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THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

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THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON

THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA
TOKYO, OSAKA, KYOTO, FUKUOKA, SENDAI

THE MISSION BOOK COMPANY
SHANGHAI

THE

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Published

January, March, May, July September, and November, 1926

Composed and Printed By The University of Chicago Press Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.

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́MERICA'S great contribution to modern culture has been said to be its boundless faith in education. Vast sums of money are being cheerfully spent for this purpose. There is an amazing procession of boys and girls who seek "higher education." Indeed, some one has said that the real religion of America is its devotion to education. We are trusting primarily to our schools and colleges to furnish the spiritual leadership of our land.

What about religious education? It is inevitable and desirable that the technically religious bodies should be influenced by this faith in education. Perhaps one of the most striking and significant developments in the church life of America is the new interest in religious education. Few of us, however, are aware of the extent and the creative ingenuity of the movement unless our attention is drawn to the many notable experiments which are being tried. Scores of young men who formerly would have prepared themselves for the standardized work of the pastor are now specializing in religious education. Professor Soares in this issue has told the story of the adventures of the past quarter-century in this field.

The broadening of the study of religion has come not only from the achievements in the field of religious education. Perhaps even more important is the rapid growth of an appreciation of non-Christian religions. The provincial point of view which represented these religions mainly as forms of degraded paganism calling loudly for Christian missionaries has

given way to a more sympathetic and accurate understanding of the dignity and power as well as the weaknesses of the religions of the world. As a result of the new study we are being enabled better to see how religion is rooted in ineradicable needs of human nature, and how any particular religion shapes itself in response to social influences. A vital religion is which is genuinely integrated in the culture of a people. Professor. Haydon's survey of the achievements of the past twenty-five years in the study of religions impresses one with the amazing quantity and the high quality of this interpretative work of

scholars.

The conversion of a nation to Christianity is often glibly portrayed as if it were a very simple process of exchanging one set of religious ideas for a different set. The missionary enterprise is artificially simplified in the minds of Christians by some such picture. It is interesting to know just what occurred in some of the noted instances of national conversion in the past. Professor Spinka has made a fresh study of the conversion of Russia, in which he reveals how complicated a process such a change of religious allegiance is.

The origins of a religion are very hard to trace with any degree of accuracy. Later ages idealize the beginnings, and read back into early stages of faith the interests which characterize later times. Original documents are lost, and scholars have to work with very fragmentary material. The origins of Shinto are peculiarly interesting because the cult has

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