their purpose in each stage of our spiritual development: evidences sufficient to constrain all who believe in God to believe also in the Son whom He has sent; to know Him as the way, the truth, and the life. In His school that rational conviction, retaining all its clearness, will undergo a process at once of development and transfigurement; and become a living faith. EXPLANATORY PAPER BY THE RIGHT REV. THE LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTER AND BRISTOL. EXPLANATORY PAPER Having been requested by the Committee of the Christian Evidence Society to draw up a short paper which might serve as a partial introduction to the Lectures, and especially might set forth their general plan and connexion, as originally designed by the Committee, I have much pleasure in submitting the following brief comments to the many readers of this valuable series. The Lectures were delivered in the course of the spring in the present year, to large audiences, in St. George's Hall, Langham Place, and were specially designed to meet some of the current forms of unbelief among the educated classes. They were delivered at the request of the Christian Evidence Society, and represent a portion of the work undertaken by the Committee of that Society in the present year. As they thus stand in such close connection with our Society, it may not be unsuitable for me to make a few explanatory remarks on the Society itself, and its general objects, as well as on the plan of the lectures which have been delivered at its request, and which are now presented to the reader in a collected and continuous form. First, then, as to the Society, and its present working and design. I. The Society was established in the spring of the past year. It had long been felt by earnest and thoughtful persons, both Churchmen and Nonconformists, that some combined attempt ought to be made to meet in fair argument the scepticism and unbelief which for the last few years have been distinctly traceable in all classes of society. Into all the causes of this state of things it is not now our object to inquire. These are, probably, many and various, and may defy any formal classification. It is, indeed, seldom that those who live in the stream and current of a quickly moving generation can properly estimate the variously combined movements around them, or can always very successfully refer them even to their more proximate causes. We may, however, very profitably, as thus illustrating the general design of the lectures, pause to advert to two or three of what would seem to be leading causes of this present prevalence of doubt and scepticism.