Universal Religion
Presented at the 1893 Parliament of Religion
To the Hindu, the whole world of religion is only a traveling, a coming up of different men and women, through various conditions and circumstances, to the same goal. Every religion is only the evolving of the Infinite Spirit out of the material man; and the same Spirit is the inspirer of all of them. Why, then, are there so many contradictions? They are only apparent, says the Hindu. The contradictions come from the same truth adapting itself to the varying circumstances of different natures. It is the same light coming through glasses of different colors. And these little variations are necessary for purposes of adaptation.
If there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one that will have no location in place or time, one that will be infinite, like the God it will preach; one whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; one that will not be Hindu or Buddhist, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, with infinite space for development; and one that with its catholicity will embrace in its infinite arms every human being, from the lowest to the highest man. It will be a religion that will have no place for persecution or intolerance in its polity, that will recognize divinity in every man and woman, and whose whole scope, whose whole force, will be centered in aiding humanity to realize its own true, divine nature.
Offer such a religion and all the nations will follow you. May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Allah of the Mohammedans, the Father in heaven of the Christians, give strength to you to carry out this noble ideal!
