time or employ your attention, I do not say that your activity is worthless-no, even then it has its value, but it does not enter into the formation of that all-sided and lofty ideal of the spirit without which no religion shall make headway in the world. When the conviction is softened and converted into the profoundest impulses of love towards God and man, I ask, is that progress or is it no progress? When this tenderness of love towards God and man consolidates itself into the active spirit of usefulness in order that the world may be the kingdom of heaven, I ask, is that progress or no progress? The charge, therefore, of unprogressiveness laid against the door of religion is a false and groundless charge. When faith and love unite in man's heart and when holiness crowns that union, is there any end to the possibilities of man?

How many noble structures has not the hand of religion raised in the West and in the East! What temples and cathedrals and caves and monasteries have been created,-by what? Human love and human trust. Is that progress or no progress? How many immortal paintings have adorned the galleries and the walls through the growth and fulness of the religious ideal! What noble sculptures have been the product of the religious instinct in man when it fructified into faith and into emotion! And music, that inspirer, that comforter, that teacher of the human race; is religion ever divided from music? is not the noblest music of every land, from Germany to India, entirely spiritual? Do you call that barren? Do you call that fruitless, which has been the source of so much creation, of so much elevation, of so much beatification, of so much harmony, of so many fair things in the world? So the charge is a groundless charge. Thus to simplicity of faith the fulness of love is added. Thus to the fulness of love the sanctities of character are added. Faith, love, holiness, when united together, find their relations to every great thought, to every great system, to every great department of the human life.

We are not bound to maintain any traditional theology. We are not bound to maintain the infallibility of any national law or scripture. We are not bound to maintain the vested rights of any church or priesthood; but when love has made the soul free, and when faith has deepened it, and when morality has enlightened it, we find that all relations of human life to high interests are greatened. In the Brahmo-Somaj religion has allied itself without the least grudge to science and philosophy. Evolution is no stumbling-block

in our path. Science is not the inveterate enemy of religion, but all the discoveries of science come down upon us as the wisdom of God rained in showers; and science lending its aid to religion gives us that strength which no doubt, no disbelief, can ever weaken. Science and religion fighting with one another shall surely, as has already been the case, cause the destruction of human faith, but where man is free enough, and is united with God enough, to accept all His purposes and the revelation of all His laws in all the departments of thought and of human interest, then religion gets a power, gets an everlasting basis, gets a possibility of progress, which neither the past nor the future can ever overthrow. Thus, then, this very speculation which has caused so much panic in the Western world, has given us hope and strength and promise, in the light of which we are walking day after day. Science is not the only thing with us,— this comparative theology day after day brings before our view the excellencies of all religions in the world. Very well did my friend, Dr. Momerie, observe in the other hall when he read his paper that all religions are fundamentally true, all religions superficially false. The science of comparative theology has penetrated below these superficialities and taken us into those depths of the religions, into those deeper recesses, where the spirit of God has revealed Himself unto man in every age and in every nation.

The most primitive forms of religious faith and the most modern, and most cultured forms of faith, have equally unsealed to us their divine spirit. As the law of gravitation belongs to no country and no people, as the sun sheds his light on all lands and on all races, so the light of the spirit which God has given to humanity becomes the light of every system that aspires to grow towards heaven, and always and on all sides towards mankind. And thus all religions come, surround us, and invite us to establish our relations with them. Take Hinduism alone. Hinduism needs mythology,needs philosophy, needs ceremonies, needs symbolism, and shows such a marvellous development of the spiritual principle that we cannot any longer turn our backs to Hinduism and say, that is all false and useless. The more we have grown in spirituality the more have been our undiscovered affinities, discovered now,- our affinities to the development of spiritual principles in every form and phase of our manifold religions. Hinduism alone in its so-called legends, in its incarnations, in its pantheistic philosophies, in its priesthoods, in its caste and in its thousand and one other aspects, has gradually unfolded such rela

tions to the spiritual nature of man that, allying ourselves to these relations, we find in Hinduism alone a source of endless education and progress. And for the last twelve years at least, the Brahmo-Somaj has been engaged in interpreting and in spiritualizing the unknown but hidden realities of the Hindu faith; and when I come to Christianity, you will understand me all the better.

I was speaking to you about the paramount necessity of having a high, moral character. As I believe in dogma, so I believe in spiritual personality. Abstract principles may form an excellent philosophy, fine sentiments will form profound poetry; but poetry is not religion, philosophy is not religion, aspiration is not religion: religion means an exalted personality. God is not an idea, God is not a sense of beauty, God is not a moral law, God is a great person. And similarly when you come to the question of spiritual progress, I maintain it is personality alone that can inspire personal character. When the Brahmo-Somaj lay in ashes and in sackcloth, repenting the great sins that its members had committed, when it lay feebly struggling against the almost almighty antagonism of surrounding priesthoods of the polytheistic superstitions, what strengthened us, what elevated us, what made our aspirations practical? The personality of Jesus Christ, as son of God. Philosophize on that subject as you like, hold any doctrines of Trinitarian or Unitarian that you like, never deny the power of personality in religious character. Unless and until there is a great lofty personality in every religious organization, no fine abstract doctrine, no fine sentimentalities, no moral analysis shall ever give you any headway in this world of obstacles and temptations.

My great sorrow in Christian countries has been the absence of spiritual leadership. You are all free men, you are all equals, you are all republicans. So far so good; but until amongst you some towering personalities arise to which you shall have to look up in spite of all your democracy, the dead level into which Christendom. has fallen shall never give way to the heights and depths of spiritual progress. In studying Christianity, therefore, the supreme power of these personalities, of the experiments and experiences that have been made and successfully made in Christendom, at once presented themselves before us. Hinduism gave us spiritual philosophy, lofty utterances, profound sentimentalities; Christianity gave us the solid realities of personal character; and when eastern sentimentalities and aspirations, when Hindu loftiness and oriental subtlety, when Asiatic

poetry and Eastern impulses, when these have combined with the energy, the power, the reality, the solidity, the triumph that character achieved in Christendom, then alone shall that great catholic church be founded of which Mr. Potter has spoken to us so eloquently.

But, realized or not, our ideal is there. The ideal of the BrahmoSomaj is a most complex ideal. Infinite emotion, infinite faith, endless morality and the supreme solidity of personal character, alliances with all systems of faith, brotherhood with men of all manner of complicated ideas and beliefs, finding God in nature, finding God in science, finding God in the heart; all this has deepened our complexity to such an extent that the ideal before us is certainly untenable in this life, though tenable certainly in personal progress. If God is infinite and eternal, the life in Him is infinite and eternal also. If God never changes and no limit can bind Him, our progress towards Him is equally boundless and endless. Any religion, therefore, which takes upon itself limited and small ideals, whatever its historic worth may be, human nature shall surely outgrow. God is infinite; his revelation is infinite--nay human nature in Him is infinite also; and when all the infinities of life and spiritual progress present themselves, religion becomes such an august, all-pervading pursuit that there is neither change in it nor end to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, but all these various complexities, all these various aspirations, these struggles for the full harmony, these affinities and alliances with other systems, have never for a single moment obscured our vision to the simple principle of monotheism, to the seed of truth from which we began. Great as human progress is, endless as life and its relations must be in the centre, it is the simplest, the easiest of all things; and to my mind that religion has solved the problem of spiritual existence which has been able to retain its primitive simplicity and plant upon that simplicity the infinite and eternal possibilities of man. That religion is alone true which can realize itself in every system of religion that has existed in the world. That religion alyne is true which can find its profoundest teachings made true in all the departments of human thought and human knowledge; and I stand before you to-day with this simple message, that this religion is the religion of the Brahmo-Somaj. do not profess to believe that we have solved all the problems of existence, but I do believe that the simple monotheism which we tenaciously hold by, which recognizes alone that God is, that man is, that

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man is in Him and that there is a future life, this simple monotheism which we hold by, shall in its infinite complexity, in its endless relations, solve in the fulness of time all those great problems which have been laid before the world at the present time.

My friends, we in India lack your resources, we lack your culture, we lack your energy, we lack your power of organization. If you respond to the simple and primitive principles of spiritual life which I have laid down, if you sympathize with our aspirations and with our struggles to realize universal brotherhood and the universal truths of primitive religion, I ask you, will you not help us in our solitude? Will you not help us in our endeavors, will you not come forward to give us the right hand of fellowship, that we may profit by your experiences, that we may be strong in your strength, that your resources may help us on, and that we theists in the East and you theists in the West, may combine ourselves to form that universal church which surely some day shall overshadow all churches and bring into lite the meaning of all religions. Such an all-embracing progress must take a long time. The present is in our hands; in the present let us help each other, that by mutual help, by mutual love, by united trust in God, we may accomplish our great destiny and deliver our message before all mankind.

I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the very kind attention with which you have listened to me, and placing my message before you I take my seat.

The Chairman gave the following notice :

Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, President of the Chicago Woman's Club, will be pleased to see the delegates to the Parliament of Religions at the Reception of the Chicago Woman's Club at the Athenæum Building, from 4 to 6, this afternoon.

DR. FRANCIS E. ABBOT was then introduced by the Chairman, and read the following paper: