Having reached the middle of a great (and bold) undertaking, may I be allowed again to offer my apologia?

It is not because I "relish versing," or with any hope to give pleasure to persons who care for poetry, that I am essaying to throw the life and teaching of our Lord into the form of verse; but because, under that progressive teaching which we believe is vouchsafed to the Church, a new need appears to have arisen, in response to which many efforts worthier than mine are being made.

. . . By way of arresting the attention of the reader upon each incident and every saying, I have ventured upon a verse rendering of the gospels, because the medium of verse seems to me at once more free and more reverent than that of prose. The approximate chronological order has been followed, because the progressive difficulty of the ideas placed before us seems to require such ordered study. . .

Though with a profound sense of its inadequacy as a treatment of so great a subject, I offer this verse rendering with some confidence to devout students. . .

. . . The present volume, for example, deals largely with controversial passages, which some of us are apt to put aside as irrelevant and perhaps a little tiresome! But this controversial matter makes up a large part of the "all things" "whatsoever" Christ has spoken, and a line-upon-line study here appears to disclose aspects of the divine character and teaching particularly suited to modern life. . . .

. . . Little or no attempt at textual criticism is made in these volumes, because we are probably approaching an era of yet "Higher Criticism" based upon a truer apprehension of the Divine Person; and towards the Higher Criticism every devout study is a contribution.

. . . The Church possesses and illimitable field of literature—sermons, commentaries, expositions,hymns,—including all the ground I am attempting to cover; but perhaps every new presentation is a gain; and it may be that gradual progressive development of Christ's teaching can be advantageously set forth by way of paraphrase and amplification in the rarely attempted form of verse.

Excerpts from the Introduction