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 ASSEMBLING AND WELCOME. 99 my people. And when I think that here, in this city of Chicago, this vortex of physicality, this center of material civilization, you hold a Parliament of Religions ; when I think that, in the heart of the World's Fair, where abound all the excellences of the physical world, you have provided also a hall for " the feast of reason and the flow of soul," I am once more reminded of my native land. Why ? Because here, even here, I find the same two sister streams of spirit and matter, of the intellect and physicality, flowing together, repre- senting the symbolical evolution of the universe. I need hardly tell you that, in holding this Parliament of Religions, where all the religions of the world are to be represented, you have acted worthily of the race that is in the van-guard of civilization — a civilization, the chief characteristic of which, to my mind, is widening toleration, breadth of heart and liberality toward all the different religions of the world. In allowing men of different shades of religious opinion, and holding different views as to philosophical and metaphysical problems, to speak from the same platform — aye, even allow- ing me, who, I confess, am a heathen, as you call me — to speak from the same platform with them, you have acted in a manner worthy of the mother- land of the society which I have come to represent to-day. The funda- mental principle of that society is universal tolerance ; its cardinal belief that, underneath the superficial strata, runs the living water of truth. I have always felt that between India and America there was a closer bond of union in the times gone by, and I do think it is probable that there may be a subtler reason for the identity of our names than either the theory of Johnson or the mistake of Columbus can account for. It is true that I belong to a religion which is now decrepit with age, and that you belong to a race in the first flutter of life, bristling with energy. And yet you cannot be surprised at the sympathy between us, because you must have observed the secret union that sometimes exists between age and childhood. It is true that in the East we have been accustomed to look toward something which is beyond matter. We have been taught for ages after ages and centuries after centuries to turn our gaze inward toward realms that are not those which are reached by the help of the physical senses. This fact has given rise to the various schools of philosophy that exist to-day in India, exciting the wonder and admiration, not only of the dead East, but of the living and rising West. We have in India, even to this day, thousands of people who give up as trash, as nothing, all the material comforts and luxuries of life, with the hope, with the realization, that, great as the physical body may be, there is something greater within man, underneath the universe, that is to be longed for and striven after. In the West you have evolved such a stupendous energy on the phys- ical plane, such unparalleled vigor on the intellectual plane, that it strikes any stranger landing on your shores with a strange amazement. And yet I can read, even in this atmosphere of material progress, 1 can discern