This preliminary definition, thus somewhat abruptly stated, will arouse in the minds of many of you serious doubts and questions. And only the whole course of our study can serve to furnish such answer to these doubts and questions as I can hope to supply to you. Yet a further word or two of purely preliminary explanation may help to prevent your thoughts, at this point, from being turned in a wrong direction. I have defined religious insight as insight into the way of salvation. But what, you may ask, do I mean by the salvation of man or by man's need of salvation? To this question I still owe you a brief preliminary answer. II The word salvation naturally first suggests to your own mind certain familiar traditions which have played a great part in the history of Christianity. I do not mean to make light of those traditions nor yet of the significance of the historical Christianity to which they belong. Yet, as I have already told you, these lectures will have no dogmatic religious system to expound, and, for that very reason, will not attempt the grave task of any extended discussion of Christianity. I propose at {10} some future time, not in these lectures, but upon a wholly different occasion, to attempt an application of some of the principles that underlie the present lectures to the special problems which Christianity offers to the student of religion. But these lectures are not to be directly concerned with this special task of expounding or interpreting or estimating Christian doctrines. I repeat: My limited undertaking is to consider in company with you the sources of religious insight, not the contents of any one religion. You will understand, therefore, that when I define religious insight as insight into the way of salvation, I use the word salvation in a sense that I wish you to conceive in terms much more general than those which certain Christian traditions have made familiar to you.