If there has been more repudiation of the main historic statement than the author expected, it may not unfairly be attributed to the temper of dislike of all innovating judgment which has always marked religious discussion. Spontaneous resentment operates in advance of critical reflection; and blame is so much more simple than refutation. Even men who have made concessions to one line of reasoned objection are often slow to listen to another; and the practice of "the higher criticism" leaves many at an uncritical standpoint in regard to sociological problems. To readers who may be under the sway of such prepossession, the author can but offer the reminder that this history proceeds upon a definite view of historical science. It is not an attempt to indicate all the good or all the evil wrought by Christians, any more than a work of "natural history" so-called is an attempt to summarize the lives of myriads of plants or animals. It is an attempt, in terms of the data, to establish principles of causation, to trace broadly the reactions of a given creed on polity, conduct, and thought, and to summarize the reactions of those on the formation and fortunes of the creed itself. To the adherents of the creed it will naturally figure as "an attack" insofar as it gives an unflattering or subversive account of the historical process. It is none the less a work of scientific investigation, written with the object, first and last, of getting at the historic truth. This, it must be observed, is a different thing from the purpose of what is called "edification," so often acted on, and even professed, by professional theologians. Recently, for instance, the Dean of Durham preached a special sermon to miners, in which he urged, not that the Christian religion is true and the disregard of it fatal to future salvation, but that "we are so fashioned that a religion we must have." All the while, the confessed motive for the declaration was that so many actually feel no such need; and the "You can't do without it" thus approximated to the advertisement of a new typewriter. Men who assert and claim to prove that the given religion is "not true" were at the same time represented by Dr. Henson as merely urging their fellows to "give no thought to religion." Here we have not merely a negative but a positive indifference to truth.