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PREFACE.
THESE Lectures, intended as an introduction to a comparative study of the principal religions of the world, were delivered at the Royal Institution in London, in February and March 1870, and printed in Fraser's Magazine of February, March, April, and May of the same year. I declined at that time to publish them in a separate form, hoping that I might find leisure to work up more fully the materials which I had collected for many years. I thought that I should thus be enabled to make these lectures more instructive and more complete, and at the same time meet several objections that had been raised by some critics against the very possibility of a scientific study of religions, and against the views which I ventured to put forward on the origin, the growth, and the real value of the ancient systems of faith, elaborated by different branches of the human race. A small edition only of these lectures was printed privately, and sent to some of my friends, whose remarks have proved in many cases most valuable and instructive.
If now I have decided on republishing these Lectures, I have done so because I fear that as during the three years that have elapsed since their delivery,
