It will be well to explain at once that the following work has been written at the request and is published at the cost of the Christian Evidence Society, and that it may therefore be classed under the head of Apologetics.

I am aware that this will be a drawback to it in the eyes of some, and I confess that it is not altogether a recommendation in my own.
Ideally speaking, Apologetics ought to have no existence distinct from the general and unanimous search for truth, and in so far as they tend to put any other consideration, no matter how high or pure in itself, in the place of truth, they must needs stand aside from the path of science.
But, on the other hand, the question of true belief itself is immensely wide.

It is impossible to approach what is merely a branch of a vast subject without some general conclusions already formed as to the whole.

The mind cannot, if it would, become a sheet of blank paper on which the writing is inscribed by an external process alone.

It must needs have its _praejudicia_-- i.e.judgments formed on grounds extrinsic to the special matter of enquiry--of one sort or another.