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The academic study of anything requires that those involved should consider at least three questions: why, what and how? The first demands that we examine our motive; the second makes us consider our material – what do we accept as admissible evidence? The third, and most difficult, level of inquiry is concerned with method: how do we deal with the material we have at hand? How do we organise it, and with what end in view (‘motive’ again)? A century ago, it was not uncommon to speak in this connection of ‘the science of religion’ (German: Religionswissenschaft) – a form of words no longer current in English. What has been identified as the foundation document carried the title Introduction to the Science of Religion (Friedrich Max Muller 1873). According to Muller, such a science of religion was to be ‘based on an impartial and truly scientific comparison of all, or at all events, of the most important religions of mankind’ (1873: 34). It was, then, to be impartial and scientific by the standards of the age and based on the best material available at the time.

(1976). Sadhu Sundar Singh and his critics: An episode in the meeting of East and West. Religion: Vol. 6, No. 1, pp. 48-66.

Only once before have I responded to a reviewer. On that occasion, some fifteen years ago, three years had elapsed between the review and the response; and in that time the distinguished reviewer had been gathered to his ancestors. Understandably, therefore, the debate came to an end at that point. I have the same feeling on this far more elaborate occasion: not one of resentment at having been hauled over the scholarly coals, but a feeling of disappointment that those who took part in the symposium on my book did not make more constructive use of their opportunity. Having written a book about more than a hundred years of methods and methodologists in the study of religion—an essay in the history of ideas, with very few methodological pretensions of its own—I was expecting a history of ideas critique by historians of ideas. This, however, hardly seemed to occur to my critics. None seemed to want to ask whether my picture in broad outline (and leaving aside the inevitable blemishes) was or was not a just one. Comparative Religion: A History is not yet canonical, and 1 know it to be vulnerable to criticism on numerous points of historical detail. Why, then, 1 have been wondering, were a few more of these points not picked up? In the virtual absence of the kind of criticism I was expecting (albeit in fear and trembling), I can only reply to the criticism I actually received. But before I proceed, I should like to say a little about the

(1975). The history of religions in Scandinavia, with particular reference to Sweden and Finland. Religion: Vol. 5, No. sup1, pp. 18-26.

The Hindu Renaissance is commonly regarded as having begun seriously in the 1870's, consequent upon the foundation in 1875 of the Ārya Samāj in the West of India.' But this is in many ways a date of convenience. The roots of the movement go back, particularly as far as Bengal is concerned, to the time of Rammohun Roy, when on the one hand there was created a serious, though small-scale. Hindu reform movement, and on the other there was introduced into Calcutta the remarkable catalyst of Western education. Hindu reform and Western education were closely linked for the greater part of the nineteenth century. The early Hindu reform movements to a very great extent shared the same characteristics: small-scale and elitist, they were not designed to appeal, and did not appeal, to the masses. The Brāhma Samāj, for instance, never succeeded in achieving popularity; it began and continued very largely as a somewhat rarefied worship-society. But the years between 1893 and 1897 were the years of Swāmi Vivekānanda's "mission" to the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago and his tours in the countries of the West. Perhaps it was in the figure of the Swāmi that the Indian national movement found its first powerful human symbol.

To the student of the recent history of theological ideas in the West, it sometimes seems as though, of all the ‘new’ subjects that have been intro duced into theological discussion during the last hundred or so years, only two have proved to be of permanent significance. One is, of course, biblical criticism, and the other, the subject which in my University is still called ‘comparative religion’—the (as far as possible) dispassionate study of the religions of the world as phenomena in their own right.

‘Dialogue’ between members of differing traditions is nowadays replacing polemics, debate, and monologue preaching of traditional missionary policy. Terms in which it can be conducted have not yet, however, been widely found. It will be illuminating to discover whether among diverse groups conversation in the terms propounded here could prove fruitful, or at least mutually intelligible. This will be a highly significant test of the theory, expecially in view of the possible importance of this activity for the world's future religious development.1

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