argument in the Grammar of Assent,' just as an essential perversity of fact underlies all his historical treatment of Arianism in the fourth century. And an irrational religion, in a time like ours, is still less possible than a mere religion of nature. It is the withdrawal of men like Dr Newman and others from the open fields of reason and history-where the true battle of religion can alone be fought which has given to the naturalistic schools of our time their temporary triumph. Traditionalism— or the acceptance of religious truth without reasongoes well with empiricism, and since the days of Hume they have even had something of respect for one another. But it is a respect which is not creditable to religion, and by which religion always suffers in the end. I am myself but a poor fighter in these open fields, to which the Anglican Church, from the days of Hooker to those of Dean Milman, Bishop Thirlwall, and Dean Stanley, has contributed so many noble champions. But these Essays may be useful to some minds to whom religion is a great subject affecting all relations of human wellbeing, and no mere affair of Churches or sects. They put plainly, I think, the 1 Dr Ward, whose Essays On the Philosophy of Theism' have just appeared as these papers are passing through the press, is a notable exception in the Roman Catholic Church; and there is another name not mentioned by me otherwise, which it would be unpardonable to omit -that of Dr James Martineau. There is no Christian thinker of our time who has seen with a clearer eye the essential questions between modern empiricism and spiritual philosophy, or who has more felicitously and powerfully, in many essays, maintained the cause of Christian theism. points at issue between Christianity and Naturalism ; and, in such a contention, to see where the stress really lies may help to settle it. It is in this hope at least I have collected the Essays, and ventured thus briefly to trace the line of thought which connects them and gives them any value. ST ANDREWS, April 1884. |