thought concerning religion as well.

One of these principles is, for example, that of dealing in true critical fashion with problems of history and literature. Long before the end of the age of rationalism, this principle had been applied to literature and history, other than those called sacred. The thorough going application of this scientific method to the literatures and history of the Old and New Testaments is almost wholly an achievement of the nineteenth century. It has completely altered the view of revelation and inspiration. The altered view of the nature of the documents of revelation has had immeasurable consequences for dogma.

Another of these elements is the new view of nature and of man's relation to nature. Certain notable discoveries in physics and astronomy had proved possible of combination with traditional religion, as in the case of Newton. Or again, they had proved impossible of combination with any religion, as in the case of Laplace. The review of the religious and Christian problem in the light of the ever increasing volume of scientific discoveries—this is the new thing in the period which we have undertaken to describe. A theory of nature as a totality, in which man, not merely as physical, but even also as social and moral and religious being, has place in a series which suggests no break, has affected the doctrines of God and of man in a way which neither those who revered nor those who repudiated religion at the beginning of the nineteenth century could have imagined.

Another leading principle grows out of Kant's distinction of two worlds and two orders of reason. That distinction issued in a new theory of knowledge. It laid a new foundation for an idealistic construing of the universe. In one way it was the answer of a profoundly religious nature to the triviality and effrontery into which the great rationalistic movement had run out. By it the philosopher gave standing forever to much that prophets and mystics in every age had felt to be true, yet had never been able to prove by any method which the ordered reasoning of man had provided. Religion as feeling regained its place. Ethics was set once more in the light of the eternal. The soul of man became the object of a scientific study.

There have been thus indicated three, at least, of the larger factors which enter into an interpretation of Christianity which may fairly be said to be new in the nineteenth century. They are new in a sense in which the intellectual elements entering into the reconsideration of Christianity in the age of the Reformation were not new. They are characteristic of the nineteenth century. They would naturally issue in an interpretation of Christianity in the general context of the life and thought of that century. The philosophical revolution inaugurated by Kant, with the general drift toward monism in the interpretation of the universe, separates from their forebears men who have lived since Kant, by a greater interval than that which divided Kant from Plato. The evolutionary view of nature, as developed from Schelling and Comte through Darwin to Bergson, divides men now living from the contemporaries of Kant in his youthful studies of nature, as those men were not divided from the followers of Aristotle.

Of purpose, the phrase Christian thought has been interpreted as thought concerning Christianity. The problem which this book essays is that of an outline of the history of the thought which has been devoted, during this period of marvellous progress, to that particular object in consciousness and history which is known as Christianity. Christianity, as object of the philosophical, critical, and scientific reflection of the age—this it is which we propose to consider. Our religion as affected in its interpretation by principles of thought which are already widespread, and bid fair to become universal among educated men—this it is which in this little volume we aim to discuss. The term religious thought has not always had this significance. Philosophy of religion has signified, often, a philosophising of which religion was, so to say, the atmosphere. We cannot wonder if, in these circumstances, to the minds of some, the atmosphere has seemed to hinder clearness of vision. The whole subject of the philosophy of religion has within the last few decades undergone a revival, since it has been accepted that the aim is not to philosophise upon things in general in a religious spirit. On the contrary, the aim is to consider religion itself, with the best aid which current philosophy and science afford. In this sense only can we give the study of religion and Christianity a place among the sciences.

It remains true, now as always, that the majority, at all events, of those who have thought profoundly concerning Christianity will be found to have been Christian men. Religion is a form of consciousness. It will be those who have had experience to which that consciousness corresponds, whose judgments can be supposed to have weight. That remark is true, for example, of æsthetic matters as well. To be a good judge of music one must have musical feeling and experience. To speak with any deeper reasonableness concerning faith, one must have faith. To think profoundly concerning Christianity one needs to have had the Christian experience. But this is very different from saying that to speak worthily of the Christian religion, one must needs have made his own the statements of religion which men of a former generation may have found serviceable. The distinction between religion itself, on the one hand, and the expression of religion in doctrines and rites, or the application of religion through institutions, on the other hand, is in itself one of the great achievements of the nineteenth century. It is one which separates us from Christian men in previous centuries as markedly as it does any other. It is a simple implication of the Kantian theory of knowledge. The evidence for its validity has come through the application of historical criticism to all the creeds. Mystics of all ages have seen the truth from far. The fact that we may assume the prevalence of this distinction among Christian men, and lay it at the base of the discussion we propose, is assuredly one of the gains which the nineteenth century has to record.

It follows that not all of the thinkers with whom we have to deal will have been, in their own time, of the number of avowedly Christian men. Some who have greatly furthered movements which in the end proved fruitful for Christian thought, have been men who in their own time alienated from professed and official religion. In the retrospect we must often feel that their opposition to that which they took to be religion was justifiable. Yet their identification of that with religion itself, and their frank declaration of what they called their own irreligion, was often a mistake. It was a mistake to which both they and their opponents in due proportion contributed. A still larger class of those with whom we have to do have indeed asserted for themselves a personal adherence to Christianity. But their identification with Christianity, or with a particular Christian Church, has been often bitterly denied by those who bore official responsibility in the Church. The heresy of one generation is the orthodoxy of the next. There is something perverse in Gottfried Arnold's maxim, that the true Church, in any age, is to be found with those who have just been excommunicated from the actual Church. However, the maxim points in the direction of a truth. By far the larger part of those with whom we have to do have had acknowledged relation to the Christian tradition and institution. They were Christians and, at the same time, true children of the intellectual life of their own age. They esteemed it not merely their privilege, but also their duty, to endeavour to ponder