462 HISTORY OF RELIGION 



an important r61e in the history of religion. It is all the more neces- 

 sary to investigate those pathological conditions in their relation to 

 the religious sensibilities, as some of the most important forward 

 movements in religion have been connected with such psychical 

 manifestations. The keen sensibility, protracted reflection, warm 

 sympathy, great reverence, and marked freedom, characteristic of 

 religious genius, sometimes produce effects that to a superficial 

 observer may seem to betray the same morbid concentration, while 

 a more methodical study tends to show that the sanest expressions 

 of the religious life are to be found in the great prophetic order of 

 mankind. 



Not less important than the methods employed is the mental 

 attitude of the investigator. In fact, his disposition is itself a means 

 of advancing or retarding scientific progress. A wrong bias of the 

 historian's mind will inevitably affect the results, even if there is 

 the appearance of a correct scientific method. To reach legitimate 

 conclusions, the student of the history of religion must cultivate a 

 frame of mind characterized by sympathy, reverence, and freedom. 

 Without a fellow-feeling enabling him to put himself in another 

 man's place, look at the world through his eyes, experience some- 

 thing of his sensations, and feel an involuntary prompting to join 

 in his acts, his religious life will be a sealed book. Sympathy alone 

 gives insight; and this sympathy must be comprehensive as well 

 as deep and genuine. In order to interpret rightly the manifold 

 varieties of religious experience, one must be able to sympathize 

 with the priest and the devotee, as well as with the prophet and the 

 philosopher. 



Nor is it sufficient that this sympathy should be the consciousness 

 of a common religious life, which might be nothing but the fellow- 

 ship of prisoners in the same jail or inmates in the same hospital. 

 There must be a sense of reverence, a feeling of the worth of religion 

 even in its humblest manifestations. Such reverence does not imply 

 respect or admiration for the absurd and the grotesque, for ideas and 

 customs out of harmony with the civilization in which they main- 

 tain themselves as useless or harmful superstitions. The immaturity 

 of infancy in the individual or the race is not to be despised; puerility 

 in the man and the survivals of crude notions and senseless customs 

 in an advanced civilization may be legitimate cause for pity or 

 laughter. But true reverence prompts a student to approach the 

 realm of religion as holy ground where man's sense of the highest in 

 life has found its preeminent expression. 



Yet the judgment of the historian would be sadly warped, if he 

 should allow his sympathy and reverence to deprive him of his 

 freedom. There is nothing so sacred in the universe that the mind of 

 man has not the right to touch it. Without hesitancy the true 



