First published in 1951,
Form and Spirit
deals with two primary questions regarding religion- a) the nature of religion as a permanent need in human life, and its relation to the cults and creeds in which it has been embodied, and b) whether what is admittedly a crying need of our time can be met by the revival of religious forms which have lost their hold. An attempt is made to trace the evolution of religion, and a brief survey is given of the development of the chief world religions. The object is not to show that any of these can be accounted ‘truer’ than the rest but rather to see what were the reasons for the forms that they have taken, and what elements and tendencies are common to them, as throwing light both on the meaning of religion and on the needs of man's spiritual nature. This is an essential read for general readers interested in religion.