PUBLIC LIBRARY 636880 ASTOR. LENOX AND R 1913 L COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY GEORGE A. GORDON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published October 1913 PREFACE FOR many years I cherished the audacious dream of writing a book on the philosophy of Revelation. More than ten years of study and reflection ended in the conviction that the task I had set myself demanded for its accomplishment the undivided devotion of a long life. The task had to be abandoned; I was compelled to allow the dream to fade. Something, however, had been gained; what could not be discussed in the form of a treatise might be presented in a series of visions close to life and warm with serious concern for the high moral possibilities of man. Such is the origin of this book; it is the second choice of its author, not the first. I have long felt that the secret of Revelation is in the keeping of the Ideal. The ideal is the East where, in each new generation, the Eternal light breaks in upon our human world. In plain words, I am convinced that the greater introductions of God to the mind of man are through man's greater ideals. Moral idealism and Revelation are but the concave and the convex of the same figure. The Divine thought is sunk in the depths of the human soul; it lives and operates there under the immediate pressure of the Divine Presence; the swift and vivid forms of imagination in the course of the ages catch and reflect something of that indwelling and mighty plan. The profoundest questions in the entire sphere of religious interest are these: Does the Eternal God speak to man? If so, how? I should like to believe that I had not altogether failed in my endeavor to answer these great questions. GEORGE A. GORDON. OLD SOUTH PARSONAGE, BOSTON, MASS., June 3, 1913. |