denomination. The Rt. Rev. William E. McLaren, D.D., D.C.L., was the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Chicago and active in promoting the Parliament. The Most Rev. P. A. Feehan was the Archbishop of the Catholic Church, much beloved by his people. The Rev. David Swing was the pastor of the Central Church of Chicago, an independent organization of Christians, and had achieved wide celebrity in literary circles. The Chairman of. the Committee, the Rev. John Henry Barrows, D.D., was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago.
Urged to provide plans for religious meetings in connection with the World's Fair, the Committee at once perceived that the religious world, in its historic developments, and not any one section of that world, should be invited to make some representation. The spirit of most generous brotherhood moved them in giving out their invitations and making their arrangements for the Parliament of Religions.
The Committee began their work with the impression that nothing like a Parliament of Religions had ever assembled before. So far as they knew at the beginning, it had never been dreamed of; but Mr. H. Dharmapala, of Calcutta, General Secretary of the Maha-Bodhi Society, who spoke for the Southern Buddhist Church of Ceylon at the Parliament, wrote:
I rejoice to see that the best intellects of the day have all approved of your grand scheme, which, if carried out, w^ill be the noblest and proudest achievement in history, and the crowning work of the nineteenth century. Twenty centuries ago, just such a congress was held in India by the great Buddhist Emperor, Asoka, in the city of Pataliputra, modern Patna, and the noblest lessons of tolerance therein enunciated were embodied in lithic records and implanted in the four quarters of his extensive empire. Here is one extract: "King Piyadasi honors all forms of religious faith . . . and enjoins reverence for one's own faith and no reviling or injury for that of others. Let the reverence be shown in such a manner as is suited to the difference of belief. . . . For he who in some way honors his own religion, and reviles that of others . . . throws difficulties in the way of his own religion; this, his conduct, cannot be right."
Dr. Martin, President of the Imperial University of Peking, reported that the idea of such a congress had often appeared in fiction and in poetry. One writer from Bohemia claimed
