Preface.

In reproducing the following Essay, I should gladly have divested it of all controversial character. But though in substance it is independent of its immediate occasion, its form has been so far shaped by the necessities of self-defence, as to render the features of its history indelible. Whatever personal element it contains will be found, I trust, strictly relevant to the general argument, and even indispensable to the right conception of the problem discussed. My sole object has been to reduce that problem to its essential factors, and remove the disguises thrown around it by ill-understood words. To the demand for exactitude of method in dealing with the border-land between Natural Knowledge and Theology I willingly submit. It was indeed in the interest of such a method that both this Essay and its predecessor were written: and it is to the want of it that the prevalent misunderstandings are due between the representatives of Science and the interpreters of Religion.