TABLE OF CONTENTS. Antiphon on an Accidental Homicide Andocides: on Making Peace with Lacedæmon Lysias against the Younger Alcibiades Eschines: against Demosthenes, "On the Crown Dinarchus: against Demosthenes, Harpalus Case THE LITERATURE OF RELIGIOUS CRITICISM BY DEAN FARRAR RELIGIOUS criticism has always been active in every age in which there has been any intellectual life at all. Religion-by which, in the broadest sense of the word, we ultimately mean the theory and the practice of duties which result from the relations between God and man-must always be a primary concern of human life. All who believe that the Creator has not remained eternally silent to the creatures of His hands, but that, E'en in the absolutest drench of dark, God, stooping, shows sufficient of His light will form their conception of religion from what they regard as His direct revelations to the soul of man. Our view as to what God requires of us is of such infinite importance as to surpass all others. In many ages the Priests of every variety of religion have tried to suppress enquiry by authority. They have claimed to be the sole authorised repositories of divine influence-the sole authorised interpreters of God's will; the sole dispensers of His grace. Whenever their views often emphasised by free resort to torture and the stake-have acquired a tyrannous dominance, the religion of the multitude has usually sunk into a mechanical fetish-worship, which, relying for salvation on outward observances, has admitted of the widest possible divorce between religion and morality. Whatever may be the perils of free enquiry they are infinitely less to be dreaded than those of a stagnant mummery, or of a subservient ignorance which rests content with the most glaring falsities. No xiii |