e last and complete explanation.
The relations of thought, belief and being.

THE RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT.

CHAPTER I.

THE BEARING OF THE LAWS OF MIND ON RELIGION.

The Science of Religion is one of the branches of general historical
science. It embraces, as the domain of its investigation, all recorded
facts relating to the displays of the Religious Sentiment. Its limits
are defined by those facts, and the legitimate inferences from them. Its
aim is to ascertain the constitutive laws of the origin and spread of
religions, and to depict the influence they have exerted on the general
life of mankind.

The question whether a given religion is true or false cannot present
itself in this form as a proper subject of scientific inquiry. The most
that can be asked is, whether some one system is best suited to a
specified condition of the individual or the community.

The higher inquiry is the object of the Philosophy of Religion. This
branch of study aims to pass beyond recorded facts and local adjustments
in order to weigh the theoretical claims of religions, and measure their
greater or less conformity with abstract truth. The formal or regulative
laws of religious thought occupy it.

Theology, dogmatic or polemic, is an explanatory defence of some
particular faith. Together with mythology and symbolism, it furnishes
the material from which the Science and Philosophy of Religion seek to
educe the laws and frame the generalizations which will explain the
source and aim of religion in general.

The common source of all devotional displays is the Religious Sentiment,
a complex feeling, a thorough understanding of which is an essential
preliminary to the study of religious systems.

Such a study proceeds on the assumption that all religions are products
of thought, commenced and continued in accordance with the laws of the
human mind, and, therefore, comprehensible to the extent to which these
laws are known. No one disputes this, except in reference to his own
religion. This, he is apt to assert, had something "supernatural" about
its origin. If this word be correctly used, it may stand without cavil.
The "natural" is that of which we know in whole or in part the laws; the
"supernatural" means that of which we do not at present know in any
degree the laws. The domain of the supernatural diminishes in the ratio
of the increase of knowledge; and the inference that it also is
absolutely under the control