ecause
the end is both within us and without us that we are bound up with our
fellow-man and God.

Whether the process of evolution is moving to any end whatever, is a
question which science declines--formally refuses--to consider.
Whether the end at which religion aims is possible or not, has in any
degree been achieved or not, is a question which the science of
religion formally declines to consider. If, however, we recognise that
the end of religion, viz. communion with God, is an end at which we
ought to aim, then the process whereby the end tends to be attained is
no longer evolution in the scientific sense. It is a process in which
progress may or may not be made. As a fact, the missionary everywhere
sees arrested development, imperfect communion with God; for the
different forms of religion realise the end of religion in different
degrees. Christianity claims to be "final," not in the chronological
sense, but in that it alone finds the true basis and the only end of
society in the love of God. The Christian theory of society again
differs from all other theories in that it not only regards the
individuals composing it as continuing to exist after death, but
teaches that the society of which the individual is truly a member,
though it manifests itself in this world, is realised in the next.

The history of religion is the history of man's search for God. That
search depends for its success, in part, upon man's will. Christianity
cannot be stationary: the extent to which we push our missionary
outposts forward gives us the measure of our vitality. And in that
respect, as in others, the vitality of the United States is great . . .
239-265

APPENDIX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 266 _ad fin._

{1}

INTRODUCTION

Of the many things that fill a visitor from the old country with
admiration, on his first visit to the United States, that which arrests
his attention most frequently, is the extent and success with which
science is applied to practical purposes. And it is beginning to dawn
upon me that in the United States it is not only pure science which is
thus practically applied,--the pure sciences of mechanics, physics,
mathematics,--but that the historic sciences also are expected to
justify themselves by their practical application; and that amongst the
historic sciences not even the science of religion is exempted from the
common lot. It also may be useful; and had better be s