The Christian Faith and Psychology The Psychology of Religion as a branch of scientific study was "made in America," and is not yet twenty years old. Its virtual founder and popularizer was William James, who furnished the introduction to Starbuck's "Psychology of Religion" (1900) and published his "Varieties of Religious Experience," the quarry in which all subsequent writers have mined, in 1903. An earlier American philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, gained the right to be called the precursor of the science by his treatise on the Religious Emotions. Of Edwards, named with Emerson and James as one of three representative American philosophers, Royce has said that "he actually rediscovered some of the world's profoundest ideas regarding God and humanity simply by reading for himself the meaning of his own religious experiences."[90] 90 "William James and Other Essays," p. 4. The way for a scientific study of religious experience had been prepared by the development of modern psychology and by the growing popular interest in religious phenomena. We recall the wide-spread interest in Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," dealing with personal religion, and in Kidd's "Social Evolution," which dealt with the place of religion on the broader field of human progress. The popularity of monographs on mysticism, such as those by W. R. Inge and Miss A. Underhill, and of lives of the saints, such as Paul Sabatier's "Life of Francis of Assisi" and McCabe's "Life of Augustine," showed by the personality of their authors and the wide circle of their readers that religious experiences, especially if they be profound and unusual, are matters of deep human interest even to those not closely connected with the churches. The saints have been taken from the church historians, and made to live before us as men of like passions with ourselves. For many months recently a religious novel, "The Inside of the Cup," held its place as the "best seller." Since the pioneer work of Starbuck, Coe[91] and James, the literature of the subject, largely by American writers, has grown apace. Established in the college course, the psychology of religion has threatened to disturb vested rights even in the theological schools. Conversion and sanctification, once regarded as themes for the theological cloister, the revival service or the closet of devotion, have become familiar topics of the text-books and commonplaces of the lecture room. 91: "The Spiritual Life," 1900.