Author Description

Large print edition, fully annotated, easy-to-read layout. "It is a book for men and women who have experience of life and human nature, who have the courage to face things as they are; who know that on the one hand the Churches of to-day, no matter how they strive carefully to disguise the fact, are confronted by the gravest possible difficulties as to doctrine, while many of the clergy, owing to a total lack of wise guidance by those in authority, are becoming a law unto themselves, or, because of the terrorism of ecclesiastical laymen, are forced to be hypocrites in the pulpit; and, on the other hand, that Judaism cannot continue in its traditional mould without doing the utmost violence to its intelligence. Traditional theology, traditional history, traditional views in general are being questioned on all hands, and there is an ever-growing conviction that the consciousness and conscience of a Church, whether that Church be the Congregation of Christendom or the Dispersion of Israel, evolve from century to century; that religion is not an exception to the law which is seen to be operative in every department of nature and human activity; and that, therefore, it is incumbent upon all who have the best interests of religion at heart "to maintain the right and duty of [any] Church to restate her belief from time to time, as required by the progressive revelation of the Holy Spirit," as one of the objects of the Churchmen's Union declares. […] The problem, then, we are about to attempt more clearly to define is not a metaphysical riddle, not a spiritual enigma, not some moral puzzle (though all of these factors may be made to inhere in it), but a problem of physical fact, well within the middle distance of what is called the historic period. It is none the less on this account of immense importance and interest generally, and especially to thoughtful students of "origins," for it raises no less a question than that of an error in the date of the lif