IF I were asked what is my reason for printing these
lectures, I might be at a loss for an answer. They are not
printed by request, or because they seem to me worthy to
be preserved, or because they are likely to be useful read-
ing, or because they supply a want. It may be that they
owe their present form to the fact that the love of correct-
ing proof-sheets has become a leading passion with the
author.

Some part of the volume may be readable, some part
useful: it may be that the useful part is hard reading, and
the readable part trifling, but I will give myself, unphilo-
sophic as it may be, the benefit of a doubt. The lectures
were written under the pressure of statutory compulsion,
and against the grain. I know, by sad experience, how
often the best lecture, the best sermon on which I have
most prided myself--eloquent, lucid, learned, logical,--has
gone the way of all fireworks. There is a chance that
something may be said for work elicited by forcible pres-
sure, under weariness and vexation, against stress of time,
under statutory obligation and a conscientious sense of
duty.

The statute under which these lectures were delivered was
a burdensome statute to me; it would not be so to every
professor, but the discomforts of working under it could
only be explained by experience: and the statute itself is
now a thing of the past. The feeling of compulsion, the
compulsion to produce something twice a year which might
attract an idle audience, without seeming to trifle with a
deeply loved and honoured study, was so irksome that

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