TO THE MEMBERS OF THE METROPOLITAN M545757 PN49 13 PREFACE The lectures included in this volume were delivered in the Metropolitan Church, Toronto, in the winter of 1918-19, and are now published in response to the request of many who heard them. My object in adopting the Series was to find modern illustrations of some of the great truths to which the Church stands committed. The difficulty consisted in making a selection out of the many influential voices which witness to the yearning of men, and to the Divine response in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Christian Faith and the Christian Ethic might be reconstructed from the prophetic teachers of the nineteenth century, some proclaiming one and some another aspect of the full-orbed truth. It is a far cry from Hawthorne to James Smetham, from Ibsen to Francis Thompson, and yet each, after his own genius, gave utterance to an authentic Christian truth. There are few more re markable facts in biographical literature than that Lord Morley should have written, with such reverence and insight, the Life of Gladstone, a life in nothing more distinguished than in its luminous religious certainties and character. This was the viewpoint of the ten lectures. The theme and the aim were fixed. I was not attempting essays in literature, but the enforcement of Christian truth. I have, however, used my utmost care to avoid imputing my own convictions to others, and have striven to frankly present the exposition of the truth as it was conceived and portrayed by the selected author. The lectures were written after they had been publicly delivered, in the midst of the duties of a city pastorate, and without opportunity for that further revision which, in presenting them to a larger public, I so much desire had been possible. I am greatly indebted to my friend, Professor J. H. Michael, M.A., for his careful reading of the lectures in proof. TREVOR H. DAVIES. |