liest motives, still prompts its worship. Should we
adopt this view, we shall find many of the difficulties disappear
which have frequently stood in the way of this study. When, according
to the new tendency that seems to govern all modern thought,
institutions and beliefs are regarded not as fixed things, but as
things growing from something that was there before, and tending
towards something that is coming, they cease to arouse contempt, or
jealousy, or hatred. If we can regard religions as stages in the
evolution of religion, then we have no motive either to depreciate or
unduly to extol any of them. The earlier stages of the development
will have a peculiar interest for us, just as we look with affection
on the home of our ancestors even though we should not choose to
dwell there. We shall not divide religions into the true one,
Christianity, and the false ones, all the rest; no religion will be
to us a mere superstition, nor shall we regard any as unguided by
God. Feeling that we cannot understand our own religion aright
without understanding those out of which it has been built up, we
shall value these others for the part they have played in the great
movement, and our own most of all, without which they could not be
made perfect. In the light of this principle of growth we shall find
good in the lowest, and shall see that the good and true rather than
the evil and false, furnish the ultimate meaning of even the poorest
systems.

We start then with the assumption that religion is a thing which has
developed from the first, as law has, or as art has; and the best
method we can follow, if it should prove practicable, will be to
follow its movement from the beginning. We must not presume to hope
that everything will be made clear, or that we shall meet with no
religious phenomena to which we cannot assign their place in the
development. We must remember that ground is often lost as well as
won in human history, and that in religions as in nations
degeneration frequently occurs as well as progress. We must not be
too sure that we shall be able to find any plain path leading through
the immeasurable forests of man's religious sentiments and practices.
Yet we may at least expect to find evidence of the direction which on
the whole the growth of religion has followed.

Preliminary Definition of Religion.--But, before we can set out on
this inquiry, we are met by the question, What is it that we suppose
to have been t