From the PREFACE.
There has never been a time in the history of scholarship when Truth for Truths sake was so earnestly pursued as now. There has never been an age when the scholar was so fully and critically equipped for the ascertainment of Truth as in the present. It is in these convictions that this book is written.
The ground reviewed in this volume is mostly historical, and the greater part of the facts as set forth have long been accepted without challenge. At the risk of appearing quite elemental, I have, in the earlier chapters, traversed a history which to scholars has long been familiar. These chapters, while not exhaustive as discussions, do, I believe, so indicate the character of the medieval ages, the faith, the science, the political conditions of those ages, as to make sufficiently clear the character of the background from which the modern thought-world has emerged.
Owing to mental habits which are controlling in many minds, and which have been domesticated in traditional thinking, I may not, perhaps, hope, especially in the brief section of the book devoted to the history of biblical criticism, to meet in all cases with sympathetic readers. I can only say, however, that throughout the preparation of this volume I have been infinitely far removed from a desire to disturb the faith of any for the sake simply of so doing.
There are some things, however, which seem to me reasonably certain. If it be true that any minds are resting in a traditional view, however cherished such view, which does not in itself represent the real truth, the truth for which an enlightened scholarship must stand, then it is far better that such persons should be disturbed rather than that they should remain content in error. Nothing in the last resort is of value, nothing will finally stand, save the truth. A traditional error in religious faith, however ancient its history or respectable its associations, might to-day prove an unmeasured peril to the Christian Church. The educated generation, now so surely coming to the front, is by the very processes of its training largely critical. It may be accepted with absolute certainty that the controlling mind of this generation will not rest in any faith which cannot stand the test of most critical examination. The question of criticism fundamentally is one of immeasurably greater importance than that of disturbing or failing to disturb the favored notions of an unscholarly belief. It is a question of so addressing Christian truth to the high-school and university-bred young life of the present world as to command both their intelligence and their conscience. No generation of mind has been trained in an intellectual atmosphere so fraught with the spirit of scientific research, of philosophical criticism, with a passion for accuracy of knowledge, as that which surrounds the younger life of to-day....