Certain gentlemen of culture and influence requested an answer to the leading arguments which Strauss, in his Life of Jesus, urges against the credibility of the Gospel history. This accounts for the frequent allusions in the following pages to the celebrated German skeptic. Of course every intelligent Christian has learned, perhaps by experience, the fruitlessness of a mere intellectual combat with infidelity; but the request could not have been declined without dishonor to the Master.

The answer was given on seven successive evenings of the Lord's day; and several believers who heard the discourses have desired their publication, hoping that they may be helpful and suggestive to some of the Lord's little ones, by presenting in a brief and cheap form a few facts and thoughts, which prove the Bible to be more than the work of man.

These friends know that the Lectures were written under the burden of manifold labors, and that during the entire period always eight, and generally ten, public services claimed attention each week, besides other cares it would be improper to mention here. Only a few hours, snatched from various engagements, could be devoted to their preparation, and there was no opportunity to revise even one of them at leisure.

They are sent forth, therefore, with a humiliating consciousness of their failure to present, in any proper clearness and fulness, the claims of Jesus and His word. But He knows that they were gladly undertaken solely for Him; and now as a most imperfect offering they are laid at His feet with the prayer, that He may be pleased to use the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

St. Louis, April, 1877.