This book, then, is not the author's _Apologia pro Vita Sua_. It is intended as a concise statement of the outlines of the teaching given from the City Temple pulpit. It is neither a reply to separate criticisms nor an _ex cathedra_ utterance. I think I am usually able to say what I mean, and in the following pages my object is to say what I mean in such a way that everyone can understand. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. THE NAME AND THE SITUATION II. GOD AND THE UNIVERSE III. MAN IN RELATION TO GOD IV. THE NATURE OF EVIL VI. THE ETERNAL CHRIST VII. THE INCARNATION OF THE SON OF GOD VIII. THE ATONEMENT.--I. ASSOCIATION OF THE DOCTRINE WITH JESUS IX. THE ATONEMENT.--II. SEMITIC IDEAS OF ATONEMENT X. THE ATONEMENT.--III. THE DOCTRINE IN CHRISTIAN HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE XI. THE AUTHORITY OF SCRIPTURE XII. SALVATION, JUDGMENT, AND THE LIFE TO COME XIII. THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOM OF GOD XIV. CONCLUSION THE NEW THEOLOGY CHAPTER I THE NAME AND THE SITUATION +Religion and Theology.+--Religion is one thing and theology another, but religion is never found apart from a theology of some kind, for theology is the intellectual articulation of religious experience. Every man who has anything worthy to be called a religious experience has also a theology; he cannot help it. No sooner does he attempt to understand or express his experience of the relations of God and the soul than he finds himself in possession of a theology. The religious experience may be a very good one and the theology a very bad one, but still religion and theology are necessary to each other, and it is a man's duty to try to make his theology as nearly as possible an adequate and worthy expression of his religion. He will never succeed in doing this in a permanent fashion, for the content of religious experience is, or should be, greater than any form of statement. But theology is everyone's business. We cannot afford to leave it to experts or refrain from forming our own judgment upon the pronouncements of experts. To speak of theology as though it had an esoteric and an exoteric side, one for the man in the study and the other for the man in the world, is a practical heresy of a most dangerous kind. Neither should theology be confounded with ecclesiasticism. It is my conviction that the battle with ecclesiasticism has long since been decided, and civilisation has nothing to fear from the official priest. Those who spend their time in protesting against sacerdotal pretensions are only beating the air--"We shall never go to Canossa," as Bismarck said. No, the real danger to spiritual religion, and therefore to the immediate future of mankind in every department of thought and action, arises from practical materialism on the one hand and an antiquated dogmatic theology on the other. I hope it will be understood by readers of these pages that in any references I may make to dogmatic theology I am