THOUGH A series of articles which appeared in the Expositor, commencing in the October number 1911, forms its groundwork, this book is not a reprint of the articles, but has been entirely rewritten.

      What has waited so long, it may be thought, might have waited till the end of the War afforded more leisure and calm of mind for studies which, to most people, will seem remote from all issues of the conflict. Yet the work, as it now stands, is the effect of the War. It scattered my students, interrupted more directly historical and philosophical studies into which an appointment to the University lectureship on the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge had led me, sent me into camps and hospitals, where fundamental religious questions were constantly being discussed, and forced upon me the reconsideration of my whole religious position. Moreover, the fact that such sorrow and wickedness could happen in the world, became the crucible in which my whole view of the world had to be tested.

      Yet my purpose being a view of the World which should include this and all other events in time, I have sought to avoid all direct references to the War which might divert the mind from that larger issue. As, during the years in which the book was being written, I was living, at home or in France, continually among the men in the army, and saw the large company of my student friends sorrowfully dwindling, and was called with bitter frequency to mourn with the companions of my youth and others near and dear, my success may not have been equal to my intention. But that, I trust, will not obscure the conviction, which these [5] years have only strengthened, that the greatest need, even of our needy time, is a religion shining in its own light, and that, greater than all political securities for peace, would be a Christian valuation of men and means, souls and things.

      The substance of the articles is still much less altered than the form. They were already the outcome of many years of study and reflection: and, if I have any confidence in offering the result of renewed thought on the subject, it is that the main contention seems to have stood the test in a way impossible, not only for a merely sentimental faith in a beneficent Deity, but also for any doctrine that starts from the Absolute, whether as the absolute process of Reason or as the absolute Divine Sovereignty.

      My application of it may not seem greatly to approve the method, but the method is more important than any particular application: and it may be permitted me to hope that even my limitations may stimulate some one to use it to better purpose.

      Mr. G. W. Alexander and the Rev. F. W. Armstrong have helped me in reading the proofs; and Mr. Vacher Burch has prepared the Summary.

[GAP 5-6]