denomination. The Rt. Rev. William E. McLaren, D.D., D.C.L., was the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Chicago and active in promoting the Parliament. The Most Rev. P. A. Feehan was the Archbishop of the Catholic Church, much beloved by his people. The Rev. David Swing was the pastor of the Central Church of Chicago, an independent organization of Christians, and had achieved wide celebrity in literary circles. The Chairman of the Committee, the Rev. John Henry Barrows, D.D., was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. Urged to provide plans for religious meetings in connection with the World's Fair, the Committee at once perceived that the religious world, in its historic developments, and not any one section of that world, should be invited to make some representation. The spirit of most generous brotherhood moved them in giving out their invitations and making their arrangements for the Parliament of Religions. The Committee began their work with the impression that nothing like a Parliament of Religions had ever assembled before. So far as they knew at the beginning, it had never been dreamed of; but Mr. H. Dharmapala, of Calcutta, General Secretary of the Maha-Bodhi Society, who spoke for the Southern Buddhist Church of Ceylon at the Parliament, wrote: I rejoice to see that the best intellects of the day have all approved of your grand scheme, which, if carried out, will be the noblest and proudest achievement in history, and the crowning work of the nineteenth century. Twenty centuries ago, just such a congress was held in India by the great Buddhist Emperor, Asoka, in the city of Pataliputra, modern Patna, and the noblest lessons of tolerance therein enunciated were embodied in lithic records and implanted in the four quarters of his extensive empire. Here is one extract: "King Piyadasi honors all forms of religious faith and enjoins reverence for one's own faith and no reviling or injury for that of others. Let the reverence be shown in such a manner as is suited to the difference of belief. . . . For he who in some way honors his own religion, and reviles that of others . . . throws difficulties in the way of his own religion; this, his conduct, cannot be right." Dr. Martin, President of the Imperial University of Peking, reported that the idea of such a congress had often appeared in fiction and in poetry. One writer from Bohemia claimed that the plan was suggested three centuries ago by the great John Comenius. More than twenty years ago the Free Religious Association of Boston conceived the idea that such a meeting should be gathered whenever practicable. President W. F. Warren, of the Boston University, wrote: I am glad to know that the World's Religions are to be represented at the World's Fair. Were they to be omitted, the sense of incompleteness would be painful. Even a museum of idols and objects used in ceremonial worship would attract beyond any other museum. Models and illustrations of the great temples of the world and of the world's history would be in a high degree instructive. Add to these things the living word of living teachers, and the whole world may well pause to listen. A few years ago President Warren preached a sermon wherein he imagined the assembling of a great convention in Tokyo, a conference of the religious leaders of the Eastern world, the Buddhist, Brahman, Parsee, Mohammedan, Taoist, Shintoist, and Confucian, met together to discuss the great problems of Faith, and to discover, if possible, the Perfect Religion. As the discussion proceeded they reached the conclusion that there could be only one perfect Religion, that the perfect Religion must reveal a perfect God, that it must assure man the greatest possible ultimate good, that it must bring God into the most loving and lovable relations with humanity, and that this could be achieved only by his taking upon himself a human form, and suffering for men. And it would have seemed that the convention was talking something ideal, something which had never been actualized, had not the last speaker, the Buddhist leader of Japan, related the story of his own long mental unrest, and how, on the day before, he had learned, through the teaching of a brother who had seen many lands, that God had really come to earth, had revealed himself through his Son, had furnished all the credentials needed by the eager intellect and the yearning heart, had centered and glorified in himself all the truths which Gautama had discovered beneath the Indian fig-tree, or Confucius in his longwandering quest, and through the Cross reared on an Asian hill-top had offered deliverance from the guilt and love of sin, and had irradiated the sorrows and incompleteness of earth, with sure and golden promises of celestial peace and unwasting joy. Early. in June, 1891, the General Committee sent out to the world a Preliminary Address. They called attention to the creative and regulative power of Religion as a factor in human development. They expressed a desire for the coöperation of the representatives of all the great historic faiths; they believed that the time was ripe for new manifestations of human fraternity. Humanity, though sundered by oceans and languages and widely diverse forms of Religion, was one in need if not altogether in hope. The Address reviewed the fact that the literatures of the great historic faiths were more and more studied in the spirit of candor and brotherhood. Disclaiming any purpose to create a temper of indifferentism, the Committee urged that a friendly conference of eminent men, strong in their personal convictions, would be useful in showing what are the supreme truths, and what light Religion affords to the great problems of the time. The Committee said: Believing that God is, and that he has not left himself without witness; believing that the influence of Religion tends to advance the gen eral welfare, and is the most vital force in the social order of every people, and convinced that of a truth God is no respecter of persons, but that in every nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted of him, we affectionately invite the representatives of all faiths to aid us in presenting to the world, at the Exposition of 1893, the religious harmonies and unities of humanity, and also in showing forth the moral and spiritual agencies which are at the root of human progress. It is proposed to consider the foundations of religious Faith, to review the triumphs of Religion in all ages, to set forth the present state of Religion among the nations and its influence over Literature, Art, Commerce, Government and the Family Life, to indicate its power in promoting Temperance and Social Purity and its harmony with true Science, to show its dominance in the higher institutions of learning, to make prominent the value of the weekly rest-day on religious and other grounds, and to contribute to those forces which shall bring about the unity of the race in the worship of God and the service of of man. "I dreamed That stone by stone I reared a sacred fane, A temple; neither Pagod, Mosque, nor Church, But loftier, simpler, always open-doored To every breath from Heaven; and Truth and Peace And Love and Justice came and dwelt therein." These lines from "Akbar's Dream," one of Tennyson's latest poems, indicate how the Laureate, who regarded the proposal of a Parliament of Religions at Chicago as a noble idea, brooded much, in his last days, over the oneness of human need and spiritual aspiration after God. "Akbar's Dream" is a beautiful contribution to our apprehension of what Mr. Higginson means by the "sympathy of religions." Tennyson quotes an inscription on a temple in Kashmir: "O God, in every temple I see people that see thee, and in every language I hear spoken, people praise thee." Such was the spirit and such the beginning of the movement which has led to one of the chief events of the century. More than three thousand copies of the Preliminary Address were sent to the religious leaders of mankind in many lands. The spirit of the Christian bodies in America was largely favorable to the Committee's plans. It has been no uncommon thing in this century for Catholic and Protestant, Christian and Jew, orthodox and nonorthodox, to confer and even work together along lines of moral reform, and when it was proposed to assemble in an ecumenical conference the representatives of all the great historic faiths, the Christian mind of the modern world was largely prepared to receive and adopt the new idea. Under date of August 8, 1891, Mr. Gladstone, the distinguished statesman of that Empire which embraces among its subjects representatives of all religions, wrote as on the next page. The venerable poet Whittier, who has since passed away from earth, wrote more than once of his deep interest in the coming Parliament. He said: I scarcely need to say that I am in full sympathy with the proposed World's Religious Convention. The idea seems to me an inspiration. I My deui dir Jamers of thou who look sure to unpround benpers and conceptions in the individual, then to the adoption of. formulated plain, for tu promotion ef religion unity. Mar Hilles I cannot read without inthent your communication of the With of august. Nanour compecheusion frequently opriate, ascrelacion, and in your pour I cordially adimine the feature of a wide and graniser comprehensioners. The subject is tooday to brifle with, on Lange to cuter on: hat looking at it as a whole I cordially with will 15 4an Christian philanthropic Yors: summanising with much 200 pet yend faithful vordinat Mlladitme can think of nothing more impressive than such an assemblage of the representatives of all the children of our Heavenly Father, convened to tell each other what witness he has given them of himself, what light he has afforded them in the awful mysteries of life and death. In my eightyfourth year, and in very feeble health, I can do but little in aid of this great work. May God bless thee in the noble work assigned thee. |