My foremost design in writing this Preface is to
address a word of exhortation to the Society for Pro-
moting Christian Knowledge. In the essay which
follows, the reader will often find Bishop Wilson
quoted. To me and to the members of the Society
for Promoting Christian Knowledge his name and
writings are still, no doubt, familiar. But the world
is fast going away from old-fashioned people of his
sort, and I learnt with consternation lately from a
brilliant and distinguished votary of the natural
sciences, that he had never so madeardiof
Bishop Wilson, and that he imagined imel to nort
invented him. At a moment when the Chute of
Law have just taken off the embargo from the re-
creative religion furnished on Sundays by my gifted
acquaintance and others, and when St. Martin's Hall
and the Alhambra will soon be beginning again to
resound with their pulpit-eloquence, it distresses one
to think that the new lights should not only have, in
general, a very low opinion of the preachers of the