for the proof of someone already known”. The true research could be only materialistic in its fundament and approaches, declared N.
The other works of the book were on the history of Christianity in a broad sense. ‘The World and Social Overturn in the Views of the Early Christianity’ was the first Marxist attempt to make a survey of the Early Christian eschatology.