The nineteenth century is not in very many quarters regarded as the goal of things.

And it will hardly now be maintained that Christianity is adequately represented by any of the many sects and parties embraced under the name.

When we turn from even the best of these, in its best and highest embodiment, to the picture that is put before us in the Gospels, how small does it seem! We feel that they all fall short of their ideal, and that there is a greater promise and potentiality of perfection in the root than has ever yet appeared in branch or flower.
No doubt theology follows philosophy.

The special conception of the relation of man to God naturally takes its colour from the wider conception as to the nature of all knowledge and the relation of God to the universe.

It has been so in every age, and it must needs be so now.