Page:The World's Parliament of Religions Vol 1.djvu/219

 PART SECOND. INTRODUCTION TO THE PARLIAMENT PAPERS. CHAPTER I. THE STUDY OF THE WORLD'S RELIGIONS. NO one of the promoters of the plan for a mutual confer- ence among representatives of the World's Religions, would urge a claim of originality in his work. This notable event was a growth whose roots reach far and deep. The germs of it have been in the world from the. days of Paul and of Jesus ; but the wide expansion of them may be dated per- haps, from about the era of modern missions. The founding of the British Empire in India opened at once a new field for evangelization, and a new field for scholarship. The addition of the mother tongue of all the languages of modern Europe — the Sanskrit — to the list of "the learned languages " culti- vated by scholars, dates only from the days of Sir William Jones, about one hundred years ago. It is long since that time that the sacred books of the great religions of the world have become accessible to Christian scholars in general. And the science of Comparative Theology is the growth almost of our own time. With the growing interest in this science has come into men's thoughts a larger conception of huro.an history, a new and more religious idea of divine providence through all ages and all lands. To this study no facts concerning the religious life of man are unimportant. Under the lowest forms of human manners, worship and thought, even among barbarous and savage tribes, it discerns the crude efforts of uninstructed man to express faith in a power above himself — efforts which reach loftier heights in the forms of Platonic 191