Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/224

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196 INTRODUCTION TO PARLIAMENT PAPERS. Zoroaster, of a religion strongly theisitic and earnestly ethical, were the subject of an eighth-day paper by J. J. Modi, and of an elaborate essay sent to the Parliament from Bombay by a specially authorized expositor, Mr. E. S. D. Bharucha. The Confucian system of China was elaborately presented in a paper by Pung Kwang Yu on the third day, and in other papers specially presented by him and reproduced in full in the report of the papers. The approach to theism made by the chiefly ethical, humane, and political teaching of Con- fucius, was further expounded in a prize essay on Confucian- ism, by Kung Hsien Ho, which was read on the sixth day. The Taoism of China, which had originally a kernel of pure theism, but later became almost wholly a worship of spirits, was touched upon by Mr. Yu, and by Professor M. S. Terry in a sixth-day paper, and was specially expounded in a prize essay by one of its disciples. The Mohammedan conception of God, as infinitely removed from man, absolute in power, clothed with every con- ceivable perfection, requiring a religion of complete submis- sion, or Islam, and known by many names, of which the first and most common is "The Merciful, The Compassionate," was brought out on the fifth day of the Parliament in a paper by Dr. George Washburn. Professor J. Estlin Carpenter on the sixth day specially noted Mohammed's saying : " Every nation has a creator of the heavens to which they turn in prayer. It is God who turneth them toward it. Hasten then emulously after good wheresoever ye be. God will one day bring you all together." On the tenth day, and again on the eleventh, the religion of Islam or resignation, submission, aspiration to God, was expounded and defended by Moham- med Webb. The theology of Judaism was reviewed b}^ Dr. Isaac M. Wise on the second day of the Parliament. On the fourth day Rabbi H. Pereira Mendes developed and applied the ancient Hebrew idea of a God of fatherhood, of mercy, of reconciliation, a God of creation, of spirit, of revelation, and of eternal life. On the sixth day Rabbi G. Gottheil set forth