A small book was published in 1918 entitled The Faiths of Mankind. It belonged to a series of College Voluntary Study Courses, and was prepared with that end in View. Since that time the desire has been repeatedly expressed that the writer prepare a volume with a wider public in View. The needs of the general reader and ministers were to be kept in mind as well as students in their college and seminary courses. Coming directly out of contact with students in the classroom, it is inevitable that the form of the present book and the selection and arrangement of material should be determined by that experience. The guiding principle has been not to overload the text with a multiplicity of facts, but to select and make use of such facts as are relevant to the main lines of development, and to make clear their meaning and relationships. To inter pret facts has been looked upon as important as to present them. One of the main problems with students is to prevent the confusion which results from presenting great quantities of material which they are not prepared to assimilate and make use of intelligently.