ies, its wars with science and its appeals to philosophy. The
history of these affairs shows that religion commonly fails to
understand the scope of its own demand for truth; but they have issued
from the deep conviction that one's religion is, implicitly, at least,
in the field of truth; that there are theoretical judgments whose truth
would justify or contradict it.

This general fact being admitted, there remains the task to which the
present discussion addresses itself, that of defining the kind of
_theoretical judgment_ implied in religion, and the relation to this
central cognitive stem of its efflorescences of myth, theology, and
ritual. It is impossible to separate the stem and the efflorescence, or
to determine the precise spot at which destruction of the tissue would
prove fatal to the plant, but it is possible to obtain some idea of the
relative vitality of the parts.

[Sidenote: Religion Means to be Practically True. God is a Disposition
from which Consequences May Rationally be Expected.]

Sect. 30. The difficulty of reaching a definite statement in this matter
is due to the fact that the truth in which any religious experience
centres is a practical and not a scientific truth. A practical truth
does not commit itself to any single scientific statement, and can often
survive the overthrow of that scientific statement in which at any given
time it has found expression. In other words, an indefinite number of
scientific truths are compatible with a single practical truth. An
instance of this is the consistency with my expectation of the
alternation of day and night, of either the Ptolemaic or Copernican
formulation of the solar system. Now expectation that the sun will rise
to-morrow is an excellent analogue of my religious belief. Celestial
mechanics is as relevant to the one as metaphysics to the other. Neither
is overthrown until a central practical judgment is discredited, and
either could remain true through a very considerable alteration of
logical definition; but neither is on this account exempt from
theoretical responsibility. In so far as religion deliberately enters
the field of science, and defines its formularies with the historical or
metaphysical method, this difficulty does not, of course, exist. Grant
that the years of Methuselah's life, or the precise place and manner of
the temptation of Jesus, or the definition of Christ in the terms of the
Athanasian Creed, are constitutive of Christian