res with practical utility--and
memory is certainly a source of such interference--lacks the main
ingredient of humanity and has something beaverish about him. Thus
taught the historical school during the nineteenth century, and the
rationalistic ideal that would have destroyed the established faiths
no longer held sway.

But while the historic method stemmed the tide of rationalism, it
failed to give back to religion its native vigor. It removed forever
the stigma of insincerity that was attached to the origin and
development of the dominant faiths; it illumined the past and
incorporated it into man's spiritual life; but it was unable to
restore to religion its most important function, that of shaping the
future. The fundamental paradox which the historic method harbors, and
which has prevented it from contributing adequately to the process of
adjustment, is the fact that the spiritual experiences of the past,
which it asks us to love and revere, were at the time of their
enactment not memories, but vital responses to immediate and pressing
needs. In the past religion dealt with its own present. That at all
times the past did play an important role cannot be denied; but in all
effective religion it can only be a means to an end. The historic
method, on the other hand, succeeds in nothing but in revitalizing the
past for its own sake. It provides no guidance for the future. A
religion must not only write history--it must make history. This is
why the historic method has been found wanting and has had to be
supplemented by a new method of adjustment, which for want of a better
term we may designate the socio-psychological.

_The New Way--the Social and Psychological Viewpoint_

BUT little attention has so far been paid to this new method of
self-adjustment. Though it is still inchoate and uncrystallized, it
forms the best part of every endeavor that makes for the
rehabilitation of religion. The remarkable feature about the new mode
of adjustment is that it did not come about directly, through a desire
on the part of the teachers of religion to make good the inadequacy of
previous methods. It was arrived at indirectly from a source that at
first seemed hostile, and to some extent is still considered so,
namely, social science. Not alone religion, but government and
education, as well as history, economics and psychology, have been
revolutionized as a result of the new way of approaching the problems
of human life. S