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alluded to, is still fundamentally in agreement with it, inasmuch as it also assumes that the differences exhibited later in the history of religion at first were non-existent. Both theories assume the existence of the originally homogeneous, but they disagree as to the nature of the differences which supervened, and also as to the nature of the originally homogeneous. I wish therefore to call attention to the simple truth that the facts at the disposal of the science of religion neither enable nor warrant us to decide between these two views. If we were to come to a decision on the point, we should have to travel far beyond the confines of the science of religion, or the widest bounds of the theory of evolution, and enquire why there should be error as well as truth--or, to put the matter very differently, why there should be truth at all. But if we started travelling {26} on that enquiry, we should not get back in time for this course of lectures. Fortunately it is not necessary to take a ticket for that journey--perhaps not possible to secure a return ticket. We have only to recognise that the science of religion confines itself to constating and tracing the differences, and does not attempt to explain why they should exist; while the applied science of religion is concerned with the practical business of bringing home the difference between Christianity and other forms of religion to the hearts of those whose salvation may turn on whether the missionary has been properly equipped for his task. If, now, I announce that for the student of the applied science it is advisable that he should turn his attention in the first place to the lowest forms of religion, the announcement need not be taken to mean that a man cannot become a student of the science of religion, whether pure or applied, unless he assumes that the lowest is the most primitive form. The science of religion, as it pushes its enquiries, may possibly come across--may even already have come across--the lowest form to which it is possible for man to descend. But whether that form is the most primitive as well as {27} the lowest,--still more, whether it is the most primitive because it is the lowest,--will be questions which will not admit of being settled offhand. And in the meantime we are not called upon to answer them in the affirmative as a _sine qua non_ of being admitted students of the science. The reason for beginning with the lowest form
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