Excerpt from Isms Old and New: Winter Sunday Evening Sermon-Series for 1880-81 Delivered in the First Baptist Church, Chicago

This conviction led to the preparation of the aecom panying sermons. Working for Christ in a community distinguished almost as much by its mental restlessness as by its business activity, the author became convinced if he would promote in the highest sense the religious life of the unconverted in his congregation he must diminish their confidence in certain prevailing errors, and disengagethem from their fetters. His endeavors were so favorably received that he has ventured to seek for his series a wider sphere of usefulness, by giving the discourses to the press. They are not, however, printed precisely as they were delivered They have been subject to such revision as the cares of an exacting pastorate, enhanced by the labors incident to the formation of a new church and the building of a house of worship, would permit; and they have been increased in number by the addition of several that were not included in the original course, of which the one on Buddhism is a sample, which was preached under a different title soon after the appearance of the beautiful poem which it commends and reviews.

In dealing with such themes as are presented in this volume, especially within the limits usually prescribed to sermons, an author will find himself frequently baffled by the immeasurableness of the territory he has to traverse, and by the shadowy vagueness of the land he seeks to ih vade. Dr. Johnson has said, There are objections against a plenum and also against a vacuum, but one or the other must be true. Verily; but how much wearisome think ing and how much wearisome writing would be needed to answer all these objections, and how much more of both would be required to completely fathom the emptiness of unbelieving speculation, and to vindicate the fullness of Christian truth. This the author of these discourses has keenly felt; and he has done, not the best that could be done, but the best that he could do under the circum stances. While not attempting an exhaustive treatment of these Isms, he has tried to point out their startling dissonances, their thought-encircling darkness, and their comfortless, hopeless, soul-freezing tendencies; and he has tried to help his readers to grasp more deeply and feel more intensely those essential doctrines of religion that meet the necessities of our spiritual life, as the celestial poles coincide with the axis of our revolving world. As Lord Byron says in Childe Harold, what is writ is writ; and the author can only pray that it may not die into an echo, but prove a word of hope to many a troubled heart, - a living seed, which, however lowly and insignificant, may not altogether prove either flowerless or leafless.

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