c cults supplies a suggestive parallel to
something in our Bible. The development of theology or of ritual in
some other religion throws light on similar developments in
Christianity. The widespread sense of the Superhuman confirms our
assurance of the reality of God. "To the philosopher," wrote Max Mueller,
"the existence of God may seem to rest on a syllogism; in the eyes of
the historian it rests on the whole evolution of human thought." Under
varied names, and with very differing success in their relations with
the Unseen, men have had fellowship with the one living God. It was this
unity of religion amid many religions that the Vedic seers were striving
to express when they wrote, "Men call Him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni;
sages name variously Him who is but One."

This study of comparative religion has gained for us:

(1) A much clearer apprehension of what is distinctive in Christianity,
and a much more intelligent understanding of the completeness of its
answer to religious needs which were partially met by other faiths.

(2) A new attitude towards the missionary problem, so that Christians go
not to destroy but to fulfil, to recognize that in the existing
religious experience of any people, however crude, God has already made
some disclosure of Himself, that in the leaders and sages of their faith
He has written a sort of Old Testament to which the Christian Gospel is
to be added, that men may come to their full selves as children of God
in Jesus Christ.

A final quarry, which promises to yield, perhaps, more that is of value
to faith than any of those named, is the _Social Movement_. In the
closing years of the Eighteenth Century social relations were looked on
as voluntary and somewhat questionable productions of individuals, which
had not existed in the original "state of nature" where all men were
supposed to have been free and equal. The closing years of the
Nineteenth Century found men thinking of society as an organism, and
talking of "social evolution." This conception of society altered men's
theories of economics, of history, of government. Nor did these newer
theories remain in the classrooms of universities or the meetings of
scientists; they became the platforms of great political parties, like
the Socialists in Germany and France, and the Labor Party in Britain.
Men are thinking, and what is more _feeling_, today, in social terms;
they are revising legislation, producing plays and novels, and
o