Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/101

ASSEMBLING AND WELCOME. 73 For more than two years the General Committee, which I have the honor to represent, working together in unbroken harmony, and presenting the picture and prophecy of a united Christendom, have carried on their arduous and sometimes appalling task in happy anticipation of this golden hour. Your coming has constantly been in our thoughts and hopes and fervent prayers. I rejoice that your long voyages and journeys are over, and that here, in this young capital of our western civilization, you find men eager for truth, sympathetic with the spirit of universal human brotherhood, and loyal, I believe, to the highest they know, glad and grateful to Almighty God that they see your faces and are to hear your words. Welcome, most welcome, O wise men of the East and of the W^est ! May the star which has led you hither be like that luminary which guided the sages of old, and may this meeting by the inland sea of a new continent be blessed of heaven to the redemption of men from error and from sin and despair. I wish ycu to understand that this great undertaking, which has aimed to house under one friendly roof in brotherly council the representa- tives of God's aspiring and believing children everywhere, has been con- ceived and carried on through strenuous and patient toil, with an unfaltering heart, with a devout faith in God, and with most signal and special evidences of his divine guidance and favor. Long ago I should have surrendered the task intrusted to me before the colossal difficulties looming ever in the way, had 1 not committed my work to the gracious care of that God who loves all his children, whose thoughts are long, long thoughts, who is patient and merciful as well as just, and who cares infinitely more for the souls of his erring children than for any creed or philosophy of human devising. If anything great and worthy is to be the outcome of this Parliament, the glory is wholly due to Him who inspired it, and who, in the Scriptures which most of us cherish as the Word of God, has taught the blessed truths of divine Fatherhood and human brotherhood. I should not use the word " if " in speaking of the outcome of this Con- gress of Religions, since, were it decreed that our sessions should end this day, the truthful historian would say that the idea which has inspired and led this movement, the idea whose beauty and force have drawn you through these many thousand miles of travel, that this idea has been so flashed before the eyes of men that they will not forget it, and that our meeting this morn- ing has become a new, great fact in the historic evolution of the race which will not be obliterated. What, it seems to me, should have blunted some of the arrows of criti- cism shot at the promoters of this movement is this other fact, that it is the representatives of that Christian faith which we believe has in it such ele- ments and divine forces that it is fitted to the needs of all men, who have planned and provided this first school of comparative religions, wherein devout men of all faiths may speak for themselves without hindrance, with- out criticism and without compromise, and tell what they believe and why