World Parliament of Religions Scrapbook 003

              #003 World Parliament of Religions Scrapbook, p. 165

through the human mind and—like a watchman
forsaking his post—we admit the intruder, for-
getting that the divine mind can guard this en-
trance.
What is termed matter, being unintelligent,
cannot say: "I suffer, I die, I am sick, or I am
well." It is mortal mind that speaks thus and
appears to make good its own claims. To mortal
mind sin and suffering are real, but immortal
sense includes no evil or pestilence. And be-
cause it has no error of sense and no sense of
error it is immortal. Cast the sickness out of
mortal mind and it disappears from the body.
Cast out the sin from this mind and the sin
ceases.
It was scientifically established that leprosy
was a mental creation and not physical when
Moses first put his hand into his bosom and drew
it forth white as snow with the dread disease,
and presently restored his hand to its natural
condition by the same simple process. Then God
said: "It shall come to pass if they will not
hear thee, neither hearken to the voice of the
first sign, that they will believe, the voice of the
latter." And so it was in the coming centuries,
when Jesus showed his students the power of
mind to cast out evil and disease, and healed
the sick and destroyed sin by one and the same
metaphysical process.
          Conclusions Differ.
Christian scientists and the popular religious
sects unite in the promise of their doctrine, but
seem to separate in their conclusions. Both
agree that there is one God, also that God is
good and omnipotent. Then the ecclesiastic
and the scientist part of their statement of
God's powers—wherein it is found that the
ecclesiastic believes in three intelligent powers
instead of one. The first power is good, an in-
telligence called God. The second power is
evil, the opposite to good. It cannot therefore
be intelligent, although so called. The third
power is called the real man, a supposed mix-
ture of the first and second powers of intelli-
gence and non-intelligence of spirit and matter,
of good and evil.
Let us remember that if God is omnipotent,
evil is impotent. There is but one side of om-
nipotent good—it has no evil side; there is but
one side to reality and that is the good side.
If God is all in all, that finishes the question of
a good and a bad side to existence. You will
gather the importance of these sayings when
sorrow comes, for "sorrow endureth but a night
and joy cometh in the morning." The dream is
sickness, sin, and death and your waking from
it is a reality, even the triumph of soul over
sense. Take the side you wish to carry and be
careful not to talk on both sides. You are attor-
ney for the case, whatever it be, and will win or
lose according to your mental verdict. The old
Latin proverb is true, "That thou seest, that
thou heist."
         Matter Yielding to Spirit.
"We are in the midst of a revolution; physics
are yielding with a struggle to divine meta-
physics. Mortal mind rebels at its own bounda-
ries. Weary of matter, it would catch the mean-
ing of spirit. If thought is startled at the wrong
claim of science for the supremacy of God or
good, and doubts it, ought we not contrawise, be
astounded at the vigorous claims of evil, and
doubt them, and no longer think it natural to
love sin, and unnatural to forsake it—no longer
imagine evil to be ever present and God absent?
Truth should not seem as surprising and unnat-
ural as error, and error should not seem as real
as truth. There is no error in science wherein
being harmonizes with its divine principle, God.
Corporeal sense may hide truth, health, har
mony, and holiness, as the mist obscures the
fountain, but divine science, the sunshine of
truth, will melt away the shadow and reveal the
celestial peaks.
The following are the tenents of the Christian
science churches:
1. As adherents of truth we take the script-
ures for our guide to eternal life.
2. We acknowledge and adore one Supreme
God. We acknowledge his son and the Holy
Ghost, and man as the divine image and like-
ness.
We acknowledge God's forgiveness of sin, in
the destruction of sin; and his present and fu-
ture punishment of "Whatsoever worketh
abomination or maketh a lie." We acknow-
ledge the atonement as proof of man's unity
with God. And the way of salvation, as demon-
strated by Jesus' casting out evils, healing the
sick, and raising the dead—resurrecting a dead
faith to seize the great possibilities and living
energies of divine life.
3. We solemnly promise to strive, watch and
pray for that mind to be in us which was also in
Christ Jesus. To love one another, and, up to
our highest understanding to be meek, merciful
and just, and to live peaceably with all men.
Brethern of the united world, in unification of
hope and charity we can say in the words of the
Hebrew bard: "Who is so great a God as our
God."
The morning session was closed with a
very interesting address on the religion of
the North American Indian by Miss
Fletcher, at the head of the ethnological
department of Harvard university.
        AFTERNOON SESSION.
  Professor A. W. Small Speaks on "The
        Churches and the City Problem."
Professor A. W. Small, Ph. D., of the
University of Chicago, presented a paper
entitled "The Churches and the City Prob-
lems." His address consisted of thirty-
three theses, with comments upon those
which are not self-evident. They were
presented with comprehensive modifying
statements, and, in brief, Professor Small
said:
The standpoint of this paper is not that of
theology, but of positive sociology. The posi-
tive evidence thus far available is sufficient to
justify sociologists, whether in sympathy with
any theology or not, in adopting the working hy-
pothesis that the principles of ultimate social
science will be reiterations of essential
Christianity. Christianity and the churches
are not distinct as gravitation and
waterwheels, or steam and cylinders.
The present discussion deals not with the force,
but with the machinery. Whatever its formal
theology, any church named after Jesus Christ
has hidden between the lines of its creeds
enough of the secret of life to transform itself
and the circle of its influence into a section of
ideal humanity. Life in modern cities presents
human wants in their most importunate and
complex forms. In cities motives to concrete
good and evil are intensified to their maxim. In
city life the highest premiums are placed on
selfishness of every sort, from the grossest to
the most refined. In cities the relative impor-
tance of economic advantage is put at the high-
est appraisals. The relations which occasion
the greatest number of social contacts in cities
are those which involve collision of economic
interests. In cities the importance of personal-
ity tends toward the minimum. Essential val-
ues thus tend most strongly to reversal in cities.
Instead of appraising goods by their service to
manhood, men in cities are under the severest
temptation to value manhood according to its
productivity of goods. Men are measured by
the same standard as draft-horses and steam
engines.
        Personal Irresponsibility.
The social isolation of the majority in great
cities increases with the growth of population.
Under these circumstances personal irresponsi-
bility develops. The foregoing conditions con-
tain the principles of difference between the re-
lation of men in cities and in smaller communi-
ties. To these conditions we may trace most of
the evils, or degrees of evil, peculiar to cities.
Chief among the symptoms of these conditions,
by no means wholly due to the circumstances of
cities, and by no means confined to cities, but ag-
gravated and accumulated in the urban popula-
tions are: 1. Poverty and crime. 2. In-
security of labor. 3. Minimizing of wages.
4. Inhuman surroundings of labor in cer-
tain industries. 5. Unsanitary housing.
6. Under-nutrition, not alone from low
wages, but from ignorance or neglect of domestic
economy. 7. The drink curse. 8. The saloon
curse—twin evils, but distinct in many causes,
and consequences, thus constituting two
separate social problems. 9. The luck
superstition, the trade in speculation,
betting, gambling, lotteries, preposterous
endowment and insurance gift enterprises, and
the thousand and one similar something-for-
nothing schemes. 10. Showy and extravagant
business customs, especially of agents spending
employers' money, consequent extravagance and
ostentation in personal habits, and temptation
to people of lower incomes. 11. Substitution of
boarding-house, apartment-house, or hotel for
the home. 12. Bread winning by mothers.
13. Child labor. 14. Scaling of wages by sex
instead of by work. 15. Degradation of
woman, by which I refer to the
whole line of curses, physical, economic, do-
mestic, political, and moral, that swarm about
the institution of prostitution; a group of phe-
nomena a hundred fold more significant than
public opinion has ever suspected. 16. Propa-
gation of "defectives." 17. Political betrayals
of the ignorant and weak. 18. Progressive
widening of social distances between classes,
along with reciprocal misunderstanding and
mistrust. 19. Organization and destructive war-
fare of mutually dependent industrial classes.
20. Abnormal materializing of the life of all
classes, or, viewed from another standpoint,
21. Alienation of the intelligent and responsible,
as well as the less prominent from practical
spiritualizing agencies. 22. Government con-
trol by ballots instead of by brains.
      Opportunity for the Churches.
The life of the great majority of the residents
of cities is practically bounded by some or all of
these facts. Within these limitations the
masses live and move and have their being. To
the masses, therefore, doctrines of humanity
and duty and religion that do not deal directly
with these realities are simply mythologies and
riddles. The conditions thus specified are al-
ready schools of broader brotherhood than has
been possible in any previous century. They
constitute an unique opportunity for the
churches. Our question is. How must the
churches improve the opportunity? The
churches, as such, do not think the thoughts,
nor talk the language, nor share the burdens
which, for the masses in cities, contain the
real problems of life. City churches are only
partially conscious of the tendencies which
threaten to reduce them to the status of class
institutions.
The churches have no explicit policy toward
city problems. They lack intelligent interest in
them. They are even suspicious of ever en-
deavoring to permit the churches the co-opera-
tion in solutions.
The churches owe it to themselves to settle
the primary questions of religious aims, viz.:
Has or not the church, besides its mission con-
cerning man in his relations to God and the
trinity, a co-ordinate mission concerning man in
his relations to his fellows, and at the present
time?
As absolutely claimed, the ultimate solution
of these problems will be Christian, but it re-
mains to be seen how generally the Christian
churches will be agents of solution.
Let us record the hope and the prediction that
this Parliament of Religions will promote
municipal co-operation of all who love their fel-
lows, each respecting the other's right to worship
God according to the dictates of his own con-
science; each pledging to the other his loyal
fellowship toward helping every brother man to
achieve life in more and more abundance.
            P. C. MAZOOMDAR.
  He Tells of the World's Religious Debt to
                   Asia.
"The "World's Religious Debt to Asia"
was the subject of an address by P. C. Ma-
zoomdar, of Calcutta. He said, in part :
The first gift conferred by Asia on the reli-
gious world is insight into nature. The Oriental
discovers, contemplates, and communes with the
spirit of God, who, in his view, fills all creation.
Nature is God's abode. In the vast temple of
nature Asia beholds the Supreme spirit reign-
ing, and worships him through the great objects
his hand has made. The forces of nature
strike the Asiatic as the manifestations of a per- 
gonal will. The life of nature is the life of God.
The senses and the soul form a vast organ on
which the contemplation of nature plays her au-
gust harmony and through which insight makes
her supernatural yet most natural revelations.
What lesson do the hermitages, the
monasteries, the cave temples, the dis-
ciplines and austerities of the religious East
teach the world? Renunciation. The Asiatic
apostle will ever remain an ascetic, a celibate, a
homeless Akinchana, a fakir. Orientals—we are
all the descendants of John the Baptist. Any
one who has taken pains at spiritual culture
must admit that the great enemy to a devout
concentration of mind is the force of bodily and
worldly desire. Communion with God is im-
possible so long as the flesh and its lusts are not
subdued. Hence, renunciation has always been 
recognized as a law of spiritual progress in Asia. 
In the West you observe, watch, and speculate.
In the East we contemplate, commune, and suffer
ourselves to be carried away by the spirit of the
universe. In the West you wrest from nature
her secrets and she makes you wealthy and
prosperous. You look upon her as your slave and
sometimes fail to realize her sacredness. In the
East nature is our eternal sanctuary, the soul is
our everlasting temple, and the sacredness of
God's creation is only next to the sacredness of
God himself.
In the West you work incessantly, and your
work is your worship. In the East, we medi-
tate and worship for long hours, and worship is
our work. Perhaps one day, after this parlia-
ment has achieved its success, the Western and
the Eastern men shall combine to support each 
other's strength and supply each other's defi- 
ciencies.
          MISSIONS THE TOPIC.
  An Interesting Symposium in Which Various
          Views Are Expressed.
In announcing the debate on foreign mis-
sions, Dr. Barrows said:
I remember receiving a letter from one of the
speakers of the afternoon, who sits here in
Chinese costume, in which he said that if a thor-
oughly practical character could be given to this
parliament of religions it would restore the un-
limited hope and ardor of the apostolic age to
Christian missions. Charles Darwin is the
greatest name in modern science. Charles
Darwin was a contributor to foreign 
missions. Some people have called this 
parliament one of the great spiritual efforts of a 
century. This parliament is to be followed for
eight days by a congress on missions. We have
on the platform with us a number of persons ex-
perienced in foreign missions. We have the
president of the Robert college at Constanti-
nople, which college is in a large degree the
creator of free Bulgaria. We have with us
those who can bring to us experience on the
improvement of Christian methods in other