Dr. Barrows, in his History of the Parliament of Religions, writes:
Since faith in a Divine Power to whom men believe they owe service and worship, has
been like the sun, a life-giving and fructifying potency in man's intellectual and moral
development; since Religion lies at the back of Hindu literature with its marvellous and
mystic developments; of the European Art, whether in the form of Grecian statues or
Gothic cathedrals; and of American liberty and the recent uprisings of men on behalf
of a juster social condition; and since it is as clear as the light, that the Religion of
Christ has led to many of the chief and noblest developments of our modern
civilization, it did not appear that Religion any more than Education, Art, or
Electricity, should be excluded from the Columbian Exposition.
It is not altogether improbable that some of the more enthusiastic Christian
theologians, among the promoters of the Parliament, thought that the Parliament would
give them an opportunity to prove the superiority of Christianity, professed by the vast
majority of the people of the progressive West, over the other faiths of the world.
Much later Swami Vivekananda said, in one of his jocular moods, that the Divine
Mother Herself willed the Parliament in order to give him an opportunity to present the
Eternal Religion of the Hindus before the world at large, and that the stage was set for
him to play his important role, everything else being incidental. The appropriateness of
this remark can be appreciated now, six decades after the great event, from the fact that
whereas all else that was said and discussed at the Parliament has been forgotten, what
Vivekananda preached is still cherished in America, and the movement inaugurated by
him has endeared itself to American hearts.
'One of the chief advantages,' to quote the words of the Hon. Mr. Merwin-Marie Snell,
president of the Scientific Section of the Parliament, 'has been in the great lessons
which it has taught the Christian world, especially the people of the United States,
namely, that there are other religions more venerable than Christianity, which surpass
it in philosophical depths, in spiritual intensity, in independent vigour of thought, and
in breadth and sincerity of human sympathy, while not yielding to it a single hair's
breadth in ethical beauty and efficiency.'
At 10 a.m. the Parliament opened. In it every form of organized religious belief, as
professed among twelve hundred millions of people, was represented. Among the non-
Christian groups could be counted Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism,
Shintoism, Mohammedanism, and Mazdaism.
The spacious hall and the huge gallery of the art Palace were packed with seven
thousand people — men and women representing the culture of the United States. The
official delegates marched in a grand procession to the platform, and in the centre, in
his scarlet robe, sat Cardinal Gibbons, the highest prelate of the Roman Catholic
Church in the Western hemisphere. He occupied a chair of state and opened the
meeting with a prayer. On his left and right were grouped the Oriental delegates:
Pratap Chandra Mazoomdar of the Calcutta Brahmo Samaj, and Nagarkar of Bombay;