THE Hibbert Trustees cannot add this volume to their series without a few lines of grateful acknowledgment. It is impossible to forget either the courteous readiness with which the accomplished author undertook the task originally, or the admirable qualities he brought to it. When he died without completing the MS. for the press, the anxiety of the Trustees was at once relieved by the kind effort of his family to obtain adequate assistance. The public will learn from the Preface how much had to be done, and will join the Trustees in grateful appreciation of the services of the gentlemen who responded to the occasion. That Dr. Hatch's friend, Dr. Fairbairn, consented to edit the volume, with the valuable aid of Mr. Bartlet and Professor Sanday, was an ample pledge that the want would be most efficiently met. To those gentlemen the Trustees are greatly indebted for the learned and earnest care with which the laborious revision was made. SYNOPSIS OF The Problem: LECTURE I. INTRODUCTORY. PAGE How the Church passed from the Sermon on the Mount to ... ... The need of caution: two preliminary considerations ... 1, 2 ... 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 (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. 42-48 48, 49 50, 51 Homer, his place in moral education; used by the Sophists in Continued by early Christian exegesis in varied schools, 77-79 1. The Apologists' polemic against Greek mythology 2. The Philosophers' polemic against Christianity 3. Certain Christian Schools, especially the Antiochene Here hampered by dogmatic complications Use and abuse of allegory-the poetry of life ... Alien to certain drifts of the modern spirit, viz. |