Publisher's Synopsis
From the PREFACE.
The main text of the present work is substantially identical with a lecture entitled "The Finding of Christ through Art; or, Richard Wagner as Theologian," delivered before the Lecture Chapter of the Guild of All Souls Church (Episcopal), New York City, Sunday afternoon, May 19, 1889, by invitation of the Guild, through the Rev. R. Heber Newton, D.D., rector of the parish.
As the time at the lecturer's command upon such an occasion would not admit of an exhaustive presentation of the evolution and final outcome of Wagner's thoughts upon religion during a period of forty years, the matter chosen and the form of the lecture were determined by the circumstances of the occasion, including the time and place of its delivery and the audience which was likely to assemble to hear it.
In preparing it for publication, the determining circumstances connected with the occasion of its first public reading lose their importance, and it becomes a duty to extend its dimensions and add to its material in ways which a regard to the larger circle of the reading community would naturally suggest. In the unabridged edition of this lecture, the additional material is presented in the form of notes and appendices.
Wagner's position in theological speculation may be compared to a Continental water-shed; for the more clearly we understand his position, so much the clearer and more far-reaching is our understanding of the course and destiny of the currents of thought which flow in various directions from that commanding height.
No study offers richer rewards to the cautious and clear-headed explorer than that of the various streams from which the children of men in all ages and climes have been accustomed to take their portion of the water of life which ever cometh down from above. Only we shall do well to avoid confounding the "ocean of commonplace," in which all religions alike find their lowest level, with the true point of unity discovered by following them upwards from the plane of ordinary human life to their sources along the way to the Throne above. For want of such precaution, Major-General Forlong, author of the monument of human research which he published under the title of "Rivers of Faith," who went to India confident that he knew all, and that he was prepared to convert the heathen, made shipwreck of the faith, being, at the end of his far-reaching researches, unable, apparently, to see anything in any religion beyond the external marks of all the degradations which all religions have suffered at the hands of the ignorant, the superstitious, and the debased; while, on the other hand, F. Max Muller, who may never have thought of converting anyone from one religion to another, has followed the currents of Hindu religion upward, until, reaching the plane of the highest ideas to which the Hindu ever attained, he has gained for us from those heights a new and open vision of the lofty superiority of Christianity, "towering o'er all the wrecks of time...".."
