INTRODUCTION.

Gruppe, Farnell, and Wissowa; in the anthropological labors of Tylor, Lang, and Frazer; in the publication of Reinach’s Orpheus; in the study of comparative religion; and in such a phenomenon as a World’s Parliament of Religions.

In a word, M. Cumont and his fellow ancient Orientalists are but one brigade engaged in the modern campaign for the liberation of religious thought. His studies are not concerned with paganism alone, nor only with the religions of the ancient past; in common with the labors of those who study modern religion, they touch our own faith and our own times, and are in vital relation with our philosophy of living—and consequently with our highest welfare. “To us moderns,” says Professor Frazer in the preface to his Golden Bough, “a still wider vista is granted, a greater panorama is unrolled by the study which aims at bringing home to us the faith and the practice, the hopes and the ideals, not of two highly gifted races only, but of all mankind, and thus at enabling us to follow the long march, the slow and toilsome ascent, of humanity from savagery to civilization... But the comparative study of the beliefs and institutions of mankind is fitted to be much more than a means of satisfying an enlightened curiosity and of furnishing materials for the researches of the learned. Well handled, it may become a powerful instrument to expedite progress...”

It is possible that all this might disquiet the minds of those who have been accustomed to assume perfection in the primitive Christian church, and who also assume that present-day Christianity is the ultimate form of the Christian religion. Such persons—if there are any—