among which Christianity and Mohammedanism have taken the lead, were giving away their own case by consenting to meet the other faiths on terms of equality and fraternity. But, powerful by position as these opponents are, there appeared no gaps in Columbus Hall because of their absence. Their faiths were represented by subordinates and subjects who had not the fear of authority before their eyes. From a logical point of view the position of these opponents may be worthy of greater admiration for its soundness than was the attitude of some of the Parliament's speakers, which was that of naked emotion with no shred of logic to cover it. Yet the advance movements of mankind are not generally made in the strict grooves of logic. The impelling forces of progress are found rather in ethical motives and sympathies of the heart, which may be only dimly conscious, or not at all conscious, of their relation to any system of thought. So it is safe to take our position with the progressive sympathies and the heart-instincts that are carrying mankind forward to larger, truer, and more loving life, even though they may be able to give a very poor logical account of themselves. As Emerson said of prayer, "In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity; yet, when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory and flee," so would I say of the World's Parliament of Religions. Though the Roman Catholic and the

Greek and the Presbyterian and the Mohammedan, and representatives of other creeds, may perchance have found it somewhat difficult logically to square their presence there with their theological beliefs, yet it was cause for devout congratulation that they fled their theory and followed their sympathies; that, though logic might forbid, they came and shook hands together, and talked together of the truths they held in common, and looked withal so radiantly happy in their fraternal action that I for one was very happy to be there, too, to help cheer on the whole illogical proceeding. I prefer to go forward with followers of the heart, though their movement may have no logical coherence with the theology of the head, rather than to do mental homage to the stanchest logicians, who are held fast and stagnant in the morass of false theological premises. To paraphrase Emerson's sentence, "When the fraternal motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should lead Jew, Presbyterian, Mohammedan, Greek, and Catholic to join hands as cobrothers in faith. Leave your logic to take care of itself, and flee to the strongholds of the heart." And the logic will take care of itself. By and by it will catch up with the larger action and make a new statement to cover it.

Hence I look for great good to come to mankind as a result of the fraternal mingling of faiths in this Religious Parliament. For one thing, I believe it will help toward these larger statements of

faith and a revision of old creeds. Among those who have come under its influence — and they are by no means limited to the people who were in person at the meetings — the sectarian spirit must be less narrow, the dogmatic temper less dominant. The new creeds may contain fewer articles and much less of the metaphysics of theological speculation, but a good deal more of brotherly love.

But here, lest I should be charged with making a plea for mere emotional sentiment in religion as against logical thought, let me say that, after all, the conflict of which I have been speaking is not so much between logic and sentiment as between two different lines of logic in our mental activities. The logic of your creed is one thing: the syllogism may be technically all right, but the premises of it all wrong, and very antique. And that is what is' the matter with the creeds of the English Archbishop of Canterbury and the Turkish Sultan, which those high ecclesiastics have brought forward in condemnation of the World's Parliament of Religions. But, on the other hand, there is another course of logic at work, perhaps, in your mind (at work, it may be, unconsciously) toward a new creed from different premises. Beneath the fraternal religious sympathies and the heart's ethical instincts there is a logic of thought. They are not mere baseless flights of feeling. What says Science of men's relation to the Eternal Power, to which all the great religions apply some name to signify Deity? That all men, of whatever race or

faith or color or nation, live therefrom and therein; that all men, therefore, are its offspring: hence that all men are brothers. There, or in similar terms, is the logic which is beneath your fraternal sympathies. There is the rational thought supporting the demand of your conscience to treat your fellow-men as equals with you in origin and entitled to like opportunities with you for life's achievements. There is the philosophy of your heart's instincts when you hasten to the aid of a fellow-man in distress; though, if your heart's instincts are healthy and sound, they do not wait to be prodded to the Good Samaritan's duty by philosophy. Yet the philosophy, the reason, the logic is there, to be called into service if need be, to convict dull consciences of neglected duty, and to stir laggard hearts to brotherly kindness. Now I believe that this kind of reason, of logical thought, of scientific knowledge concerning the common origin and the social relations of men, has been in late years working, burrowing, more or less clearly or dimly, in the minds of great numbers of thoughtful people all round the globe; and from this wide-spread thought have largely come the fraternal impulses which have produced the World's Parliament of Religions, in itself a most practical and vivid illustration of the thought. And, the Parliament having been such a brilliant success,a triumph beyond even the ardent expectations of its promoters, its influence will now react to strengthen and multiply the thought which was its

root, and to keep alive those active sympathies of practical fraternity which are the very life-breath of the thought. If the thought be not exercised in the vital air of a large liberty, it will dwindle and perish.

ear.

But I look not for its death, but rather for its growth and increase, the green blade to-day, but the ear will follow, and then the full corn in the This idea of human fraternity, of a fraternity of faiths as well as races, is to be a potent factor, I believe, in writing the creeds of the future and moulding the work of all the faiths and churches. There will be much less in those new creeds than in the old ones of attempts to define God, but there will be a great deal more about the needs and duties of man. The extensive work of foreign missions sustained by Christendom will gradually develop new methods consonant with this idea. There will be less talk of conversion, more of education and elevation. There has been of late a dreadful fear in the orthodox world that to cease urging on the heathen that their ancestors who never heard of Christ are in the bottomless pit of helpless perdition is going to cut the nerve of missionary effort; but this dread, it may be hoped, will not much longer trouble the minds of devout Christians. Even the venerable American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, in its late sessions at Worcester, seems to have felt a whiff from the new religious breeze blowing from the Chicago Parliament, and has begun to adjust its