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FAITH AND ITS PSYC H O LO GY BY WILLIAM RALPH INGE LADY MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AT CAMBRIDGE NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS 1910 GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES MAN has no deeper or wider Interest than theology none deeper, for however much he may change, he never loses Ms love of the many questions it covers and none wider, for under whatever law he may live he never escapes from its spacious shade nor does he ever find that it speaks to him in vain or uses a voice that fails to reach him. Once the present writer was talking with a friend who has equal fame as a statesman and a man of letters, and he said, Every day I live, Politics, which are affairs of Man and Time, interest me less, while Theology, which, is an affair of God and Eternity, interests me more. As with him, so with many, though the many feel that their interest is in theology and not in dogma. Dogma, they know, is but a series of resolutions framed by a council or parliament, which they do not respect any the more because the parliament was composed of ecclesiastically-minded persons while the theology which so interests them is a discourse touch- ing God, though, the Being so named is the God man conceived as not only related to himself and his world but also as rising ever higher with the notions of the self and the world. Wise books, not in dogma but in theology, may therefore be described as the supreme, 4,, v j s, f CK 64l lbd5 GENEBAL INTRODUCTION need of our day, for only suet can save us from mucli fanaticism and secure us in the full possession of a sober and sane reason. Theology is less a single science than an ency clopaedia of sciences indeed all the sciences which hare to do with man have abetter right to he called theological than anthropological, though the man it studies is not simply an individual but a race. Its way of viewing man is indeed characteristic from this have come some of its brighter ideals and some of its darkest dreams. The ideals are all either ethical or social, and would make of earth a heaven, creating fraternity amongst men and forming all states into a goodly sisterhood the dreams may be represented by doctrines which concern sin on the one side and the will of God on the other. But even this will cannot make sin luminous, for were it made radiant with grace, it would cease to be sin. These books then, which have all to be written by men who have lived in the full blaze of modern light, though without having either their eyes burned out or their souls scorched into insensibility, are in tended to present God in relation to Man and Man in relation to God. It is intended that they begin, not in date of publication, but in order of thought, with a Theological Encyclopaedia which shall show the circle of sciences co-ordinated under the term Theology, though all will be viewed as related to its central or main idea. This relation of God to human know ledge will then be looked at through mind as a com munion of Deity with humanity, or God in fellowship G-ENERAIi with concrete man. On this basis the idea of Kevela tion will be dealt with. Then, so far as history and philology are concerned, the two Sacred Books, which are here most significant, will be viewed as the scholar, who is also a divine, views them in other words, the Old and New Testaments, regarded as human documents, will be criticised as a literature which expresses relations to both thepresent and the future that is, to the men and races who made the books, as well as to the races and men the books made. The Bible will thus be studied in the Semitic family which gave it being, and also in the Indo-European families which gave to it the quality of the life to which they have attained. But Theology has to do with more than sacred literature it has also to do with the thoughts and life its history occasioned. Therefore the Church has to be studied and presented as an institution which God founded and man ad ministers...