Brief Outline of the Study of Theology - Drawn Up to Serve as the Basis of Introductory Lectures #232927

My fear is, lest some individuals of this class should interpret my sincere and uncaptious homage into an attempt to identify you with the details of doctrine and sentiment contained or implied in the following pages. Certainly, if such an attempt were made, it could be fruitful of evil to none save its author. You could not suffer: the Church and the World know you too well.<br><br>Considerate readers, however, will, 1 trust, bear in mind that a Translator, by the mere act of translation, does not even profess his own adherence to the system of his author. If it were so, a man might easily come to be esteemed the luckless champion of half-a-dozen different and hostile creeds. Much less, then, is the imputation of such an adherence implied in a mere Dedication.<br><br>There are reasons, moreover, for connecting your name with that of Schleiermacher: especially in an age which groans over the want of Union in the Church, and yet, in too many instances, hugs that mental littleness which renders Union impossible; an age, therefore, which can not afford that any real analogy or identity between the services attempted or accomplished by men of God in different countries and under different circumstances, should be overlooked or ignored. The invidiousness, not to say the impertinence, of a formal comparison between yourself and the great German, I would wholly avoid.