PREFACE In spite of all that has been done in the way of applying scientific principles to religious ideas, there is much that yet remains to be accomplished. Generally speaking science has only dealt with the subject of religion in its more normal and more regularised forms. The last half-century has produced many elaborate and fruitful studies of the origin of religious ideas, while comparative... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION—IDOLATRY AND IMAGINATION The relation of religion to art has varied greatly among different peoples and at different periods. At the one extreme is the uncompromising puritan spirit, which refuses to admit any devices of human skill into the direct relations between God and man, whether it be in the beauty of church or temple, in the ritual of their service, or in the images... more...

CHAPTER I.THE ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS FEELING. I believe that man originated his first ideas of the supernatural from the external phenomena of nature which were perceptible to one or more of his five senses; his first theogony was a natural one and one taken directly from nature. In ideation the primal bases of thought must have been founded, ab initio, upon sensual perceptions; hence, must have been... more...

RELIGION AND THEOLOGY. 2 Cor. xi. 3.—"The simplicity that is in Christ." There is much talk in the present time of the difficulties of religion. And no doubt there is a sense in which religion is always difficult. It is hard to be truly religious—to be humble, good, pure, and just; to be full of faith, hope, and charity, so that our conduct may be seen to be like that of Christ, and our... more...

I. ANTECEDENTS.   "A GOOD MAN LEAVETH AN INHERITANCE TO HIS CHILDREN'S  CHILDREN." Prov. xiii. 22. Within the grounds attached to the mansion of the Earl of Harewood, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, is a substantial and well-built farm house, furnished with suitable outbuildings, and surrounded by a fine cluster of fruit-trees. It stands on the side of a hill, which slopes gently down... more...

CHAPTER I — THE ANCIENT FAITH Philosophical Theory of the Universe.—The problem of the universe has never offered the slightest difficulty to Chinese philosophers. Before the beginning of all things, there was Nothing. In the lapse of ages Nothing coalesced into Unity, the Great Monad. After more ages, the Great Monad separated into Duality, the Male and Female Principles in nature; and then, by a... more...

CHAPTER I AN INTERPRETATION OF THE FAMILY § 1. TAKING THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS TERMS The ills of the modern home are symptomatic. Divorce, childless families, irreverent children, and the decadence of the old type of separate home life are signs of forgotten ideals, lost motives, and insufficient purposes. Where the home is only an opportunity for self-indulgence, it easily becomes a cheap... more...

The settlement of Englishmen at Jamestown in 1607 was the outgrowth of a vision of transatlantic expansion which had been growing stronger steadily during the preceding generation. It was in the following of that vision that Queen Elizabeth granted to a group of men headed by Sir Walter Raleigh the authority to establish a colony upon the remote shores of the Atlantic ocean, and out of the plans of... more...

The Source of Perplexity The first and greatest of religious perplexities, the source of all the rest, arises in the mysterious fact of our existence as individual souls. Our perplexities spring from the very root of life. Why are we here at all? Did we but know the purpose for which we are present in the world, should we not have in our hands the key to all the questions we raise about God, freedom,... more...

RELIGIOUS POEMS THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM Where Time the measure of his hoursBy changeful bud and blossom keeps,And, like a young bride crowned with flowers,Fair Shiraz in her garden sleeps; Where, to her poet's turban stone,The Spring her gift of flowers imparts,Less sweet than those his thoughts have sownIn the warm soil of Persian hearts: There sat the stranger, where the shadeOf scattered... more...