o,--if any one
is to have any use for it. It must make itself useful to the man who
has practical need of its results and wishes to apply them--the
missionary. He it is who, for the practical purposes of the work to
which he is called, requires an applied science of religion; and
Hartford {2} Theological Seminary may, I believe, justly claim to be
the first institution in the world which has deliberately and
consciously set to work to create by the courses of lectures, of which
this series is the very humble beginning, an applied science of
religion.

How, then, will the applied science differ from the pure science of
religion? In one way it will not differ: an applied science does not
sit in judgment upon the pure science on which it is based; it accepts
the truths which the pure science presents to all the world, and bases
itself upon them. The business of pure science is to discover facts;
that of the applied science is to use them. The business of the
science of religion is to discover all the facts necessary if we are to
understand the growth and history of religion. The business of the
applied science is, in our case, to use the discovered facts as a means
of showing that Christianity is the highest manifestation of the
religious spirit.

In dealing with the applied science, then, we recover a liberty which
the pure science does not enjoy. The science of religion is a historic
science. Its student looks back upon the past; {3} and looks back upon
it with a single purpose, that of discovering what, as a matter of
fact, did happen, what was the order in which the events occurred. In
so looking back he may, and does, see many things which he could wish
had not occurred; but he has no power to alter them; he has no choice
but to record them; and his duty, his single duty, is to ascertain the
historic facts and to establish the historic truth. With the applied
science the case is very different. There the student sets his face to
the future, no longer to the past. The truths of pure science are the
weapons placed in his hand with which he is to conquer the world. It
is in the faith that the armour provided him by science is sure and
will not fail him that he addresses himself to his chosen work. The
implements are set in his hands. The liberty is his to employ them for
what end he will. That liberty is a consequence of the fact that the
student's object no longer is to ascertain the past, but to make