equence; or it may be used as
when we speak of the History of the Romans, an attempt being made to
tell the story of religion in the world in the order of time. In
either case the use of the term "history" indicates that the study
now aims at something more than the accumulation of materials and the
pointing out of resemblances and analogies, namely, at arranging the
materials at its command so as to show them in an organic connection.
This, it cannot be doubted, is the task which the science of religion
is now called to attempt. What every one with any interest in the
subject is striving after, is a knowledge of the religions of the
world not as isolated systems which, though having many points of
resemblance, may yet, for all we know, be of separate and independent
growth, but as connected with each other and as forming parts of one
whole. Our science, in fact, is seeking to grasp the religions of the
world as manifestations of the religion of the world.[1]

[Footnote 1: The above statement is criticised by Mr. L. H. Jordan in
his excellent work, _Comparative Religion_, p. 485, but is in the
main a true account of what has taken place. Mr. Jordan strongly
holds that Comparative Religion is a science by itself, and ought to
be distinguished from the History of Religion, though the latter is,
of course, its necessary foundation.]

In rising to this conception of its task, the science of religion is
only obeying the impulse which dominates every department of study in
modern times. What every science is doing is to seek to show the
unity of law amid the multiplicity of the phenomena with which it has
to deal, to gather up the many into one, or rather to show how the
one has given rise to the many. In the study of religion, if it be
really a science, this impulse of all science must surely be felt.
Here also we must cherish the conviction that an order does exist
amid the apparent disorder, if we could but find it. We must believe
that the religious beliefs and practices of mankind are not a mere
chaos, not a mere incessant outburst of unreason, consistent only in
that it has appeared in every age and every country of the world, but
that they form a cosmos, and may be known, if we take the right way,
as a part of human life from which reason has never been absent, and
in which a growing purpose has fulfilled and still fulfils itself.
Some theories, it is true, from which the world formerly hoped much,
are not now relied