With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521...

In The Varieties of Religious Experience the late Professor William James has said (p. 465): 'The religious phenomenon, studied as an inner fact, and apart from ecclesiastical or theological complications, has shown itself to consist everywhere, and at all its stages, in the consciousness which individuals have of an intercourse between themselves and higher powers with which they feel themselves to be related. This intercourse is realised at the time as being both active and mutual.' The book n

Allen, Grant. The Evolution of the Idea of God. London, 1897. Anthropology and the Classics. Oxford, 1908. Bastian, A. Volks- und Menschenkunde. Berlin, 1888. Bousset, W. What is Religion? (English Translation). London, 1907. Crawley, A.E. The Idea of the Soul. London, 1909. Fossey, C. La Magie Assyrienne. Paris, 1902. Frazer, J.G. Early History of the Kingship. London, 1895.   ——  The Golden Bough. London, 1900.   ——  Psyche's Task. London, 1909. Gardner, P. Modernity and the Churches. London,

Every child that is born is born of a community and into a community, which existed before his birth and will continue to exist after his death. He learns to speak the language which the community spoke before he was born, and which the community will continue to speak after he has gone. In learning the language he acquires not only words but ideas; and the words and ideas he acquires, the thoughts he thinks and the words in which he utters them, are those of the community from which he learnt t

The idea of God is to be found, it will be generally admitted, not only in monotheistic religions, but in polytheistic religions also; and, as polytheisms have developed out of polydaemonism, that is to say, as the personal beings or powers of polydaemonism have, in course of time, come to possess proper names and a personal history, some idea of divine personality must be admitted to be present in polydaemonism as well as in polytheism; and, in the same way, some idea of a personality greater t

We have found mythology of but little use in our search after the idea of God; and the reason, as we have suggested, is that myth-making is a reflective process, a process in which the mind reflects upon the idea, and therefore a process which cannot be set up unless the idea is already present, or, rather we should say, has already been presented. When it has been presented, it can become food for reflection, but not until then. If then we wish to discover where and when it is thus immediately

The question may perhaps be raised, whether it is necessary for us to travel beyond worship, in order to discover what was, in early religions, or is now, the idea of God, as it presents itself to the worshipper. The answer to the question will depend partly on what we consider the essence of religion to be. If we take the view, which is held by some writers of authority on the history of religion, that the essence of religion is adoration, then indeed we neither need nor can travel further, for

Men thought, spoke and acted for long ages before they began to reflect on the ways in which they did so; and, when they did begin to reflect, it was long before they discovered the principles on which they thought, spoke and acted, or recognised them as the principles on which man must speak, if he is to speak intelligibly; on which, as laws of thought, he must think, if he is to think correctly; and on which, as laws of morality, he must act, if he is to act as he should act. But though many t