312 PROFESSIONAL RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 



Christian society, necessary and final as have appeared to be those 

 dividing lines between the denominational schools, it is impossible 

 to prevent the waning of sectarian zeal or to arrest an age-movement 

 that derives its momentum from larger and more ultimate consid- 

 erations. That this age-movement may advance beyond an unor- 

 ganized groping into complete theological self-realization, it must 

 be directed from centres of religious thinking where the science of 

 Christian theology is studied and taught in an atmosphere exempt 

 from ecclesiastical tests. 



Another consideration, yet more far-reaching than the last, must 

 be advanced, to establish the expediency of a more intimate alliance 

 of theology with the university. Modern philosophy and anthro- 

 pology have brought about a new conception of the nature and signi- 

 ficance of religion as a fact in the life of the human race. No longer 

 is it possible to hold that the final fact in religion is " the acceptance 

 of a system of truths, presented from some external source and duly 

 sanctioned by appropriate manifestations of authority." By the 

 analysis of the inner experience of the human mind the phenomenon 

 of religion has taken on new content and opened new questions of the 

 first magnitude. " It is not needful," if I may use the recent words 

 of Professor Estlin Carpenter, " to rehearse the specific modifications 

 successively suggested by the great teachers of Germany: Kant with 

 his reconstruction of religion on an ethical basis; Hegel and his 

 doctrine of the Absolute; Schleiermacher with his protest that re- 

 ligion is neither morals nor metaphysics, but lies in the feeling with 

 which the soul contemplates the varied life revealed in nature and in 

 man - - these three names may stand as representatives of different 

 aspects of the great inquiry and the solutions which it begot. How- 

 ever much they might differ in detail, or even in principle, they all 

 agreed in this: the sources of religion were to be found in the mind 

 itself. Religion, therefore, must be regarded as inseparably bound 

 up with human nature. It had a universal character, and the study 

 of it was justified by psychology." * 



The advance of thought to this position has invested with new 

 meaning the total religious experience of the world, has brought every 

 form of religion within the sphere of serious and sympathetic exami- 

 nation. It has done more. It has set the Christian religion in a 

 new relation toward other faiths, a relation involving momentous 

 historical, moral, and social considerations. 



It is impossible to ignore the conclusion that issues from the 

 philosophical reconstruction of the idea of religion. It involves by 

 the logic of necessity the status and function of the Christian religion 

 in the world, and its relation to the non-Christian faiths. The 

 authoritative ecclesiastical interpretations of Christianity, Protestant 



1 The Place of Christianity among the Religions of the World, pp. 13, 14. 



