The present volume was announced in the preface to "Christianity and Greek Philosophy" as nearly ready for publication under the title of "Christianity and Modern Thought."

Several considerations have induced the author to delay its appearance, the most influential of which has been the desire to await the culmination among a class of self-styled "advanced thinkers" of what they have been pleased to call "the tendency of modern thought." No extraordinary sagacity was needed to foresee the issue, or to predict that it must soon be reached. The transition has been rapid from negative criticism of the Christian religion to direct assault upon the very foundation of all religion—the personality and providence of God. Distrust of a supernatural revelation, and denial of all authority to the teaching of the sacred Scriptures, has been succeeded by doubt of the existence of God in the proper import of that sacred name. The Theistic postulate is degraded to the rank of a mere hypothesis, which is pronounced inadequate to explain the universe. A "law-governed Cosmos, full of life and reason," eternal and infinite, must now take the place of a personal God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. This is the "New Faith" which is to supersede the Old.

The question, "Are we still Christians?" has received a final answer in the words of Strauss: "If we would speak as honest, upright men, we must acknowledge we are no longer Christians."[1] And in giving this answer he is confident he speaks in the name of a large and rapidly increasing number of men who once believed in the truth of Christianity—"The We I mean no longer counts only by thousands."[2] The further question, "Have we still a Religion?" (understanding by religion "the recognition and veneration of God, and the belief in a future life") is also answered in the negative. Religion "is a delusion, to abolish which ought to be the endeavor of every man whose eyes are open to the truth."[3] The only question which now remains for the speculative intellect is, "What is our conception of the Universe?"—the conception which henceforth must take the place of a personal God. The answer of Strauss is explicit, and in his estimation final: "The conception of the Cosmos, instead of that of a personal God as the finality to which we are led by perception and thought, or as the ultimate fact beyond which we can not proceed, ... assumes the more definite shape of matter infinitely agitated, which, by differentiation and integration, develops itself to ever higher forms and functions, and describes an everlasting circle by evolution, dissolution, and then fresh evolution."[4]

This may be called pantheism or atheism, materialism or idealism, just as we please; Strauss has no solicitude about mere names. "If this be considered pure, unmitigated materialism, I will not dispute it. In fact, I have always tacitly regarded the contrast so loudly proclaimed between materialism and idealism (or by whatever term one may designate the view opposed to the former) as a mere quarrel about words. They have a common foe in the dualism which pervaded the conception of the world throughout the Christian era, dividing man into body and soul, his existence into time and eternity, and opposing an eternal Creator to a created and perishable universe."[5]

The end is reached at last—no soul, no God, no providence, no immortality! We have waited for a culmination, and now we are called upon to look, "not into the golden Orient, but vaguely all around into a dim, copper firmament pregnant with earthquake and tornado." Or, rather, we are called to look into an abyss, and, "shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, receive no answer" save "the Everlasting No." It only remains for us to listen to Strauss's De Profundis and retire. "The loss of the belief in providence belongs, indeed, to the most sensible deprivations which are connected with a renunciation of Christianity. In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers, in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man—a helpless and defenseless creature—finds himself placed, not secure for a moment that on some imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him to powder. This sense of abandonment is at first something awful. But, then, what avails it to have recourse to an illusion? Our wish is impotent to refashion the world; the understanding clearly shows that it indeed is such a machine. But it is not merely this. We do not only find the revolution of pitiless wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding of soothing oil. Our God [the world-machine] does not, indeed, take us into his arms from the outside, but he unseals the well-spring of consolation within our own bosoms.... He who can not help himself in this matter is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our stand-point."[6]

There is a weighty and solemn lesson in this illustration of the "tendency of modern thought"—a lesson which even Strauss intended to teach the age, viz., that there is no discernible via media between "the Old Faith and the New"—between the belief in a personal God and the impersonal All. The "New Faith" must at last be the faith of all who reject providence, that providence which is pre-eminently revealed in history, instituting a kingdom of God upon earth by a supernatural guidance and grace.

The issue, now so sharply and clearly defined, between a God and no God, has determined a change in the plan of our work, and justifies, we trust, the attempt we have made to restate and defend "The Theistic Conception of the World."

Those who have done me the honor to read "Christianity and Greek Philosophy" will detect in the present volume a radical change of views concerning the concepts Time and Space. This change of position is the result of patient reconsideration of this branch of the discussion, and we allude to it here simply to guard against the charge of unconscious inconsistency. The views presented in this volume must stand or fall on their own merits.

The author has to acknowledge many obligations to his friend, Dr. Bernard Moses, for material aid rendered in getting this work through the press.

University of Michigan, July, 1875.