Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/138



HE record of the transactions of the Parliament is to be sought in Part Third, in which are reproduced, for study and preservation, the papers presented to that body. But there are scenes, incidents and details to be recounted, which are essential to the completeness of the history. Some things, indeed, may be said, once for all, as applying to the whole course of the meetings. They were attended by enormous throngs with every indication of deep and intent interest, even when the themes and the treatment of them were of an abstruse character that would have seemed remote from popular appreciation. Once the great "Hall of Columbus" was so thronged that the neighbor "Hall of Washington" was required to contain the overflow, when the two meetings went on side by side, listening alternately to the same addresses. When the scientific section was opened for the consideration of a certain class of subjects, the diversion gave no appreciable relief to the pressure of the eager crowds at the main session of the Parliament.

Nor was the quality of the attendance less significant than its numbers. Out of the thousands of hearers, the ministers of the Gospel of various sects and orders, both Catholic and Protestant, might always be numbered by hundreds. And among the multitude of ministers were some, in large proportion, whose presence was specially significant,—missionaries of the cross, returned from labors in the ends of the earth, and teachers in the theological seminaries, not of Chicago only, but of the country at large. Nothing can give a better idea of the intentness of the interest that prevailed than the fact that the splendors and wonders of the great Fair itself often seemed