BY LYMAN ABBOTT REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET Ι9ΟΙ DEDICATION. TO THE FACULTY AND STUDENTS OF WELLESLEY COLLEGE THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED, WITH THE PERMISSION OF THE PRESIDENT, ALICE E. FREEMAN, PH.D. THEIR INTEREST IN SOME OF THE THOUGHTS EMBODIED IN THESE A COURSE OF LECTURES IN THEIR COLLEGE CHAPEL, THOUGH I CANNOT HOPE, FOR A MORE RESPONSIVE CIRCLE. 943984 PREFACE. HE title of this book indicates its purpose. It is THE written in order to give aid to those who desire to hold fast to their faith, but find intellectual and moral difficulties in so doing. There is a considerable class of persons in the community who have no conscious desire for spiritual life, who are very willing to be rid of the sanctions imposed by a belief in God and the future, who have no sense of sin and therefore no desire for pardon, no sense of unworthiness and therefore no desire for a diviner life, to whom the rejection of Christianity, with its hopes and its duties, brings no regret. This book is not addressed to such. It does not aim to make an unwilling convert; it does not seek to convince any one against his will, to wring a verdict by force of logic from a reluctant jury. I have little faith in polemical theology; little faith in the possibility of convincing any one of the truth of Christianity who sees nothing in it to desire; still less faith in any moral advantage in such conviction, even if it can be produced. Self |