Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/255

CHAPTER XI. THE ACCOUNT OF RELIGION AND MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS. THE relation of Catholic Christianity to acute social prob- lems was specially remarked on by Cardinal Gibbons in a fourth-day paper. The example and teaching of Jesus Christ made every honest labor laudable, at a time when Greek and Roman life had put a stigma of degradation upon work, mechanical as well as manual, relegating it to slaves, and mak- ing it unworthy of freemen. Even the primeval curse of labor was obliterated by the toilsome life of Jesus Christ. The reputed son of an artisan, and his early manhood spent in a mechanic's shop, Christ has lightened the tools of toil and cast a halo upon lowly labor. No less an advance upon pagan morality was made when Christ, who knew no sin, threw the mantle of mercy over sinning woman. No page of revelation is more touching than that on which is inscribed the judg- ment, " Neither will I condemn thee ; go, sin no more." The Catholic congregation of the Good Shepherd has to-day 150 houses where 20.000 women are under the care of upward of 4,000 sisters. Buddhism, according to the fifth-day paper of a Siamese representative, teaches that poverty, accident, or misfortune should be borne with patience, and that if they have come by one's own fault the sufferer should try to discover their causes and seek a remedy for them. Temperance is enjoined upon all Buddhists on the ground that the habit of using anything that intoxicates tends to lower the mind to the level of that of an idiot, a madman, or an evil spirit. With the eleventh day of the Parliament came the consid- eration of the practical problems of human society and the actual facts of human life. On the previous day Swami Vivekan- anda, the Hindu monk, had criticised the greater readiness of S37