The test to which every new idea is subjected by business men as well as by physical scientists, is this,— How does it work? and the answer given is determinative, for this is the final court of appeal. The suggestion, however, that religious theories are amenable to the same practical test, has not been received without protest, and it is only in recent years that the pursuit of a scientific method in the study of the Bible and of religious phenomena has been acceptable to any considerable proportion of Christian believers.
While exploration and textual criticism have led the way and done much to multiply and enrich the data for judgment, philosophical criticism has done no less, perhaps, in leading the world to an "improved belief" respecting the essentials of faith, and the only satisfactory and final test of the value of an asserted religious truth.
In his "Varieties of Religious Experiences—A Study of Human Nature," recently published, Professor James of Harvard University discusses in his lucid and suggestive way this question of the legitimate test of the truth of those religious propositions which can be demonstrated only in human experience, and in connection with a reference to the thought of Sir Henry Maudsley, a noted materialist, he says, "Not its origin, but the way in which it works on the whole is Dr. Maudsley's final test of a belief. This is our own empirical criterion; and this criterion the stoutest insisters on supernatural origin have also been forced to use in the end."
