an act of reflection in order to investigate the origin and seek for the value of this experience, but also to review the whole history of the past and examine in it the origin and development of the relations of humanity with the supernatural world. To this end the student will not be able to limit himself to the study of the Bible only, as a unique source of the history of religion. For him the Bible is as yet a book having the same value as all other books, sacred or profane, which record the history of antiquity. Only after these have been confronted by him with one another, and all alike subjected to the control of critical science; only when the superiority of the religious sentiment, as it germinated and advanced to maturity among a people which had to traverse supreme difficulties and to exist under conditions which were often unfavourable to the rapid growth of a civilization developing in the same way as that of the surrounding nations, has asserted itself in
