on, and the present tendency is to abstain from
any general doctrine of the subject, and to be content with careful
collection and arrangement of the facts in special parts of the
field. Caution is no doubt most needful in the attempt to form a view
of this great study as a whole. Yet something of this kind is
possible, and is beyond all doubt much called for. It is the aim of
this little work not only to describe the leading features of the
great religions, but also to set forth some of the results which
appear to have been reached regarding the relation in which these
systems stand to each other.

The Growth of Religion Continuous.--We shall not pretend to set out
on this enterprise without any assumptions. The first and principal
assumption we make is that in religion as in other departments of
human life there has been a development from the beginning, even till
now, and that the growth of religion has gone on according to the
ordinary laws of human progress. This is a position which, begin the
study at whatever point he may, the student of this subject will find
himself compelled to take up, if he is not to renounce altogether the
idea of understanding it as a whole. To understand anything means, to
the thought of the present day, to know how it has come to be what it
is; of any historical phenomenon at least it is certain that it
cannot be understood except by tracing its history up to the root. We
assume, therefore, until it be disproved, that in this as in other
departments of human activity, growth has been continuous from the
first. In every other branch of historical study, this assumption is
made. The history of institutions is traced back in a continuous line
to an age before there was any family or any such thing as property.
The methods by which men have earned their subsistence on the earth
are known equally far back; and there is no break in the development
from the hooked stick to the steam plough. And should it not be the
same in religion? Here also shall we not assume, until we find it
proved to be incorrect, that there has been no break in the growth of
ideas and practices from the earliest days till now, and that the
highest religion of the present day is organically connected with
that religion which man had at first? It is, indeed, in many ways far
removed from the earliest religion, but what was most essential in
the earliest belief still lives in it, and what was fittest to
survive of its ear