It is perhaps needless to add that the appended Synopsis of Literature does not in the least pretend to be a bibliography for professed students. It is designed merely as a first help to painstaking readers to search and judge for themselves on the problems under notice. December, 1901. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION In the dozen years that have passed since this book was written there has probably been some change in the outlook of the more critical of the readers to whom it might be said to be addressed. It challenges criticism on two main issues: that of Christian origins, and that of the sociological interpretation of Christian history. Twelve years ago, the thesis of the non-historicity of the gospel story in respect of its "natural" no less than of its supernatural matter found few serious listeners, even among Rationalists; while the strictly naturalistic study of Christian history incurred a good deal of resentment. To-day, perhaps, the thesis as to origins may receive more attention; while the historic narrative may arouse less impatience. On both issues, critical thought appears to be at work. The primary problem may be left to the fortunes of discussion: the question as to how Christian history is fitly to be presented in summary is perhaps worth some introductory treatment. An attentive reading of the reviews of the first edition left the author impressed by the fact that censure was generally passed without any attempt to prove error of statement. Error there may well have been; but it was not pointed out or founded on in the hostile judgments passed by religious reviewers. One German Catholic ecclesiastic was ironical at great length on the account given of the history of the Catholic Church; but he did not seem to impugn any particular historical statement. More serious reviewers made nothing clear save that they resented the selection made of facts and the summing-up from these. So far as the author could gather, they claimed that another set of data should have been given, and another general impression set up. If he understood them aright, they held that the way to write Christian history is to look for all the utterances of good feeling, all the instances of humane action, all the items of political, social, and intellectual betterment that have occurred in the Christian era, and to call the general statement of these--with, of course, a sympathetic account of doctrinal evolution--a history of Christianity. The things on the other side of the shield--the religious wars, the consecration of error, the strangling of truth, the persecutions, the propagandist massacres, the countless cruelties wrought in the name and on the sanction of the faith--are from this point of view external to its history: things to be set down to the perversity of men. All the good that has happened is to be credited to Christianity; all the bad to human nature.