Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/47

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THE WORLD'S RESPONSE.
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decided opposition to the proposed Parliament. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, at its meeting in Portland (1892), passed a resolution emphatically disapproving of the Parliament; but as this resolution was adopted without debate in the hurried closing hours of the Assembly, when probably the majority of those who voted for the resolution of the Committee did not know accurately what they were Condemning, this action of the General Assembly produced very little effect. The leading Presbyterian journals of the United States cordially approved the Parliament, and among the Presbyterian scholars and divines who accepted appointments on the Advisory Council were, Drs. Ellinwood, Patton, Green, DeWitt, Hunt, Willis Beecher, Happer, Haydn, Briggs, Van Dyke, Sample, Morris, Riggs, William C. Roberts, William H. Roberts, Marvin R. Vincent, Schaff, C. L. Thompson, Ecob, Parkhurst, W. A. Bartlett, Niccolls, Teunis L.Hamlin, Ray, Withrow, Worrall, McClure, Tuttle, McPherson, and Freeman.

Dr. Ellinwood, one of the Secretaries of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, wrote that the plans of the Parliament had been carefully considered by that Board, and that they had met general and cordial approval. Dr. Henry Van Dyke wrote : "A real convention of men ought to be one of the best safeguards against a false conventionality of opinions." Dr. S. J. Niccolls, formerly Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, wrote:

I trust that your largest hopes concerning the Parliament may be fully realized. I am not surprised that narrow-minded men, in our own church even, should oppose it. There are some good bigots who imagine that God will not cease working until he has made all men Presbyterians and brought them to adopt ipsissimis verbis the Confession of Faith. There is no religion in the world worth naming or noticing but their own.

The Christian conviction back of this Parliament was well expressed by Pere Hyacinthe in the Contemporary for July, 1892:

It is not true that all religions are equally good; but neither is it true that all religions except one are no good at all. The Christianity of the future, more just than that of the past, will assign to each its place in that