The Gospel of the Pentateuch: A set of Parish Sermons




PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF THE GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH
TO THE REV. CANON STANLEY.



My Dear Stanley,

I dedicate these Sermons to you, not that I may make you responsible
for any doctrine or statement contained in them, but as the simplest
method of telling you how much they owe to your book on the Jewish
Church, and of expressing my deep gratitude to you for publishing
that book at such a time as this.

It has given to me (and I doubt not to many other clergymen) a fresh
confidence and energy in preaching to my people the Gospel of the
Old Testament as the same with that of the New; and without it, many
of these Sermons would have been very different from, and I am
certain very inferior to, what they are now, by the help of your
admirable book.

Brought up, like all Cambridge men of the last generation, upon
Paley's Evidences, I had accepted as a matter of course, and as the
authoritative teaching of my University, Paley's opinions as to the
limits of Biblical criticism, {0a} quoted at large in Dean Milman's
noble preface to his last edition of the History of the Jews; and