The Way, the Truth, the Life: The Hulsean Lectures for 1871

Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892) gave the Cambridge Hulsean lectures in November and December of 1871. First published posthumously in 1893, with minor revisions, these lectures are built around a sustained meditation on John 14: 5-6. They represent Hort's defence of the continuing relevance of Christianity in an increasingly science-focused world where religion was no longer the sole arbitrator of 'truth'. These lectures are a direct response to the development of Historical Criticism and the aftermath of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859). Hort argues that confidence in the 'truth' of Christianity can only lead to a championship of science and other non-theological methods of inquiry for ultimately 'all knowledge ministers to the knowledge of the highest'. Hort's lectures are a key work of Anglican theology addressing the issue, still pressing over a century later, of religion's relationship with science.