there is no one in whose steps I can claim to follow, or whose work I can profess to carry on. But though I have no direct predecessor in this Chair, I have great traditions in this University to guide me. Cambridge in our own day has fostered a school of theologians who are strong in the use of the historical method. I will not attempt a survey of their labours, but will only say that they have done much to substitute for unprofitable controversy a fruitful search for truth. They have set themselves soberly and steadfastly to sift the evidence of Christian antiquity. They have gone far to dispel difficulties and to settle problems by reducing them to definite proportions, by regarding them in strict reference to the circumstances which gave them birth. The traditions of theological teaching have been thoroughly leavened by the historic spirit. So far as regards the origins of the Christian Church, its organisation, its doctrines, its rites, its liturgies, the existing staff of teachers need no further help. They are all historians within their several spheres. Theology has become historical and does not demand that history should become theological.
I think, therefore, that I am not merely following the direction of my own studies, but am also consulting the needs of the teaching of the University, if I say that I do not at present purpose to turn my attention to the earliest period of the history of the Church. I think that I should be doing a more useful work if I tried to carry on the subject to later times, and aimed at kindling a greater interest in the nature and influence of the ecclesiastical organisation when considered as a factor in European civilisation. I
