Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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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

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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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I THE QUEST OF THE PERFECT RELIGION. 23 Taoist teacher was politely introduced. As his noble form advanced quietly to the front of' the platform in the costume of a Chinese Mandarin of the highest rank, it was at once evident that the better side of Taoism was to be represented, - the ideas of the Tao-teh-king, and not the superstition and jugglery of modern popular Taoism. I-Ie began by saying that it seemed proper for him to start out from the point where the preceding discussion had stopped, tl1e Convention having already voted that there could be but one perfect religion, and that this religion in order to be perfect must present a perfect object of worship. . With both of these propositions he said he was in full accord, provided only that it be constantly borne in mind that the whole discussion related to a purely abstract or hypothetical question. V Now, said he,' ffif a man really had a perfect object of worship, it is plain that his duty toward it would be very differ- ent from that he owes to any of' 'those finite and limited and imperfect divinitics which we and our fathers have been accus- tomed to worship. Our duties to these, and their duties to us, are more analogous to our duty to observe courtesy toward our fellowmenand kindness toward those below us. The moment we picture to ourselves a perfect God, the maker, upholder and governor of all beings, lord even of the celestial and terrestrial spirits whom we are in the habitof' worshipping, that moment we see that the worship of sucl1 a being would of necessity be something very different. As giver of all our powers and possi- bilities, l1e could justly demand that we employ them all for the accomplishment of the purpose for which he gave them. Indeed were he a perfectly rational being it would seem impossible that he should require less. On the other hand such a being would of necessity posf sess both the power and the 'inclination to give to his sincere worshipper the perfect fruit of genuine piety. This can be nothing less than perfect virtue and even exquisite delight in virtue. In a perf'ect piety -all self'-conflict, all internal resistance to good, all self-will, must be absolutely and totally eliminated. All fear-even of that perfect Being-would have to be ab- sentg nay, it would have to be trausmuted into eager uninter- mittcnt love. On the other hand, how unutterably would a.