Henry Barclay Swete

Essays on Some Theological Questions of the Day: Early Twentieth Century Cambridge Essays Henry Barclay Swete

Preface vii neither the efforts of Justin and Clement to correlate Christianity with the best thoughts of Greek philosophy, nor the sarcastic dialectic of Tertullian, nor Origen sbrilliant reply to Celsus, nor the often acute answers of Macarius Magnes to the moribund yet militant paganism of the fourth century, nor the refutation of seventeenth and eighteenth century unbelief by English writers such as Cudworth, Butler, and Paley, can adequately meet the wants of the present age, when the case against faith is stated by a new learning of which our fathers never dreamt. We shall rejoice if this book is found worthy to suggest lines of thought to the future apologist, and we are not without hope that it may be thus used by him. For these Essays are the work of men who have lived for years, in some cases for the best part of a lifetime, in the atmosphere of an English University, and who therefore cannot be either unconscious or regardless of the problems which modern knowledge presents to theologians. It is one of the chief advantages of our academical system that the student of Theology meets, in the frank intercourse of a common life, with the student of History and Literature on the one hand and the student of Nature on the other. In Cambridge no sharp line of demarcation separates sacred from secular learning ; T heology gladly descends into the arena of the studies, and learns to regard all knowledge as sacred and all truth as of God. For theologians who have lived in such surroundings it is impossible to ignore objections raised by other branches of knowledge, and no less impossible to offer answers which have not first satisfied their own intellectual needs. It is because this volume of Essays has been written by men who have in every case passed through such training that it may be expected to render some real assistance to the Christian apologist. But
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