the MSS. till the broken sentences became whole, and the disconnected paragraphs wove themselves together; and then he transcribed the black and bewildering pages into clear and legible copy for the printer. He had heard the Lectures, and had happily taken a few notes, which, supplemented from other sources, proved most helpful, especially in the way of determining the order to be followed. He has indeed been in every way a most unwearied and diligent co-worker. To him we also owe the Synopsis of Contents and the Index. Professor Sanday has kindly read over all the Lectures that have passed under the hands of the editor, and has furnished him with most helpful criticisms, suggestions, and emendations. The work is sent out with a sad gratitude. I am grateful that it has been possible so far to fulfil the author's design, but sad because he no longer lives to serve the cause he loved so well. This is not the place to say a word either in criticism or in praise of him or his work. Those of us who knew him know how little a book like this expresses his whole mind, or represents all that in this field he had it in him to do. The book is an admirable illustration of his method; in order to be judged aright, it ought to be judged within the limits he himself has drawn. It is a study in historical development, an analysis of some of the formal factors that conditioned a given process and determined a given result; but it deals throughout solely with these formal factors and the historical conditions under which they operated. He never intended to discover or discuss the transcendental causes of the process on the one hand, or to pronounce on the value or validity of the result on the other. His purpose, like his method, was scientific; and as an attempt at the scientific treatment of the growth and formulation of ideas, of the evolution and establishment of usages within the Christian Church, it ought to be studied and criticised. Behind and beneath his analytical method was a constructive intellect, and beyond his conclusions was a positive and co-ordinating conception of the largest and noblest order. To his mind every species of mechanical Deism was alien; and if his method bears hardly upon the traditions and assumptions by which such a Deism still lives in the region of early ecclesiastical history, it was only that he might prepare the way for the coming of a faith and a society that should be worthier of the Master he loved and the Church he served. A. M. FAIRBAIRN. OXFORD, July, 1890. SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS. PAGE How the Church passed from the Sermon on the Mount to 1. A religion relative to the whole mental attitude of an age: 2. Every permanent change in religious belief and usage rooted in historical conditions: roots of the Gospel in Evidence as to process of change scanty, but ample and representative as to ante-Nicene Greek thought and Hence method, the correlation of antecedents and consequents 11-13 1. Demand upon attention and imagination 2. Personal prepossessions to be allowed for (b) The nature of religion, e.g. its relation to conscience History as a scientific study: the true apologia in religion 21-24 The first step a study of environment, particularly as literary. education, in special terms and usages... 40-42 ... 4. Its persistent survival up to to-day in general 42-48 Homer, his place in moral education; used by the Sophists in Continued by early Christian exegesis in varied schools, Reactions both Hellenic and Christian: viz. in 1. The Apologists' polemic against Greek mythology 2. The Philosophers' polemic against Christianity ... 82, 83 ... |