or that evangelical speakers took a craven and apologetic attitude; or that missionaries did not appear well; or that all the non-Christians were men of small calibre; or that distinctively orthodox views were never favored by the audiences.

President Bonney in his opening address on the first day of the Parliament said, "No attempt is here made to treat all religions as of equal merit. Any such idea is expressly disclaimed." Count Bernstorff, of Germany, whose scholarly orthodoxy no one will doubt, said in his first speech before the Parliament: "I, for myself, declare that I am here as an individual evangelical Christian, and that I should never have set my foot in this Parliament if I thought it signified anything like a consent that all religions are equal, and that it is only necessary to be sincere and upright. I can consent to nothing of this kind. I believe only the Bible to be true, and Protestant Christianity the only true religion. I wish no compromise of any kind." (Barrows, P. of R., p. 93.) With this keynote all the proceedings were in harmony to the last moment of the sessions. "The laws of the Congress forbidding controversy or attack," said President Bonney in his closing speech on the last night of the Parliament, "have on the whole been wonderfully well observed. No system of faith or worship has been compromised by this friendly conference." (Barrows, P. of R., p. 185.) "Concession," says Professor Toy, of Harvard University, "formed no part of the scheme of the Parliament. The element of positiveness and certainty was not lacking on the Christian side. Certainly the Catholic church did not intend to yield one iota of its faith; yet it took a large and earnest part in the proceedings. No one of the speakers believed himself to be conceding anything." (The New World, Dec. 1893, p. 736.) It is an almost inexplicable confusion of thought that has led certain critics of the Parliament to accuse it of putting all faiths on a level. Doctrinal equality and parliamentary equality are very different things. The former was explicitly denied and the latter explicitly asserted. Nowhere did any speaker make any doctrinal concessions to other faiths than his own.

It is to be remembered constantly that the Parliament was

not called to found an universal religion; that it was not a debating society; that it was not a place for the wearing of bland masks; that it was not a surrender of Christianity to non-Christian faiths; that it was not a surrender of non-Christian faiths to Christianity; that it was not a political assembly; that it, nevertheless, was not indifferent to moral and political reform, national and international.

III.

Professor Tholuck was accustomed to call paganism, starlight; Judaism, moonlight; Christianity, sunlight. One of Dr. Barrows' many eloquent epigrams at the Parliament was that light has no fellowship with darkness but that light has a certain degree of fellowship with twilight. It may be admitted that before moonlight appears the starlight is better than no light; and that before sunlight appears the moonlight is better than starlight. But if any inferior light sets itself up as better than superior light then the inferior light may itself be a peril.

1. It is a matter of great interest that the First World's Parliament of Religions practically agreed in a definition of religion.

A definition of religion that the four continents and the ten thousand isles of the sea will generally recognize as valid is a very important and as some think a very difficult matter. What objection is there to these general definitions?

Glad Conformity to God.

The Unresisted Life of God in the Soul of Man.

Rejoicing Acceptance of God as both Saviour and Lord.

The Love and Worship of God and the Love and Service of Man.

All these definitions were used in the World's Parliament of Religions, and the last of the list officially. (Barrows, P.

of R., p. 68.)

Self-surrender to the Self-evident, is the most universal of all religious and scientific watchwords. It is one which all sane men must accept and one which no logical mind can accept without coming into harmony with the Biblical cans

and cannots, which are appeals to strictly self-evident truth. Self-surrender to the Self-evident-imitation of the Mind that was in Christ.

This is a double watchword almost certain to-day to meet with general acceptance among men of religious disposition and enlightened minds anywhere. The peerlessness of Christ as a sinless example and as a religious teacher, is already, in the best educated populations, a firmly crystallizing line in the supreme article of a cosmopolitan faith.

Can there be a definition of religion sufficiently broad and yet not including a definite statement of belief in God's existence as a Person? Can the pantheist, the agnostic, or the atheist be in any true sense religious? To meet these questions, it was my fortune to propose in the Parliament the following definition of religion in its most general form :

Delight in saying I WILL, whenever the Still Small Voice whispers THOU OUGHTEST.

This is a more severe definition than it seems for it contains the word whenever. It means

Continuous, Glad Conformity to Conscience, and this means

Rejoicing Self-surrender to the Self-evident, and this means

Utter and Affectionate Loyalty to the Best Light the Soul possesses or can obtain.

Under these last definitions, there is a sense in which even the pantheist, the agnostic or the atheist may be religious. In this sense, religion ought to seem to any sane human being a reasonable duty. But behind Loyalty to Light and Self-surrender to the Self-evident, and to the Still Small Voice, stands always He who has, and is, and is to come. To all these definitions of religion, all the Christians and most of the nonChristian participants in the World's Parliament of Religions would agree. If Christians alone were to give a definition of Religion in its full Biblical meaning they would undoubtedly call it

Assent and Consent to God;

or more particularly,

The Conviction of the Intellect that God, or God in Christ is, and the Affectionate Choice of the Heart that He should be, both our Saviour and our Lord;

or yet more definitely

Permanent Deliverance from the Love of Sin and the Guilt of it through the New Birth and the Atonement.

2. The greatest of all the salient facts concerning the First World's Parliament of Religions is that although it by no means agreed on a Universal Religion, it did practically agree on what the tests of the Best Religion are.

By what tests is the best religion to be known? Are there any tests as to the justice and validity of which there is likely to be cosmopolitan agreement? Face to face with a World's First Parliament of Religions, what tests may an alert and candid mind depend upon as indisputably fair and worthy of world-wide acceptance?

As five such tests which any World's Parliament ought to endorse, and most of which have been used by all the faiths, but which I would apply in constant combination, I venture to emphasize the following:

1. The Best Religion must have the best attainable Doctrine of GOD-His existence, personality, attributes.

2. The Best Religion must have the best attainable Doctrine of MAN.

3. The Best Religion must have the best attainable Doctrine of the Relations between God and Man and must transmute this doctrine into LIFE.

4. The Best Religion must meet successfully the demands of Science, not falsely so called.

5. The Best Religion must be approved by Experience, varied and prolonged.

GOD, MAN, HARMONY OF GOD AND MAN, SCIENCE, ExPERIENCE. These are the adequate and indisputably fair tests of all schemes of religious Faith and Practice.

(See the Rev. Dr. F. A. Noble's masterly address on Christianity in the Light of the Parliament of Religions, as published in The Standard, Chicago, Dec. 14, 1893.)

Applying these tests to all the Religions of the world, we

are to ask which has the best doctrine of God? Which the best doctrine of Man? Which the best doctrine and life harmonizing God and Man? Which best bears the inspection of Science? Which is best approved by prolonged and varied experience of men and nations? Has Christianity in its scholarly and aggressive forms anything to fear from the application of these tests?

Has not every other religion almost everything to fear?

It is to be taken for granted that men will have a religion and that educated and conscientious men will have the best. In the struggle for existence, the fittest religions survive, under the law of what St. Paul calls God's purpose according to selection. This last is a scriptural phrase of unfathomed depth.

The Parliament exhibited the strategic position of churches in the Occident. As James Russell Lowell has said: "The whole world now has but one set of nerves and we all have the headache together.' The eyes of the Orient are fastened on the Occident in this generation as they are likely never to be fastened after another century has passed. This is the transitional hour for the Orient, and the Occident is at present its leader-but subject to prompt dismissal after a

season.

4. The next most memorable feature of the Parliament was its exhibition of the practical unity of the world's standards of judgment in the chief matters of common morality and justice.

The Parliament would not listen to a defence of polygamy. It abhorred the spirit of caste.

It called for the Christianization of Christendom.

5. It gave a friendly hearing to every sound scheme of philanthropy and practical reform.

6. It listened eagerly to the freshest inculcations of advance philosophy and science.

7. It assumed man's freedom and responsibility, and exalted the religion of conscience.

8. It relied upon the facts of personal immortality and of a judgment to come beyond death.