CUNNINGHAM GEIKIE, D.D., LL.D., LATE VICAR OF ST. MARTIN AT PALACE, NORWICH. A.D. 55 TO A.D. 64, WITH THE EPISTLES TO THE GALATIANS, FIRST AND с LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET. PREFACE THIS volume completes my study of St. Paul. I have striven to keep free from traditional conceptions of any kind, and to set the Apostle and his Epistles before my readers as he and they would appear to his contemporaries. To transfer our modern developments of ecclesiastical affairs to his age, distorts his whole story and robs it of its most valuable lessons. In theology I have simply stood behind the Apostle, and given his words and arguments without the colour of any school. As to the amplifications introduced in the texts of the Epistles, to make them more easily understood by the ordinary reader, they are seldom my own, but almost always those of the highest critical authorities of our day. I admire the surgical skill of reviewers, and am greatly obliged by their kind estimate of the volume already published, but it may be well if I put them on their guard, lest when they think they are launching an arrow at me, they find they have transfixed one or other of the supreme living or recent masters of New Testament literature. I can only hope that my volumes may prove a pleasant but reliable history, and a new form of inviting, but V |