[We gladly insert the following from the New York Sun on the Parliament of Religions now In session at the World's Fair, Chicago;-a well deserved rebuke, even from the editor of a newspaper.]
If the so-called Parliament of Religions at Chicago is for any other purpose than to be a sensational side show to the big Fair, it is a purely agnostic purpose. It is to destroy the old conviction that there is a single absolute true and perfect religion revealed from God, and to substitute for it the agnostic theory that no religious belief is more than an expression of the universal and ceaseless effort of men to discover the undiscoverable. It is that men's Gods are of their own making, and that they are improved and finally discarded according as the manufacturers grow in enlightenment.
How, then, can Christians consistently join in any such polytheistic symposium as that now proceeding at Chicago ? If Christianity is not the sole true and perfect religion, and if all others are not consequently false and pernicious, it is based on delusion. If it is not merely the best, but also the only religion whereby men can be saved, it is an imposture. If it contains only a part of the truth, sharing that priceless possession with many other religions, its source is not as it proclaims itself to be. Christianity is either the sole and complete revelation of divine truth from God Himself, and hence the only and absolute truth, or it is a fabrication of men, the more worthless because it seeks to bolster itself up by false pretenses. If God did not come down from heaven and take on the form of a man in order to show man the only way to salvation, thereby making all other religions false and profane, Christian theology is a sham :it is built on fiction.
That being so, Christianity cannot argue with other religions and compromise with them, accepting something and giving something. It can only say, This is the truth of God, uttered by God Himself, and there is no other religious truth possible. Accept it or reject it at the peril of your soul. God does not argue with men. He commands and they must obey :and Christianity is that divine command, or it is no more than a delusion and a superstition. If it is not divine and absolute, but uncertain human groping for truth like other religions, the story of the incarnation and the resurrection is a fable and the doctrine of the atonement is a myth.
How, then, can Christians come together with Buddhists, Brahmans, Mohammedans, Jews, and Zoroastrians to discuss their religion with them on equal terms? How can they treat them otherwise than as infidels who are the surer of damnation because they have seen the light of heaven and turned away from it?
In Chicago hospitality to all religions indicates agnostic indifference to them all.-(New York Sun.)