ition. We must remember, however, that such an
historical and comparative approach can, at its best, only break up the
mythical simplicity of a sentimentalized past and reveal the complexity
of the many-channeled forces at work; it cannot prove any particular
doctrine. The creation must come from the spirit of the present, as it
carries the stimulus of the past and adds to it its own energies.

All developed religions have their sacred books. Until the translation
of the Sacred Books of the East was undertaken in the latter part of
the nineteenth century, few people realized how many such books there
were. And we Americans have been the unwilling witnesses of the
appearance of two other collections of writings making the same claims,
_The Book of Mormon_ and _Science and Health_. Now such sacred books
are {62} regarded as revelations which could not be obtained except by
a mysterious contact with divine things. And the religious faith which
has been called forth and directed by a teaching founded on the
scripture turns back its own warmth upon its source. Nothing is more
natural than this interaction between a living faith and the writings
which are felt to be its guarantee. Religion is notoriously
conservative and retrospective. Especially is this true of religions
which impute to themselves a complete and final source of revelation in
the past. Faith and book are associated in the mind so intimately that
they lose their separateness. To doubt one is like doubting the other.
Thus faith forms an emotional envelope which protects the literature,
while the concrete detail of the literature reacts upon the mind to
strengthen the faith. It is not strange, therefore, that the cult of
the book is a phenomenon which is universal in the advanced religions.
The Mohammedan believes in the verbal inspiration of the Koran just as
fully as does the Jew in the divine origin of the Old Testament, and
the Christian in the inspiration of the accepted canon called the
Bible. Nor are these the only examples. But this psychological circle
is a vicious one. It involves the substitution of a subjective support
to claims and theories which require the test of human experience as a
whole. But just because science is this coordination of the whole
range of experience, there inevitably arises that conflict between
science and theology of which we have heard so much during the last few
decades. It is a conflict between a part of e