volume realises this ideal others must judge; it has never been absent from the author's mind.

Religions like those before us, which have sacred Scriptures and other writings whose authority is recognized as normative in matters of faith and practice, should be allowed to present and interpret themselves in conformity with these authoritative sources, and the same right belongs to their divisions, and to religious movements and controversies in them. In this as in the former volume it is primarily the religion of intelligent and religious men that is described. Where we are dependent on literary sources, it is from the writings of such men that the best and most authentic part of our knowledge is derived. Such men are always the minority, but they are the true representatives of their religion in any age, teachers and examples to their fellows. No religion has ever succeeded in bringing all of its adherents to its standards of right living, or within sight of its intellectual and spiritual ideals; and in the highest religions the gulf between the intellectual and moral leaders and the superstitious and depraved sediment of society is widest. But it is not from ignorance and superstition that anything can be learned about a religion; at that end they are all alike.

Writers on the history of religions often spend themselves on the beginnings as if they alone signified, and deal cursorily with everything that came after. A study of the origins of a religion can yield nothing but a knowledge of the origins; the religion itself can be known only in its whole history. It is the aim of the present volume, therefore, to exhibit the development of the religions with which it deals as completely as the limits of space permit, passing over no important stage or movement. In the chapters on Christianity the author has not purposed either a sketch of the history of the church or a history of Christian doctrine, but an outline history of the religion itself from the same point of view from which that of other religions is written. It is indeed evident that only this point of view

and a corresponding method of treatment are a sufficient reason for adding another to the innumerable books about Christianity.

To what was said in the Preface to the first volume about the spelling of foreign words, I have only to add that, in Arabic proper names in which the article appears, both assimilation and the liaison with a preceding inflection vowel are neglected.

The index is constructed for the purpose of facilitating the comparison of corresponding phenomena in different religions as well as of following the development of an idea, an institution, or a rite, in any single religion. As illustrations reference may be made to the index under the entries, "Attributes," "Predestination." So far as the matter is similar, the topical entries agree with those in the first volume, so that the comparison may be at will extended to the religions discussed in it; see, for example, "Asceticism," "Eschatology," etc.

Among the many books to which I am indebted, I should make particular acknowledgment of my obligation throughout the chapters on Christianity to Loofs, "Leitfaden der Dogmengeschichte," and in the chapters on the Sequel of Reformation and Modern Tendencies, to the informing and suggestive treatment of the period by Troeltsch in "Die Kultur der Gegenwart." It is hardly necessary for any student of Mohammedanism in our day to confess how much he owes to the learning and insight of Ignaz Goldziher.

Doctor H. A. Wolfson, Instructor in Jewish Literature and Philosophy, was kind enough to look over in proof the chapters on medieval and modern Judaism, and Doctor George La Piana, of Harvard University, did the same service for the chapters on Christianity. To both of them I am indebted for corrections and suggestions, as I am also to Professor Charles C. Torrey, of Yale University, who read the manuscript on Mohammedanism in an earlier stage of the work, and to Professor William R. Arnold, of Andover Theological Seminary, who read the same chapters

in proof. Mr. Albert H. Moore, of Cambridge, who assisted me in the first volume, has had a much larger share in the second, in the preparation and revision of the manuscript and correction of the proofs. The book owes not a little to his constant critical scrutiny.

CAMBRIDGE, MASS., May, 1919.

G. F. M.