[p. v]
This book is made up of essays on religion written in many places, from an island off the Maine coast to a steamer far up the Nile. In spite, however, of diversity in the environments from which they spring and variety in the themes of which they treat, the essays have a common center and properly belong in one booh.
Their unifying background is the perplexing and challenging religious situation in America, created in part by the rise of fundamentalism, which has provoked so wide-spread a popular interest, alike within and without the churches. Neither in intent tion nor in tone are the papers controversial, but they hoive been written with the American churches clearly in mind, and with a desire, if possible, to help interpret a situation which must cause grave anxiety to all who are interested in the fortunes of religion.
Even deeper has been the writer’s desire to separate religion altogether from the fickle ups and downs of theological and sectarian strife and to make it appear, as it is, an integral part of a wholesome life. Like love of beauty or human friendship, true religion springs out of elemental human [p. vi] needs md has its permanent place in human experience. No man is the whole of himself until he possesses it.
The essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, or the Ladies’ Home Journal, and alike to the editors of these publications and to their far-flung circles of readers I am indebted for manifold courtesies.
Harry Emerson Fosdick.
August 1, 1926.