Excerpt from The Influence of Christianity, Vol. 8: On the Vocabulary of Old English

No one of the above cited authors had, to my mind, treated the theme anything like as exhaustively as the subject demanded. In the lists of words and expressions cited it was often hard to see precisely wherein the influence of Christianity consisted; and the reader was forced to a continual use of the dictionary to supply the deficiency.

Furthermore no trace of an exposition of the historical development of a word or expression within the language in question was to be observed; in short the entire treatment seemed to me much too brief and rudimentary.

Starting out with the intention of reading only the more important anglo-saxon monuments, I soon found it desirable for even a tolerably complete presentation of my subject to include within the scope of the investigation every work of any importance in the language. This, of course, much ih creased the bulk of preparatory work.

I had hoped to complete the whole as a dissertation; but have been compelled by the increased amount of the materials collected to abandon this purpose and publish at the present a work equal to about one third of the entire undertaking.

I trust to be enabled at a future date to complete the remaining parts of the work.

Part I. Discusses the Church in its entirety; i. E. Treats all words and expressions relating to the divisions of the human race, the departed members of the Church, secular and monastic clergy, ecclesiastical dress and revenues, ecclesiastical edifices, holy times and seasons, divine service, and the Bible. Part II. Will discuss belief and whatsoever is connected there with; e. G. Various religious conceptions and abstract ideas, God, the Trinity, philosophical notions of the world, sin, penance, confession, etc.
For the second part much material has already been collected.

It has not been found advisable to treat prose and poetry separately, there being too few variations in the poetic usage from that of the prose; where such occur they have been noted.

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