benediction had been pronounced by Bishop Keane, he pronounced the World's first Parliament of Religions adjourned without day. Meantime, President Bonney, in the Hall of Columbus, invited the audience to join with the Apollo Club in singing "America," after which the first great Parliament of Religions was declared closed.

A CHINESE IDOL CALLED BIG-BELLY-MI-LI FOAH.

TRADITION SAYS HE WAS FORMERLY A HARE; BUT AFTER MANY YEARS BECAME CHANGED INTO A MAN, THOUGH STILL RETAINING
HIS LONG EARS. HE WAS AFTERWARDS THE PUPIL OF A CELEBRATED TAOIST PRIEST WHO GAVE HIM THE NAME OF LONG-EARED
TING. AFTER HIS DEATH, WHICH WAS CAUSED BY LAUGHING, HE WAS DEIFIED BY AN EMPEROR OF THE CHOW DYNASTY.

PART SECOND.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PARLIAMENT PAPERS.

PART SECOND.

INTRODUCTION TO THE PARLIAMENT PAPERS.

N°

CHAPTER I.

THE STUDY OF THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS.

O one of the promoters of the plan for a mutual conference among representatives of the World's Religions, would urge a claim of originality in his work. This notable event was a growth whose roots reach far and deep. The germs of it have been in the world from the days of Paul and of Jesus; but the wide expansion of them may be dated perhaps, from about the era of modern missions. The founding of the British Empire in India opened at once a new field for evangelization, and a new field for scholarship. The addition of the mother tongue of all the languages of modern Europe -the Sanskrit-to the list of "the learned languages" cultivated by scholars, dates only from the days of Sir William Jones, about one hundred years ago. It is long since that time that the sacred books of the great religions of the world have become accessible to Christian scholars in general. And the science of Comparative Theology is the growth almost of our own time. With the growing interest in this science has come into men's thoughts a larger conception of human history, a new and more religious idea of divine providence through all ages and all lands. To this study no facts concerning the religious life of man are unimportant. Under the lowest forms of human manners, worship and thought, even among barbarous and savage tribes, it discerns the crude efforts of uninstructed man to express faith in a power above himself efforts which reach loftier heights in the forms of Platonic