In the following essay, Taylor explores the continued relevance of The Varieties of Religious Experience, finding its ideas concerning the need for spiritual belief in an age of science fitting for today's world.

It is almost a hundred years since William James delivered his celebrated Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh on The Varieties of Religious Experience. I want to look again at this remarkable book, reflecting on what it has to say to us at the turn of a new century.

In fact it turns out to have a lot to say. It is astonishing how little dated it is. You can even find yourself forgetting that these lectures were delivered a hundred years ago.

What was James's take on religion? What was the wider agenda of which it was part? Like any sensitive intellectual of his time and place, James had to argue against the voices, within...