It would seem, therefore, that, as a
psychologist, the natural thing for me would be to invite you to
a descriptive survey of those religious propensities.
If the inquiry be psychological, not religious institutions, but
rather religious feelings and religious impulses must be its
subject, and I must confine myself to those more developed
subjective phenomena recorded in literature produced by
articulate and fully self-conscious men, in works of piety and
autobiography. Interesting as the origins and early stages of a
subject always are, yet when one seeks earnestly for its full
significance, one must always look to its more completely evolved
and perfect forms. It follows from this that the documents that
will most concern us will be those of the men who were most
accomplished in the religious life and best able to give an
intelligible account of their ideas and motives. These men, of
course, are either comparatively modern writers, or else such
earlier ones as have become religious classics. The documents
humains which we shall find most instructive need not then be
sought for in the haunts of special erudition--they lie along the
beaten highway; and this circumstance, which flows so naturally
from the character of our problem, suits admirably also your
lecturer's lack of special theological learning.
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