From the PRELIMINARY. IT is with great diffidence that the Author of this book puts himself into the place of a teacher. It is a lofty office, and one from which all arrogance, self-interest, and every personal feeling should be carefully eliminated. My own interpretation of that function is that moral or spiritual teaching should not be so much directed to the enforcement of any rules of life or conduct from the outside as to the indication of, and reference to, that internal Monitor which abides in all of us, which, after all has been said and done, will assert its right to be heard, and, finally, will give a decisive verdict upon every point and principle set before it. In addressing the following observations to religious thinkers, I mean those who are not, or who do not wish to be, moved by external presentments, who are free from every form of religious faction, bigotry and exclusivism, who, though they may be worshipping in churches, are not restricted by them, regarding them as a means, and not an end; not necessarily synonymous or identical with Divine Truth to the adherent at every stage of his religious development, but rather as a ship which takes us to the shore of our wishes, which may then be abandoned or dispensed with in the attainment of a larger freedom, in the development of the apprehension of an Inward Law which commands us with a stronger and more irresistible force than any external restrictions, as that of the "Kingdom of Heaven which is within us." And surely the time has now come for such an appeal to be made, in the awakening sense that is everywhere manifest of the inadequacy of all external and imposed systems to satisfy the inmost desires of the soul. To the lover of pure truth, to those who search for the highest essential truth as for a hid treasure, who are ready to abandon all they possess, as opinions or life-principles, if they should see just reasons or cause for doing so, these observations are addressed. They disclaim all that is dogmatic or personal in their enunciation. It is only asked that they may be submitted to the test of the highest Faculty within us; for it is this dominant Faculty which governs our lives, whatever may be the forms and prejudices beneath which it subsists. When George Fox, the Quietist, preached to his votaries of varying social grades and degrees of education, he said, "I appeal to that which is of God in you"; and there was rarely wanting some form of response, even where his message was not fully accepted. It is to this inward standard or ultimate ground of judgment that the following pages are directed, and in nowise to the dialectician, the ethical schoolman, or to those who would seek to prove that a circle is round, or a square quadrangular. Better accept something that is obvious without wasting time on the threshold; for there is a truth above logic, something to live by nobler, grander, and more imperial than Euclid ever demonstrated or Aristotle propounded-a principle of truth whose claims are self-confirmed and self-contained; it lives in its proper vitality and is its own verification, rendering every subsidiary testimony superfluous. Religion is an axiom of being, and asks neither proof nor confirmation.