Far from wishing to elude any of the difficulties of this question, I would now set Christianity in contact with the ideas and forces that seem most contrary to it, and with three of them more especially: Liberty, Independent Morality, and Science. {vii} Assertions are running the tour of the world that Christianity can accommodate itself neither to liberty nor science; that morality is essentially distinct and separate from Religious Faith. All this I hold to be false and highly prejudicial to the very cause of Liberty, of Morality, and of Science, which those who give utterance to such assertions affect to serve. I believe Christianity and Liberty to be not only compatible with each other, but necessary to each other. I regard Morality as naturally and intimately united to Religion. I am convinced that Christianity and Science need not make any mutual sacrifices, that neither has anything to fear from the other. This I establish in the first three Meditations of the present series. I then enter into the peculiar domain of Christianity, and determine what, in the presence of Liberty, of Philosophical Morality, and of Human Science, is the principle and what the bearing of "Christian Ignorance" and of Christian Faith. {viii} I finally apply to ideas their natural and inevitable law, the law which obliges them to express themselves in facts; I interrogate theory thus transformed into practice, and I show that Christianity alone supports this test victoriously. "Christian Life" becomes a forcible demonstration of the Legitimacy of Christian Faith. With these three Meditations the present series concludes. But to complete my undertaking, a final and capital question, the historical question, remains to be treated. Not that I think of retracing the History of Christianity throughout the whole of its course; such a design is far from my thoughts. I neither can nor wish to do more than to demonstrate the grand historical facts which, in my opinion, are in Christianity the stamp of a divine origin, and of a divine influence upon the development and destiny of the human race. Of these facts the following is a summary:-- 1. The authority of the sacred books. 2. The primitive foundation of Christianity. 3. The Christian Faith persistent from age to age. {ix} 4. The Church of Christ persistent also from age to age. 5. Romanism and Protestantism. 6. The different Antichristian crises, their character and their issue.