PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION.

A NEW edition of this book has now for some years been required but, notwithstanding the representations of its publisher, I could neither find time for such a recompilation as I felt necessary, nor consent to a mere reprint, with detached and unimportant corrections. At first, my official engagements forbade such an undertaking and subsequently, physical ailments interposed to prevent any continuous labour. Thus I have been unable till now to complete such improvements as might allow me to offer this new edition to the public and I can only wish that the many interruptions amidst which this little work has been brought to its present state, may be as little perceptible as possible in my execution of the task.

In the present edition my efforts have chiefly been directed to give a more concise and distinct form to those portions which I have retained from former editions, and at the same time to combine with this such new matter as seemed desirable, whether from the works of others, or from the results of my own further investigation of the subject during the last ten years. I hope this has been done in such a manner as nowhere to interfere with the organic connection of the whole. It has been my aim that the book, while losing none of its essential contents, should, in spite of the addition of new elements, be at once more brief and more lucid, and, above all, that its fundamental thought should be more clearly developed and more conclusively argued.

How far this may have been attained, it is not for me, but for intelligent readers, to determine.

My wishes for its success naturally accompany the work in its present, as in its former state yet I do not allow myself to cherish any sanguine hopes with respect to non-theological readers. I am well convinced, indeed, that there are among these many who will not give up the name of Christians, and who will consent to a Christianity which accommodates itself with but very little scruple to the humanitarian notions of the age. But I see, too, that matters take quite a different turn when Christianity appears, not perhaps as a mere dogmatical system, but in the simple and unadulterated form in which it was delivered to the world by its Founder and first confessors, and especially when it advances those great and deep-reaching moral claims which are absolutely inseparable from its very nature. A willingness to receive it in this form involves more than a wish just to maintain an amicable relation thereto it implies a mind earnestly striving after eternal happiness,—a mind estimating the invisible inheritance above all visible possessions, and therefore capable of the greatest sacrifices, especially the sacrifice of self, for its attainment in short, it implies the felt need of salvation.

That the number of such earnest seekers is in our days a large, or even an increasing one, I cannot, so far as my acquaintance with the religious and intellectual condition of the age extends, persuade myself. And since this treatise, though based only upon the general principles of morality, has nevertheless no other end in view than the advocacy of that primitive and scriptural Christianity, with its positive. creed and its moral demands upon the obedience of the whole human race, I cannot venture to anticipate for it, in this respect, a very favourable reception.

Yet I do not doubt that there are, in the different classes xof society, many in whom the above named predisposition towards Christian truth exists, but who have not yet been able to find a corresponding access thereto. To such, as well as to theologians, I would again address myself by means of this little work; and if it may, by God’s blessing, be useful to them, be they few or many, I shall have abundant cause for gratitude.

ULLMANN.

Carlsruhe, June 25, 1863.