The present volume is the fourth work published bythe Yale University Press on the James Wesley CooperMemorial Publication Fund. This Foundation was establishedMarch 30, 1918, by a gift to Yale Universityfrom Mrs. Ellen H. Cooper in memory of her husband,Rev. James Wesley Cooper, D.D., who died in NewYork City, March 16, 1916. Dr. Cooper was a memberof the Class of 1865, Yale College, and for twenty-fiveyears pastor of the South Congregational Church ofNew Britain, Connecticut. For thirty years he was acorporate member of the American Board of Commissionersfor Foreign Missions and from 1885 until thetime of his death was a Fellow of Yale University, servingon the Corporation as one of the Successors of the Original Trustees.
The chief, perhaps the only, commendation ofthese chapters is that they pretend to no finalsolution of the problem which they discuss.How to assert the eternal and objective reality of thatPresence, the consciousness of Whom is alike the beginningand the end, the motive and the reward, of thereligious experience, is not altogether clear in an age that,for over two centuries, has more and more rejected thetranscendental ideas of the human understanding. Yetthe consequences of that rejection, in the increasing individualismof conduct which has kept pace with thegrowing subjectivism of thought, are now sufficientlyapparent and the present plight of our civilization is alreadyleading its more characteristic members, the politicalscientists and the economists, to reëxamine and reappraisethe concepts upon which it is founded. It is asimilar attempt to scrutinize and evaluate the significantaspects of the interdependent thought and conduct of ourday from the standpoint of religion which is here attempted.Its sole and modest purpose is to endeavor torestore some neglected emphases, to recall to spirituallyminded men and women certain half-forgotten values inthe religious experience and to add such observations regardingthem as may, by good fortune, contribute somethingto that future reconciling of the thought currentsand value judgments of our day to these central andprecious facts of the religious life.
Many men and minds have contributed to these pages.Such sources of suggestion and insight have been indicatedwherever they could be identified. In especial Imust record my grateful sense of obligation to ProfessorIrving Babbitt's Rousseau and Romanticism. The chapteron Naturalism owes much to its brilliant and provocative discussions.