PREFACE vii 



students for years afterwards. It shows that Robertson 

 Smith possessed powers which would have enabled him 

 to produce further useful contributions to Mathematical 

 and Physical Science, had he not turned away from these 

 branches to quite other domains.&quot; 



The editors have to express their cordial thanks to 

 Mr. D. B. Mair, ex-Fellow of Christ s College, Cambridge, 

 who was kind enough to read the proofs of this part of 

 the book, and to undertake the necessary corrections. 



Of the Theological Essays and Lectures composing the 

 next three sections it is enough to say generally that they 

 have been selected with a view to exhibiting the evolution 

 of Professor Smith s opinions on Biblical questions, the 

 ever- widening range of his scholarship, and the painstaking 

 and cautious character of his teaching. The undergraduate 

 papers of the second section show the effects of his first 

 contact with the German theological genius in Rothe, the 

 first-fruits of the influence of Ritschl, and an approxima 

 tion to his final views of the results reached by the School 

 of Kuenen. The Aberdeen Lectures in Sections III. and IV. 

 give a series of characteristic samples of the educational 

 work he was able to do for Theology and for the Church 

 before his ecclesiastical career was cut short. 



The controversies which centre round the topics 

 treated in these papers have to some extent lost the 

 freshness which they had in Smith s time ; new points of 

 detail have arisen, and with the advance of scholarship 

 new internal evidence has been accumulated. But the 

 fundamental positions in Biblical criticism are almost as 

 keenly debated as ever, and the spirit of the conflicting 

 tendencies in criticism is practically the same as it was in 

 the days of the Aberdeen Heresy. The reprint, therefore, 

 of a selection from Smith s earlier critical writings, which 

 in the opinion of those competent to judge are models of 



