r to every thoughtful reader, is
the inquiry, _Cui bono?_--what justification has one for treating the
subject at all, and why in the particular way which he has chosen? To
the pertinency of this question to the present treatise the author has
been deeply sensible, and therefore cannot forbear a few prefatory words
of explanation of his object and method.

In accounts of the theistic argument, as in the history of philosophy in
general, it has been customary to pass over a space of well-nigh ten
centuries of the Christian era in silence, or with such scanty and
unsympathetic notice as to make silence the better alternative. Largely
through the influence of such treatment as this, we moderns have almost
forgotten at times that during this period there lived men inferior to
none in history in endowments of mind and influence on succeeding
generations, and that there then took place some of the most significant
and far-reaching intellectual conflicts in the history of thought. "With
Cicero," says Professor Stirling, "we reached in our course a most
important and critical halting-place.... We have still ... to wait those
thousand years yet before Anselm shall arrive with what is to be named
the new proof, the proof ontological, and during the entire interval it
is the Fathers of the Church and their immediate followers who, in
repetition of the old, or suggestion of the new, connect thinker with
thinker, philosopher with philosopher, pagan with Christian."[1] To
attempt to account for even one of the details of thought during this
period cannot be without its advantages.

For Christianity gave a new and unique turn to thought. It brought with
it a new set of data, and a new subject-matter. The Christian doctrine
of God, the distinctions in the Trinity, the great doctrines centering
around the person of Jesus Christ, though, perhaps, faintly foreshadowed
in some of the earlier speculations, are, in their fulness and
completeness, first given to the world by the Founder of Christianity.
The claims made for these doctrines, too, gave them a unique character.
In contrast with the half-hearted, faltering conclusions of the
prevalent philosophical schools, Christianity asserted that its
teachings were absolute truth; it claimed to be nothing less than a
revelation from the Creator of the world. It will be readily seen that
the introduction of such a system as this into the Greek world would be
attended with important results, no