been spun for the weekly issue, wove themselves together in my
imagination into the pattern of a simple story, true as to every
substantial fact, yet fictitious in all its dress and form. And so
out of Letters of Layman grew, I myself hardly know how, this simple
story of a layman's life in a country parish.

I cannot dismiss this book from my table without adding that I am
conscious that the deepest problem it discusses is but barely
touched upon. This has obtruded itself upon the pattern in the
weaving. It was intended for a single thread; but it has given color
and character to all the rest. How shall Christian faith meet the
current rationalism of the day? Not by argument; this is the thought
I hope may be taught, or at least suggested, by the story of Mr.
Gear's experience,--and it is a true not a fictitious story, except
as all here is fictitious, i.e. in the external dress in which it is
clothed. The very essence of rationalism is that it assumes that the
reason is the highest faculty in man and the lord of all the rest.
Grant this, as too often our controversial theology does grant it,
and the battle is yielded before it is begun. Whether that
rationalism leads to orthodox or heterodox conclusions, whether it
issues in a Westminster Assembly's Confession of faith or a
Positivist Primer is a matter of secondary importance. Religion is
not a conclusion of the reason. The reason is not the lord of the
spiritual domain. There is a world which it never sees and with
which it is wholly incompetent to deal. And Christian faith wins its
victories only when by its own--heart life it gives some glimpse of
this hidden world and sends the rationalist, Columbus-like, on an
unknown sea to search for this unknown continent.

I am not sure whether this preface had not better have remained