The Author has taken advantage of the issue of a second edition to revise this work. He has re-written portions of the first part, and otherwise re-arranged it. He hopes that the argument has thus been made more clear and consecutive.
Theoretically, the duty of adequate inquiry into the truth of any statement of serious importance before believing it is universally admitted. Practically, no duty is more universally neglected. This is more especially the case in regard to Religion, in which our concern is so great, yet the credentials of which so few personally examine. The difficulty of such an investigation and the inability of most men to pursue it, whether from want of opportunity or want of knowledge, are no doubt the chief reasons for this neglect; but another, and scarcely less potent, obstacle has probably been the odium which has been attached to any doubt regarding the dominant religion, as well as the serious, though covert, discouragement of the Church to all critical examination of the title-deeds of Christianity. The spirit of doubt, if not of intelligent inquiry, has, however, of late years become too strong for repression, and, at the present day, the pertinency of the question of a German writer: "Are we still Christians?" receives unconscious
illustration from many a popular pulpit, and many a social discussion.
The prevalent characteristic of popular theology in England, at this time, may be said to be a tendency to eliminate from Christianity, with thoughtless dexterity, every supernatural element which does not quite accord with current opinion, and yet to ignore the fact that, in so doing, ecclesiastical Christianity has practically been altogether abandoned. This tendency is fostered with profoundly illogical zeal by many distinguished men within the Church itself, who endeavour to arrest for a moment the pursuing wolves of doubt and unbelief which press upon it, by practically throwing to them, scrap by scrap, the very doctrines which constitute the claims of Christianity to be regarded as a Divine Revelation at all. The moral Christianity which they hope to preserve, noble though it be, has not one feature left to distinguish it as a miraculously communicated religion.