Not many intelligent thinkers in these days doubt the reality and the permanence of religion.  Herbert Spencer did not profess to be a Christian believer; by many persons he was supposed to be an enemy of the Christian religion; yet no man has more strongly asserted the permanency and indestructibility of religion.  As to the notion that religions are the product of human craft and selfishness, he says:  “A candid examination of the evidence quite negatives the doctrine maintained by some that creeds are priestly inventions."[3] And again:  “An unbiased consideration of its general aspects forces us to conclude that religion, everywhere present as a weft running through the warp of human history, expresses some eternal fact."[4] And again:  “In Religion let us recognize the high merit that from the beginning it has dimly discerned the ultimate verity and has never ceased to insist upon it....  For its essentially valid belief, Religion has constantly done battle.  Gross as were the disguises under which it at first espoused this belief, and cherishing this belief, though it still is, under disfiguring vestments, it has never ceased to maintain and defend it.  It has everywhere established and propagated one or other modification of the doctrine that all things are manifestations of a power that transcends our knowledge."[5]

That religion is, in John Fiske’s strong phrase, an “everlasting reality” is a fact which few respectable thinkers in these days would venture to call in question.  But, as we have seen, this reality takes upon itself a great variety of forms.  Looking over the world to-day, we discover many kinds of religion.  Religious ideas, religious rites and ceremonies, religious customs and practices, as we gather them up and compare them, constitute a variegated collection.

Professor William James has a thick volume entitled “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” in which he brings together a vast array of the documents which describe the religious feelings and impulses of persons in all lands and all ages.  It is not a study of creeds or philosophies of religion, it is a study of personal religious experiences; of the fears, hopes, desires, contritions, joys, and aspirations of men and women of all lands and ages, as they have been dealing with the fact of religion.

Not only do we find many different kinds of religion existing side by side upon this planet; we also find that each of these types has been undergoing constant changes in the course of the centuries.  To trace the religious development of any people from the earliest period to the present day is a most instructive study.