PREFACE

THE present book is the result of studies whose first outcome appeared, in 1908, in my "Philosophy of Loyalty." Since then, two volumes of my collected philosophical essays have dealt, in part, with the same problems as those which "The Philosophy of Loyalty" discussed. Of these two latter volumes, one is entitled "William James and other Essays on the Philosophy of Life"; and contains, amongst other theses, the assertion that the "spirit of loyalty" is able to supply us not only with a " philosophy of life," but with a religion which is "free from superstition" and which is in harmony with a genuinely rational view of the world. In 1912 were published, by the Scribners in New York, the "Bross Lectures," which I had delivered, in the autumn of 1911, at Lake Forest University, Illinois, on "The Sources of Religious Insight." One of these "Bross Lectures" was entitled "The Religion of



Loyalty"; and the volume in question con tained the promise that, in a future discus sion, I would, if possible, attempt to "apply the principles" there laid down to the special case of Christianity. The present work re deems that promise according to the best of

my ability.

I

The task of these two volumes is defined in the opening lecture of the first volume. The main results are carefully summed up in Lectures XV and XVI, at the close of the second volume. This book can be under stood without any previous reading of my "Philosophy of Loyalty," and without any acquaintance with my "Bross Lectures." Yet in case my reader finds himself totally at variance with the interpretation of Chris tianity here expounded, he should not finally condemn my book without taking the trouble to compare its principal theses with those which my various preliminary studies of "loyalty," and of the religion of loyalty, contain.

In brief, since 1908, my "philosophy of



loyalty" has been growing. Its successive expressions, as I believe, form a consistent body of ethical as well as of religious opinion and teaching, verifiable, in its main outr lines, in terms of human experience, and capable of furnishing a foundation for a de fensible form of metaphysical idealism. But the depth and vitality of the ideal of loyalty have become better known to me as I have gone on with my work. Each of my efforts to express what I have found in the course of my study of what loyalty means has con tained, as I believe, some new results. My efforts to grasp and to expound the "religion of loyalty" have at length led me, in this book, to views concerning the essence of Christianity such that, if they have any truth, they need to be carefully considered. For they are, in certain essential respects, novel views; and they concern the central life-problems of all of us.

II

What these relatively novel opinions are, the reader may, if he chooses, discover for



himself. If he is minded to undertake the task, he will be aided by beginning with the "Introduction," which immediately follows the "Table of Contents" in the first volume of this book. This introduction contains an outline of the lectures, — an outline which was used, by my audience, when the text of this discussion was read at Manchester Col-1 lege, Oxford, between January 13 and March 6, 1913.

But a further brief and preliminary indica tion is here in order to prepare the reader a little better for what is to follow.

This book is not the work of an historian, nor yet of a technical theologian.