Note: / The following pages represent an attempt at what I might call, with some hesitation, 'applied theology'. In them I endeavour to describe the development during a specific period of European history, of a phenomenon which has been, especially in the last fifteen years or so, a topic of intense theological discussion. That phenomenon is secularism. Now, the concept 'secularism', as it is understood nowadays, played no part in the theological discussions of the years we shall consider. The closest term was 'atheism', which we, from our perspective, in consideration of the secular theism of the French Revolution, for example, can see to have a rather different meaning. What I attempt to do here, then, is to write, not quite an essay in historical theology, since there is no theology of secularism in the period at issue; nor quite an essay in Church history, since, in a secularized society, the Church appears merely as one social institution amongst others; but an historical essay on the development of certain social attitudes which to-day pose a genuine theological problem.[...]

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