Excerpt from The Foregleams of Christianity: An Essay on the Religious History of Antiquity

This volume is largely a recast of one entitled The Foregleams of Christianity, of which a revised edition appeared in 1893, and the first edition as far back as 1877, when, perhaps not too presumptuously, the author may think himself to have been, here and there, somewhat of a pioneer. For, during the last twenty years, much new light has been shed on the ancient religions of the world by important discoveries of many kinds, and no less from the study by eminent scholars of sources long, as Well as recently, known. But, if, in the endeavour to bring my work up to date, I have had much to correct as well as to add, I have been very happy to find that such correction was needed almost entirely for details bearing but Slightly, if at all, on either the arguments or the conclusions which I now submit again, even more confidently than before, to readers interested either in Christian apologetics or in ancient history.

I can repeat, too, the statement in my former prefaces, that the ambition of my work is to be, in a humble way, supplementary to the Boyle Lectures of Frederick Denison Maurice (the Religions of the World and their Relations to Christianity).

I do not apologize for having left, in the footnotes, some quotations from French authorities in the original, not only to escape the suspicion of 'traduttore traditore but also because I hope to deserve the thanks of my readers for serving them with some choice bits of writing, there being no branch of literature where the French excel more than in the prose of history and criticism.

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