science, ethics and theology of its age, and the religious experience of
which it is the record, and in which we find the Self-disclosure of God.

(3) An historical rather than a speculative Christ. We do not begin
(however we may end) with a Figure in the heavens, the eternal Son of
God, but with Jesus of Nazareth. This method of approaching Him
reinforces the emphasis on His manhood which came from Humanitarianism.
Christianity, like the fabled giant, Antæus, has always drawn fresh
strength for its battles from touching its feet to the ground in the
Jesus of historic fact. It was so when Francis of Assisi recovered His
figure in the Thirteenth Century, and when Luther rediscovered Him in
the Sixteenth. There can be little doubt but that fresh spiritual forces
are to be liberated, indeed are already at work, from this new contact
with the Jesus of history.

Still another opening in the scientific quarry is _Psychology_. The last
century saw great advances in the investigation of the mind of man,
which revolutionized educational methods, gave new tools to novelists
and historians, and threw new light on every aspect of the human spirit.
Psychologists turned their attention to religion, and have done much to
chart out the movements of man's nature in his response to his highest
inspirations. They have altered methods of Biblical education in our
Sunday Schools, have shown us helpful and harmful ways of presenting
religious appeals, and have given us scientific standards to test the
value of the materials employed in public worship.

We may ascribe the following elements in our Christian thought to them:

(1) The normal character of the religious experience. Faith had been
regarded as the product of deception or as an aberration of the human