LECTURE I.

THE WORLD'S FIRST PARLIAMENT OF RE

LIGIONS.

I.

The World's Parliament of Religions is likely to be repeated. It is worthy of study for its own sake; and also because, great and memorable as it was in itself, it was probably the initiative of something greater and more memorable. If not in Europe, then in America, at some world's exhibition, or other international gathering, another congress resembling but surpassing it will probably be attempted at no very distant date. Already a delegate parliament of all the Christian organizations of the world is proposed for the year 1900 to determine what is the common faith of Christendom, exclusive of unessentials in polity and liturgy. This Parliament, it is hoped, may be followed in the same year and at the same place by a convention of delegates with unimpeachable credentials from all the Christian and non-Christian organizations of the world to consider the points of contact and contrast between the common Christian faith and all other religions. (Bishop Newman's article in the Independent, January 18, 1894.) The ethical and religious unification of Christendom could not fail to assist immensely in the advancement of missions at home and at the ends of the earth. It is the hope of improved and strategic repetitions that should give great significance even among its critics, to the World's First Parliament of Religions.

The greatest fact of modern history is that Monotheism is now at once cosmopolitan and Christo-centric. Both sides of this proposition are established and illustrated by the World's First Parliament of Religions. That Parliament was a World's Parliament. It had no precedent. Its subject was religion. It was homo-centric. It was theocentric. It was

Christo-centric. These facts are enough to make the Parliament memorable in history.

The Golden Rule has made a triumphal circuit of the world, but this is not all. The Lord's Prayer has been solemnly used as the universal prayer by a World's Parliament of Religions, but this is not all. The Decalogue and the Sermon on the Mount are the acknowledged highest ethical ideals of the world, but this is not ali. Au unspeakable reverence for Christ's religious teaching and authority and character, wholly aside from any definite teaching as to the mysterious nature of His Person, has pervaded the bestinstructed populations of the whole earth.

"The Unitarian paper here," says Dr. Barrows, the organizer of the Parliament, writing to your present speaker, from Chicago, January 16, "criticises my history for being Christocentric instead of homo-centric. But it is not my fault. The Parliament was Christo-centric, and I suppose the universe itself is also Christo-centric."

Primitive Monotheism, it has now been proved, was the well-spring of most of the non-Christian faiths. It is a proverb in the science of comparative religion that the younger the polytheism, the fewer the gods.

Olympus are dead. speaks its belief in man's. It is also God's, for God made man. outcome of man's highest faculties age after age is a self-revelation of the author of those faculties.

Monotheism has made a triumphal circuit of the world. All polytheism is moribund. Pan is dead. The gods of Thor is dead. Thor is dead. The great heart of man

one personal God. This testimony is. The normal

Prof. Schaff, the greatest church historian of his day in America, said to Dr. Noble, as the two friends sat together on the platform of Madison Square Garden, before the audience of fifteen or twenty thousand delegates and friends of the Christian Endeavor societies in 1890: Whoever writes the history of the church in our day must notice this meeting." On the platform of the World's Parliament of Religions, after leading the assembly in the Lord's

Prayer, this veteran scholar made the most pathetic speech of his life, which ended soon after :

"This is short notice to speak to be given one who has just risen from the dead. A little more than a year ago I was struck down by apoplexy, but I have recovered through the mercy of God, and am a miracle to myself. I was warned by physicians and friends not to come to Chicago. They said it would kill me. Well, let it kill me. I was determined to bear my last dying testimony to the cause of Christian union, in which I have been interested all my life. But I think the Lord will give me strength to survive this Parliament of Religions. The idea of this Parliament will survive all criticism. The critics will die, but the cause will remain. And as sure as God is the Truth, and as sure as Christ is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, His Word will be fulfilled, and there will be one flock and one Shepherd." (Barrows, P. of R., p. 138.)

II.

It is a felicitous feat in the art of international transit to bring together a Parliament that really deserves to be called a World's Parliament. This has been done. Fifty years ago such an achievement would have been very difficult, an hundred years ago practically impossible.

Prof. Schaff, in a recent admirable work on the Introduction to Theology (Theological Propedeutic, p. 381) tells us he never heard of Jonathan Edwards until he met Prof. Park at Leipsic as a student, in 1843. The young Swiss suggested to Prof. Herzog, who had never heard of Edwards, that an article on him should be prepared for Herzog's famous religious Cyclopedia, by Prof. Park or Prof. Stowe, and the latter prepared the article. This was only fifty years ago. Jonathan Edwards was even then not well known in theological circles of the most learned nation on earth, but now we must know Keshub Chunder Sen, and Mozoomdar, and a score of others of India, and Pung Kwang Yu, and others of China, and Neesima and Sawayama and Ichihara and Fukuzawa and others of Japan, if we are to be fairly abreast of the times.

Azoka's Parliament, held some twenty-four centuries ago, represented only Buddhism. Akbar's Parliament, as Vivi Kananda, the Hindoo monk, said in Chicago, was little more

than a parlor-meeting. Representatives of various faiths debated before the Emperor, in order that he might form an opinion of their respective merits.

It must be conceded that the Parliament of Religions was a World's Parliament. There are now but seventyfive organized states in the whole world. Of these only eighteen occupy eighty-seven hundredths of its entire surface. The Parliament of Religions had in it participants from thirty nations. It was estimated that these nations contain 1,200,000,000 of men, or fully three-quarters of the entire population of the globe. Every great historic non-Christian faith was represented-Hindooism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Parseeism, Mohammedanism, Judaism. The Christian world was present in the persons of prelates of Greek Church, Romish Church, Armenian Church, and leading preachers, theologians and authors from the Protestant, Evangelical, the Lutheran, the Reformed, the Church of England, and the missionary circles of the world. The liberal churches of Universalists, Unitarians and Swedenborgians had their part in the conference.

Two hundred Congresses ran through six months at the World's Fair. The Parliament of Religions occupied seventeen days in September, with usually three sessions each day. It heard one hundred and seventy carefully prepared papers and addresses and had a series of audiences aggregating one hundred and fifty thousand people. On its advisory committees, made up of men who deliberately gave the use of their names, were more than three thousand persons prominent in the foremost religious organizations of Christendom, besides scores of able representatives of the chief non-Christian faiths of the whole world.

It cannot be said that scholarly and devout orthodoxy failed to assert itself at the World's First Parliament of Religions. Among the most trenchant and powerful of all the papers read were those of Prof. George P. Fisher on Christianity as a Religion based upon Incontrovertible Historical Facts; Prof. Schaff on The Reunion of Christendom; Canon

Freemantle on the same subject; Prof. Momerie on The Rational and Moral Demonstration of the Being of God; Prof. Valentine on the same subject; Prof. W. T. Harris on the same; Archbishop Latas on The Greek Church; Dr. Maxom on The Argument for Immortality; Pres. Washburn on Mohammedanism; Dr. Munger on Christianity as Interpreted by Literature; Dr. George F. Pentecost on The Invincible Gospel; Dr. Brand on Christian Evangelists; B. Fay Mills on Christ the Saviour of the World; Count Bernstorff on The Religious State of Germany; Prof. Townsend on The Persistence of Bible Orthodoxy, Miss Willard on A White Life for Two; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson on The Attitude of Christianity toward other Religions; Dr. Dennis on The Message of Christianity to other Religions; Rev. Dr. H. H. Jessup on The Religious Mission of the English Speaking Nations; Rev. Dr. G. C. Lorimer on The Baptist Churches; Rev. George T. Candlin on Christian Unity in Missions; Prof. F. G. Peabody on Christianity and the Social Question; Rev. M. L. Gordon on Buddhism in Japan; Rev. R. A. Hume on Christian and Hindoo Thought; Rev. D. J. Burrill on What Christianity has Wrought for America; Rev. W. R. Alger on How to Achieve Religious Unity; Prof. M. S. Terry, on The Sacred Books of the World; Rev. Dr. G. W. Lee, on Christ the Reason of the Universe; Rev. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, on America's Duty to China; Rev. F. E. Clark, on Christianity as Seen by a Voyager Around the World; Rev. H. K. Carroll, on The Present Religious Condition of America; Bishop Keane on The Ultimate Religion; Bishop Dudley on The Historic Christ; and Dr. Boardman on Christ the Unifier of Mankind.

The Parliament must be judged by its official record. When this is read, various misapprehensions caused by fragmentary reports, or partisan feeling, will appear curiously unfounded. It is fiction and not fact to assert that in the Parliament doctrinal equality among religions was granted and all faiths put on one level; or that liberalism triumphed on the whole; or that Buddhism triumphed; or that the Pope's portrait hung over the platform; or that Roman Catholicism made a better general impression than Protestantism;