and the river will flow on beneficent
and beautiful.

My work in this book is like that of the Russian mujik on the Neva. I
simply try to aid in letting the light of historical truth into that
decaying mass of outworn thought which attaches the modern world to
mediaeval conceptions of Christianity, and which still lingers among
us--a most serious barrier to religion and morals, and a menace to the
whole normal evolution of society.

For behind this barrier also the flood is rapidly rising--the flood
of increased knowledge and new thought; and this barrier also, though
honeycombed and in many places thin, creates a danger--danger of a
sudden breaking away, distressing and calamitous, sweeping before it not
only out worn creeds and noxious dogmas, but cherished principles
and ideals, and even wrenching out most precious religious and moral
foundations of the whole social and political fabric.

My hope is to aid--even if it be but a little--in the gradual and
healthful dissolving away of this mass of unreason, that the stream of
"religion pure and undefiled" may flow on broad and clear, a blessing to
humanity.

And now a few words regarding the evolution of this book.

It is something over a quarter of a century since I labored with Ezra
Cornell in founding the university which bears his honored name.

Our purpose was to establish in the State of New York an institution for
advanced instruction and research, in which science, pure and applied,
should have an equal place with literature; in which the study of
literature, ancient and modern, should be emancipated as much as
possible from pedantry; and which should be free from various useless
trammels and vicious methods which at that period hampered many, if not
most, of the American universities and colleges.

We had especially determined that the institution should be under the
control of no political party and of no single religious sect, and with
Mr. Cornell's approval I embodied stringent provisions to this effect in
the charter.

It had certainly never entered into the mind of either of us that in all
this we were doing anything irreligious or unchristian. Mr. Cornell
was reared a member of the Society of Friends; he had from his fortune
liberally aided every form of Christian effort which he found going on
about him, and among the permanent trustees of the public library
which he had already founded, he had named all the clergymen of
the town--Catholic and