Great Epochs of Sacred History and the Shadows they Cast

By James M. Gray

Prefatory Note

 

The origin of the following pages is the same as that of a companion 'book, " Satan and the Saint," which appeared a year earlier.

The several chapters were originally lectures spoken extemporaneously to popular audiences in New York, Chicago and Grand Rapids, and previously in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

They were reported stenographically, and in correcting the copy for the printer the author strengthened a statement here and there by quotations from others, sometimes inserted in the chapter and sometimes added as a note.

The only adverse criticism of " Satan and the Saint " meeting the author's eye was the remark that he was a better diagnostician than a therapist he knew better haw to classify a disease than to heal it.

But he is persuaded that the critic did not read the book very carefully, and especially that he did not read it through. The remedy for the individual is the salvation which is found only in Jesus Christ by faith; and for society the remedy is the second coming of the same Saviour who has promised that "the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever."

This remedy was found in every chapter of the former book as it is in this, and the closing chapter was entirely given over to its exposition.

"Come, Lord, and wipe away

          The curse, the sin, the stain,

And make this blighted world of ours

          Thine own fair world again."

JAMES M. GRAY.

The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago.