Systematic theology has fallen on evil days. To her may be applied, with scarcely a change of a word, what Kant in the Preface to his famous Critique says of metaphysics: Time was when she was the queen of all the sciences, and if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her Object-matter, this title of honour. Now it is the fashion Of the time to heap contempt and scorn upon her, and the matron mourns, forlorn and forsaken, like Hecuba.