nt, of observation, of hypothesis checked by known facts.
It is impossible for me to do more than glance across the threshold of
this subject. But it is necessary to say that the method is in an
elementary stage of revival. The imposing success that belongs to
natural science is absent: we fall short of the unchallengeable
unanimity of the Biologists on fundamentals. The experimental method
with its sure repetitions cannot be applied to our subject-matter. But
we have something like the observational method of palaeontology and
geographical distribution; and in biology there are still men who
think that the large examination of varieties by way of geography and
the search of strata is as truly scientific, uses as genuinely the
logical method of difference, and is as fruitful in sure conclusions
as the quasi-chemical analysis of Mendelian laboratory work, of which
last I desire to express my humble admiration. Religion also has its
observational work in the larger and possibly more arduous manner.

But the scientific work in religion makes its way through difficulties
and dangers. We are far from having found the formula of its
combination with the historical elements of our apologetic. It is
exposed, therefore, to a damaging fire not only from unspiritualist
psychology and pathology but also from the side of scholastic dogma.
It is hard to admit on equal terms a partner to the old undivided rule
of books and learning. With Charles Lamb, we cry in some distress,
"must knowledge come to me, if it come at all, by some awkward
experiment of intuition, and no longer by this familiar process of
reading?"[220] and we are answered that the old process has an
imperishable value, only we have not yet made clear its connection
with other contributions. And all the work is young, liable to be
drawn into unprofitable excursions, side-tracked by self-deceit and
pretence; and it fatally attracts, like the older mysticism, the
curiosity and the expository powers of those least in sympathy with
it, ready writers who, with all the air of extended research, have
been content with narrow grounds for induction. There is a danger,
besides, which accompanies even the most genuine work of this science
and must be provided against by all its serious students. I mean the
danger of unbalanced introspection both for individuals and for
societies; of a preoccupation comparable to our modern social
preoccupation with bodily health; of reflexion upon