Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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ATHE QUEST OF THE PERFECT RELIGION. 21 As soon as my friend and I could get our bearings, we were pleased to find that only one of the questions had been discussed and acted upon by the Convention before our arrival. W'e were told that the assembly had been opened by the President desig- nated in the callg and that nothing on earth was ever more impressive than the three minutes of silent prayer which fol- lowed the uplifting of the Chairman's hand and eye. After this there had been a brief address of welcome from the Com- mittee of Arrangements, a few words of thanks from the Presi- dent in response 3 then a short opening address by the President, and the introduction of the distinguished Buddhist representa- tive from Ceylon, who was to discuss the question: Can there be more than one perfect religion? To a Buddhist, there could be, of course, but one answer to this question, and that a negative. But he argued it -- as our informants told us - with wonderful tact as well as power. I-le kept the qualifica- tion tt perfect so prominently before his hearers' minds that however accustomed any of them might be to think and say that there may be and are many good religions, none could fail to see that of perfect religions there could be but one. He also carefully abstained from identifying his own system with the perfect religion, and thus avoided the mistake of exciting the jealousy of rival religionists. So complete had been his success, that after a short discussion in which several very diverse speakers participated, a venerable Parsee had moved, and just before our arrival the Convention had unanimously adopted the following resolution: Resolved, that in the opinion of this World's Convention there can be but one perfect religion.'T While we were getting hold of these facts we lost the Presi- dent's introduction of the second pre-appointed speaker. We soon lerned, however, that he was the senior moulvie of the great Mohammedan University at Cairo, a school of Islam in which there are all the time about ten thousand students in preparation for the duties of public religious teachers and ehanters -of prayers. His piercing eye and snow-white beard and vigorous frame would have made him anywhere a man of mark. Seated after his manner of teaching in the mosque upon a low bamboo 'frame, clad in his ofilcial robe, he looked like a resurrected Old Testament prophet-an Isaiah in living form

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20 g BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. and sect I had ever heard of -except the Christian--was named and provided for. Of course I was at once intensely in- terested to see so rare a body-the first of its kind in the history of the world. I But the crowd was so dense I was almost in despair. Fortunately in our extremity two stout policemen recognized my companion, and knowing his ainbassadorial char- acter undertook to make a way for us and to bring us into the hall. The struggle was long and severe, but at last our faithful guides succeeded in edging us into an overcrowded balcony to a standing-place from which nearly the whole body of the delegates could be seen. Never can I forget that many hued and strangely clad assembly. Nearly every delegation had some sacred banner, or other symbol, by which it might be dis- tinguished. In the centre of the hall was the yellow silken banner of the Chinese Dragon. On the left I saw the crescent of Islamg on the right the streamers of the Grand Lama of Thibet. 'Not far away was the seven-storied sacred umbrella of Burmah, and beyond it the gaudy feather-work of a dusky dele- gation from Ashantee. In one corner I even thought I recog- nized the totem of one of our Indian tribes of Alaska. On the programme there were five questions, each evidently framed with a view to make its discussion and' answer contrib- ute toward the common end, the definition of a perfect and uni- versal religion. The first read as follows: Can there be more than o11e perfect religion? The opening of the discus- sion of this had been assigned to a great Buddhist teacher from Ceylon. The second question, to be opened by a Mohamme- dan, was : H What kind of an object of worship must a perfect religion present? The third was assigned to a Taoist, and was thus formulated: 'f What must a perfect religion demand of, and promise to, the sincere worshipper? The fourth, assigned to a Hindu pundit, was the following: In what relation must the divine object and the human subject stand to each other in a perfect religion? The fifth and last question read: By what credentials shall a perfect religion, if ever found, be known? The honorx and responsibility of opening this last and highest of the' proposed dischssions was reserved to the official head of the Shinto priesthood of Japan, the highest representative of the ancestral faith of the Einpire.

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22 BOSTON UNIVERSITY rE.41e 30015. before ns. At first I wondered 'if he would be able to speak to so modern a question as the one assigned him : What kind of an object of worship must a perfect religion present? Time would fail me were I to attempt to report with any ful- ness his rhythmic speech. It was Oriental through and through -quaint, poetic, full of apothegms, proverbs, parables, - but it conclusively answered the question. He made even the feather-decked gri-gri worshippers of lVestern Africa see that a. god who knows much about his worshipper, and can do great things for him, is more perfect than a god who knows little and can do but little. Then arguing up and up, he made it plain to every intelligence that a perfect religion necessarily demands a god possessing all knowledge and all'power. It becomes a per- fect religion only by presenting to the worshipper, as the su- preme object of obedience,love and service, a perfect being. He showed also that'perfection in an object of worship required that it be a livingobject, that it have intelligence, rational feel? ings and purposes, in a word, that it possess real and complete personality. It must be possible to address him as a person- ality. i Ile needs to be in every place, to be before all things, in.all things, above all things. Limit him in any respect and the religion you present becomes less than perfect. This was the thought stripped of all its weird and Oriental adornments. But as he expanded and enforced it his eye kindled and his chant-like speech rose and fell, and rose and fell, until we hardly knew whether we were in the body or out ofthe body, so wondrous was the spell wherewith he had bound us., He was followed by an eloquent representative of the Brahmo Somaj, and he in turn by a Persian Babist, both of whom argued in the same line with such effect, that when a picturesquely turbaned representative of the religion of the Sikhs gained the floor and moved that it be the sense of the Convention that a perfect religion must present a perfect god, the whole vast assembly was found to be a unit in aflirming this grand declara- tion. ' Next, of course, came the third question: What must a perfect religion demand of the sincere worshipper, and what must it promise to him? To open its discussion theappointed . I i