uality, The Continuity of Life, The Spiritualism of Shakespeare,
The Voiceless Code of the Cosmos, The Godlikeness of Divine Metaphysics
in Business. Their themes are not more bizarre, it must be confessed,
than some of the topics announced for the orthodox churches. (Indeed the
church advertisement page in cities whose churches indulge generously in
display advertisements is not altogether reassuring reading.) But, in
general, this list which can be duplicated in almost any large city is
testimony enough to a confusion of cults and a confusion of thought. As
far as they can be classified, according to the scheme of this study,
they are variants of New Thought, Theosophy and Spiritualism. If they
were classified according to William James' "Varieties of Religious
Experience" they would be seen as mystical rather than rational,
speculative rather than practical.

Fort Newton, who speaks of them perhaps more disrespectfully than they
deserve as "bootleggers in religion," finds in these lesser movements
generally a protest against the excessively external in the life of the
Church to-day and a testimony to the quenchless longing of the soul for
a religion which may be known and lived out in terms of an inner
experience. But this certainly is not true of all of them.

_Bahaism_

There is, however, one other larger and more coherent cult, difficult to
classify, which deserves a more extended notice. That is Bahaism, which,
as it is now taking form, is a leaven rather than a cult. It is an
attempt after spiritual unity and the reduction of religion to very
simple and inclusive forms and a challenge to the followers of religions
widely separated on the surface to be more true to what is deepest in
their faith. It has a long and stirring history and curiously enough is
drawn from Mohammedan sources. Its basal literatures are Arabic and
Persian, "so numerous and in some cases so voluminous that it would
hardly be possible for the most industrious student to read in their
entirety even those which are accessible, a half dozen of the best known
collections in Europe."

We find its genesis, historically, in certain expectations long held by
Persian Mohammedans akin to Jewish Messianic expectations held before
and at the time of Christ. There has been, we know, a tradition of
disputed succession in Mohammedanism ever since the death of the
prophet. Persian Mohammedans believed the true successor of Mohammed to
have been unjust