LEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

New York: 158 Fifth Avenue
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave.
London: 21 Paternoster Square
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street

_To E.M.C._

_Whose constant friendship through changing years has been like the fire
upon his hearthstone, a glowing gift and a grateful memory_

Introduction

The last thirty years, though as dates go this is only an approximation,
have witnessed a marked development of religious cults and movements
largely outside the lines of historic Catholicism and Protestantism. One
of these cults is strongly organized and has for twenty years grown more
rapidly in proportion than most of the Christian communions. The
influence of others, more loosely organized, is far reaching. Some of
them attempt to give a religious content to the present trend of science
and philosophy, and, generally, they represent the free movement of what
one may call the creative religious consciousness of our time.

There is, of course, a great and constantly growing literature dealing
with particular cults, but there has been as yet apparently no attempt
to inquire whether there may not be a few unexpectedly simple centers
around which, in spite of their superficial differences, they really
organize themselves.

What follows is an endeavour in these directions. It is really a very
great task and can at the best be only tentatively done. Whoever
undertakes it may well begin by confessing his own limitations.
Contemporaneous appraisals of movements upon whose tides we ourselves
are borne are subject to constant revision. One's own prejudices, no
matter how strongly one may deal with them, colour one's conclusions,
particularly in the region of religion. The really vast subject matter
also imposes its own limitations upon even the most sincere student
unless he has specialized for a lifetime in his theme; even then he
would need to ask the charity of his readers.

Ground has been broken for such an endeavour in many different
directions. Broadly considered, William James' "Varieties of Religious
Experience" was perhaps the pioneer work. Professor James' suggestive
analyses recognize the greatly divergent forms religious experience may
take and establish their right to be taken seriously as valid facts for
the investigator. The whole tendency of organized Christianity--and
Protestantism more largely than Catholicism--has been to narrow
religious experience to accepted forms, but religion itself is