Shortly after his success at the Parliament of Religions, the Swami began, as we have
seen, to write to his devotees in India, giving them his plans for India's regeneration.
He urged them to take up work that would lead to better systems of education and
hygiene throughout India. He wanted a magazine to be started for disseminating among
his fellow-countrymen the broad truths of Vedanta, which would create confidence in
their minds regarding their power and potentialities, and give them back their lost
individuality. He exhorted his devotees to work especially for the uplift of women and
the masses, without whose help India would never be able to raise herself from her
present state of stagnation. He sent them money, earned through his lectures, for
religious, educational, and other philanthropic activities. His enthusiastic letters
inspired them. But they wanted him to return and take up the leadership. They were
also distressed to see the malicious propaganda against him by the Christian
missionaries in India. The Swami, however, repeatedly urged them to depend upon
themselves. 'Stand on your own feet!' he wrote to them. 'If you are really my children,
you will fear nothing, stop at nothing. You will be like lions. You must rouse India and
the whole world.'
About the criticism from the Christian missionaries, he wrote: 'The Christianity that is
preached in India is quite different from what one sees here. You will be astonished to
hear that I have friends in this country amongst the clergy of the Episcopal and
Presbyterian Churches, who are as broad-minded, as liberal, and as sincere as you are
in your own religion. The real spiritual man — everywhere — is broad-minded. His
love forces him to be so. They to whom religion is a trade are forced to become narrow-
minded and mischievous by their very introduction into religion of the competitive,
fighting, selfish methods of the world.' He requested the Indian devotees not to pay any
heed to what the missionaries were saying either for or against him. 'I shall work
incessantly,' he wrote, 'until I die, and even after death I shall work for the good of the
world. Truth is infinitely more weighty than untruth.... It is the force of character, of
purity, and of truth — of personality. So long as I have these things, you can feel easy;
no one will be able to injure a hair of my head. If they try, they will fail, saith the Lord.'
EXPERIENCES IN THE WEST
For some time Swami Vivekananda had been planning a visit to London. He wished to
sow the seed of Vedanta in the capital of the mighty British Empire. Miss Henrietta
Müller had extended to him a cordial invitation to come to London, and Mr. E.T.
Sturdy had requested him to stay at his home there. Mr. Leggett, too, had invited the
Swami to come to Paris as his guest.
Mr. Francis H. Leggett, whose hospitality the Swami had already enjoyed at Percy,