Excerpt from Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series, the Fundamental Institutions
In April 1887 I was invited by the trustees of the Burnett Fund to deliver three courses of lectures at Aberdeen, in the three years from October 1888 to October 1891, on "The primitive religions of the Semitic peoples, viewed in relation to other ancient religions, and to the spiritual religion of the Old Testament and of Christianity." I gladly accepted this invitation; for the subject proposed had interested me for many years, and it seemed to me possible to treat it in a way that would not be uninteresting to the members of my old University, in whose hall the Burnett Lectures are delivered, and to the wider public to whom the gates of Marischal College are opened on the occasion.
In years gone by, when I was called upon to defend before the courts of my Church the rights of historical research, as applied to the Old Testament, I had reason to acknowledge with gratitude the fairness and independence of judgment which my fellow-townsmen of Aberdeen brought to the discussion of questions which in most countries are held to be reserved for the learned, and to be merely disturbing to the piety of the ordinary layman; and I was glad to have the opportunity of commending to the notice of a public so impartial and so intelligent the study of a branch of comparative religion which, as I venture to think, is indispensable to the future progress of Biblical research.
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