Preface

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A deep unsettlement of belief is characteristic of our age. We prize the doubt that low kinds and simpler ages existed without; an interrogation point is held to be the badge of mental superiority. While this unsettlement is to be deplored when it leads, as it does in so many cases, to the shipwreck of faith and even of morals, there is yet a certain exhilaration in living in a critical age. The challenge to faith, meeting us at every point, rouses from dogmatic slumber and dead orthodoxy. We realize that the faith which is to survive must be not simply a traditional faith, but an intelligent faith, sending its roots down deep into reason and experience, and blossoming upward in the flowers and fruits of character and of good works. As character receives its crown in the times of persecution, so perhaps faith may grow strongest in an age of doubt: it was the doubter among the disciples who at last made the boldest confession of faith. A restless age may at last heed the invitation, "Come unto Me; I will give you rest."

These lectures, delivered at Princeton Theological Seminary in February, 1914, under the title of "The Christian Faith in the Light of Modern Knowledge," have now been revised with the addition of new matter. They were written in the conviction that what Christianity has most to fear is ignorance and prejudice and presupposition; that the Christian Faith, with its motto, "Come and see," welcomes the fullest investigation; and that every advance in knowledge, whatever temporary perplexities it may occasion, will in the end reveal more fully the intrinsic excellence of the Christian religion and establish more firmly its sovereign claim to be from heaven and not from men.

W. H. J.

Lincoln University, Pa.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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