Boston University - HUB Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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l 24 BOSTON UNIVERSITY YEAR BOOK. perfect object of worship love and bless a perfectly sincere worshipperl After many other touching words, particularly upon the woe- ful contrast between the ideal and the actual in 1ife,' and upon the arduousncss of the struggle for virtue under every religion, he closed by submitting the following proposition for the further eoirsideration of the Convention : H Resolved, that a perfect religion will have to demand of man a perfect surrender of will and life to a perfect object of worship, and will have to promise him a perfect freedom and satisfaction in the life of goodness. A Suli from Ispahan, a Theosophist from Bombay, and vari- ous other speakers followed, all very nearly agreeing with the first, but some of them preferring a different wording of the resolution. Various amendments were proposed and discussed, until at length the followingsubstitute was offered: H Resolved, that if a perfect religion were possible to imperfect men, it would require of the worshipper a perfect devotion to a perfect god, and would demand of the perfect god a perfect ultimate beatifi- cation of the worshipper. This was unanimously and even enthusiastically adopted. Question four was now in order. The President rose and said : The fourth question reads as follows: 'In what relation must the divine object and the human sulgject stand to each other in a perfect religion? ' The discussion of this question is to be opened by one who has himself ofttimes been the recipient of divine worship, and who represents an ancient and powerful priesthood believed by millions to be a real embodiment of the one divine and eternal Spirit. I have the honor to present to the Convention the venerated head of all the sacred houses of the Brahmins in the holy city of Benares. Calm as his own imposing religion, yet keener than any who had preceded him, the Hindu addressed himself to his allotted task. For twenty minutes he held every eye and commanded every mind. How shall I give you any conception of that cap- tivating discourse? The following is but the barest thread to intimate the great truths touched upon by his master hand. He began by saying that some personal relationship between the worshipper and the worshipped was necessarily involved in the very idea of worship. In this act the worshipper is think-

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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.

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1 L THE QUEST OF THE PERFECT RELIGION. 25 ing of the object of his Worship, otherwise he is not worshipping. So the being worshipped is thinking of his worshipper, other- wise he is not receiving the worship. Here, then, is mutual simultaneous thought. Each has a place in the consciousness of the other. To this extent they possess a common consciousness. In this fellowship of mutual thought they are mutually related, by it they are vitally and personally connected. This connection may, of course, be of two kinds. If the god is angry with his worshipper, or the worshipper with his god, the relationship is one of hatred and antagonism. If, on the other hand, it is a relation of mutual inclination, -the man sin- cerely seeking to please his god, and the god sincerely seeking to bless his worshipper, it is, of course, a relationship of amity, of good fellowship, of mutual love. But all religions agree that the first of these relationships, that of enmity and estrangement, is ab- normal, one which ought not to be. All religions aim to remove or to transform such a relationship wherever it exists. It is there- fore plain that the perfect religion, if there be one, must require and make the personal relationship between the worshipper and the worshipped a relation of mutual benevolence - a relation of mutual love. Nowhere can there be a perfect religion if the man do not sincerely love his god, and if the god do not sin- cerely love his worshipper. ' Here the speaker raised a most interesting question as to degree. To what extent ought this love to go? There could be but one answer. In a perfect religion the love of the wor- shipper for the worshipped must ot' course be the strongest possible, particularly as the worshipped is himself all-perfect, and hence all-worthy of this love. X So, on the other hand, the love of the worshipped toward the worshlpper ought to be the very strongest possible. What then is thc strongest possible love which the divine can bear to the human and the human to the divine? I cannot enough regret that my limits compel me to suppress his discussion of this pregnant question. I can Only say that from point to point he carried the convictions of his vast audi- ence until he had trinmphantly demonstrated three far-reaching propositions: Q11 That the ever higher and more perfect devo- tion of a worshipper can never reach its supreme intensity until