THE Revision, for which a new edition afforded opportunity, has extended to the whole work, not excluding the Summary and the Index. Considerable changes have been introduced into the first three chapters, and Chapter IV is altogether new. This new matter is designed to show more fully the origin, the scope and the condition of the inquiry. The rest of the alterations and expansions aim only at clearer, or--in a few cases--at fuller statement. As they were mostly determined by actual difficulties felt by readers it is hoped that something may have been done to remove obscurities due to defects in the presentation and not to the nature of the subject. That more were not exposed must be ascribed to the kindness of reviewers, who, having sympathy with the purpose, were willing to overlook imperfections in the performance. Yet there was frequent insistence on the need of attentive reading for serious thinking; and, in so far as that was warning, its repetition may still only be too necessary.

      But also, in so far as it was a general principle, it is no more likely than before to be refuted. The nature of the subject precludes any treatment of it, which is not wholly superficial, from being for him who runs to read. The main difficulty still lies in the presupposition of the inquiry, that, in religion, as in all other subjects, truth can only rest securely on the witness of the reality to itself, and that, in religion, more than in any other subject, it must be a witness to ourselves. Were all achieved that had been purposed, and it were now true as some readers have already been rash enough to affirm that, if this condition be first accepted, everything follows [7] simply enough, it would still be a simplicity which, for many, would be far from easy. As one, with four years' habit of military metaphor, expresses it, "It means going over the top and not caring a hang what is to happen." It means that for action as well as for thought: and for both inseparably. But till discovery is made that no final victory, either for truth or righteousness, ever can be won, except in the open country of the spirit, that venture is mere bravado. So long as the business of religion is thought to be with traditional faiths and accepted customs and the business of theology to erect sandbags of learning upon their parapet, it will even seem the essence of unbelief in what God has done, and everything said on the presupposition that it is the essence of faith in what God is doing, can be accepted only as it is misconceived. Nor is the case much better, when it is thought possible both to remain in the entrenchments of outward authority and be in the open country of action and inquiry at the same time.

[GAP 7-8]