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THE WORLD REBUILT 
 
WORLD 
 REBUILT 
 
 WALTER WALSH, 
 
 D.D. 
 
 Leader of the Free Religious Movement 
 towards World - Religion and World- 
 Brotherhood, London. Author of "The 
 Moral Damage of War," "The Thinker 
 and the Fighter," "Jesus in Jute- 
 opolis," " The Greater 
 Parables of Tolstoy," 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD. 
 
 Ruskin House, 40 Museum Street 
 
 London, W.C. 1 
 
 - i 
 
DEDICATION 
 
 With appreciation and respect I dedicate 
 
 The World Rebuilt 
 to 
 
 HENDRICK CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN 
 
 a distinguished master of the arts who for more than a decade 
 has devoted his talents and fortune to the working-out of 
 his great conception of a City -which should be a World- 
 Centre of Communication and a means towards the World's 
 Peace, and 'who, enlisting the best art and artists, has with 
 pen and pencil and architectural design set forth his scheme 
 in noble literary form, successfully summoning also the 
 leaders of mankind to the formation of a great World- 
 Conscience Society to function as the soul of the World- 
 City, and to prepare for the administration of the earth 
 by scientific, rational, and fraternal methods: 
 and to 
 
 PAUL OTLET 
 
 Belgian jurist, professor and sociologist, -who for a score 
 of years has been a leader in the cause of Internationalism, 
 author of many books on International relations and world- 
 peace, including his great outline of a World-Charter, 
 organiser of the Union of International Associations and 
 the Centre for International Studies and Informations, with 
 connected publications, museums, libraries and catalogues 
 of International movements, and whose genius for the em- 
 bodiment of great ideals in the working institutions of 
 society points to the functional activities of the Interna- 
 tional World-Centre, the architectural features of -which 
 have been so magnificently planned by Mr. Andersen 
 as a visible symbol of The World Rebuilt. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE FREE RELIGIOUS MOVEMENT toward? 
 World-religion and World-brotherhood gave birth to thir 
 book in the form of Addresses delivered in London. The 
 original intention was to set forth the principles and aims 
 of the Movement. But as the Movement is really a cosmic 
 one, radiating from the facts of universal religion and 
 brotherhood, it concerns itself with the peaceful reconstruc- 
 tion of society, and the rebuilding of the war-shattered 
 world. 
 
 Under many different names, the Free Religious Move- 
 ment flourishes in every part of the civilised globe. It is 
 the Modernist Movement in its most comprehensive and 
 thorough-going form. It has its source in that desire for 
 unity which pervades the modern world. It is a reasoned 
 effort to express and encourage that sweep towards Uni- 
 versalism in religion and politics and social ethics which 
 is the most powerful and hopeful impulse of our time. It 
 takes the world for its parish, and mankind as its concern. 
 It seeks to relate human beings to one another and to their 
 universe by principles which are rational, scientific, ethical, 
 and international. 
 
 The Movement is essentially religious; but it is not a 
 sect or a church; for it operates in all sects and churches, 
 yet outside and independently of them all. It substitutes 
 the humanist for the dogmatic, ethics for creeds, and the 
 collective service of mankind for sacraments . It regards 
 religion as spiritual enthusiasm directing itself towards 
 reform of abuses, just social order, free economic conditions, 
 and pacific international arrangements. All forms of 
 religion spring from those universal desires for beauty^ 
 
PREFACE 
 goodness and truth which reveal themselves in man's 
 growing knowledge of his universe and his own aspiring 
 moral nature, and which constitute the sure warrant for 
 a society of World-brotherhood. The human soul is a 
 unity, and the racial solidarity of man follows. Univer- 
 salism is the final goal of human effort. 
 
 The Movement bases itself on humanism rather than 
 ecclesiasticism. Its root is deep in the spiritual oneness of 
 humanity, and its growth is towards the flower and fruit 
 of international unity. Its faith is in the divinity inherent 
 in human nature; it expects to find goodness and truth in 
 the immortal books of all ages and races; and it regards 
 with reverence all those who in every nation and time have 
 laboured and suffered and lived and died for humanity. 
 In the belief that ample wisdom and virtue dwell within 
 the nature of man himself, it moves forward to the 
 accomplishment of the successive tasks of mankind in the 
 strength of those truths which have been approved by 
 experience, discovered by science, and tested by reason. 
 
 The Movement is a movement towards freedom. The 
 goal of human unity can be reached only in the degree in 
 which men and women learn to think independently, fear- 
 lessly and rationally; in proportion as mind and conscience 
 become liberated from servile submission to authority and 
 tradition. It assumes the right of everyone to think and 
 speak his or her own thoughts; and expects the greatest 
 progress to follow from entire intellectual liberty and 
 perfect freedom of judgment. 
 
 The Free Religious Movement, finally, is an insistent 
 and urgent force in human affairs. As becomes a world- 
 wide consciousness and a world-embracing purpose, it takes 
 
PREFACE 
 the widest survey of those questions which agitate the minds 
 and those interests which engage the activities of men and 
 'women in every land and among every people. Nothing 
 that is human is alien to it. Acknowledging the common 
 universal religion embedded within every one of the historic 
 and dogmatic andmythical and sectarian forms of religion, 
 yet recognising the same common universal religion in 
 groups and combinations and movements beyond the 
 bounds of all the organised faiths of the world, the Free 
 Religious Movement claims to be an undefined Association 
 of all those who are making towards a iiiorld which shall 
 beenlightened by knowledge, guided byreason, andanimated 
 by Icrve. 
 
 London, November, 1917. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Parti 
 WORLD-RELIGION 
 
 Page 
 
 The Free Religious Movement and its goal - 
 
 World-religion is a possibility - i 
 
 The spiritual unity of man .... 3 
 
 One God, one humanity, one religion - 5 
 
 Ideals the common possession of all races - - 6 
 
 The problem of evil in the light of human goodness 7 
 
 Religion as natural as art andscience - 9 
 
 The Rebuilding of the World more than a dream - 10 
 
 The historic religions are not universal - - 11 
 
 But merely sects of a larger growth - - - 12 
 
 Trade and politics becoming international - - 12 
 
 Christianity not the universal religion - - 13 
 
 Universal religion built on man not men • - 14 
 
 All religions come out of the human soul - 15 
 
 Supernatural elements a hindrance - - 16 
 
 Internal authority substituted for external - 17 
 
 Compiling the universal Bible - - - - 17 
 
 The religions abandoned for religion - - - 18 
 The Free Religious Movement moves towards religious 
 
 unity ... - - - 20 
 
 Goethe's religion of the Three Reverences - - 20 
 
 Part II 
 
 WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 
 The World can be Rebuilt only on brotherhood 22 
 
 World-brotherhood is a possibility - - 22 
 
 Religion unites where patriotism divides - - 23 
 
 Creed, class and caste as obstacles to brotherhood - 23 
 
 Man's struggle is now against his social environment 24 
 
 The unity of God implies the unity of man - 25 
 
 The Universal Races Congress - 26 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 Race prejudice must be abolished 28 
 
 And an international conscience be developed - 31 
 
 Patriotism has ceased to protect 32 
 
 World-love must be organised 34 
 
 How hate has been organised - - - - 35 
 
 International Congress of Free Religions - 35 
 
 The Free Religious Movement not a sect - - 36 
 
 Faith in human nature ----- 37 
 Humanist forms of faith must supplant dogmatic forms 38 
 
 Instances of the essential oneness of religion - - 39 
 
 In what sense the word God - - - - 41 
 
 To organise World-love is the truest patriotism - 43 
 
 Part III 
 
 A WORLD-CHARTER 
 
 Working or praying for a better world - - - 44 
 
 Religion has to do with public affairs - - 44 
 
 "The Parliament of man, the Federation of the world" 45 
 
 The World-Charter of M. Paul Otlet 47 
 
 The kind of peace to follow the war - - 47 
 
 The United States of the World - - - 50 
 
 Progress towards Internationalism - - - 50 
 
 Call for faith in man 51 
 
 For and against an international army - - - 52 
 
 Imperialism and the " Balance of Power " - 52 
 
 Organise for peace ------ 53 
 
 Human nature and evolution 54 
 
 " Utopia " as practical politics 55 
 
 The trowel must supplant the sword - - - 55 
 
 Part IV 
 A WORLD-CENTRE 
 
 Cities as symbols of civilisation - 
 The World-Centre planned by Hendrick Christian 
 Andersen - - 
 
 57 
 
 58 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Pag: 
 
 Signs of Progress - - - 60 
 
 The town-planning of Chicago 61 
 
 The World-Centre in brief outline - - 63 
 
 Questions of cost ...... 63 
 
 Putting an end to war ----- 64 
 
 Universal combination of States - - - - 65 
 
 Disarmament will follow peace organisation - - 66 
 
 A city of refuge .... - 66 
 
 The building of Troy, Thebes, and the World-Centre 68 
 
 Part V 
 
 A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 
 Conscience most important - - - 69 
 
 Character precedes and shapes institutions - - 70 
 
 Material advance has outrun morals - - - 71 
 
 The false and easy life of our time - - 71 
 Ineffective religion - - "73 
 
 A World-Conscience Building - 73 
 
 A Temple of Religions ..... 74 
 
 National temples are partizan 75 
 
 Future advances not military but humane - 76 
 
 Away from separation towards unity 77 
 
 Human nature and social evolution tend to unity - 78 
 
 Animal instincts yielding to human character - 79 
 
 An international mind and body 79 
 
 A World-Conscience Society 79 
 
 An opportunity to Rebuild the World - - - 80 
 
 The World-Centre as a City of Celebration - - 81 
 
I 
 
 WORLD-RELIGION 
 
 THE Free Religious Movement sets 
 out boldly towards the goal of 
 World-religion, in the sacred name 
 of which alone can the World be 
 Rebuilt. But the faltering mind at 
 once raises the question, Is World- 
 religion possible? I believe it is ; 
 and I can call many witnesses. I call first on a witness 
 who lived nearly seven hundred years ago. 
 
 Jalalu-'d-Din is universally recognised as the great- 
 est of the Persian mystical poets. When he lived and 
 sang, by those who knew him best, he was given the 
 royal title of " The Splendour of the Faith," or "The 
 Glory of Religion." Jalalu-'d-Din was one of the pro- 
 phets of the universal. He left mankind the univer- 
 salist gem, 
 
 Because he that is praised is, in fact, only One, 
 In this respect all religions are only one religion. 
 
 This relates itself to the saying of Schiller, "What 
 religion do I profess ? Not one of those you name 
 to me ! And why none ? Because of religion itself! " 
 And that other saying of Victor Hugo, "We are for 
 religion against the religions." 
 
 I next call the spiritual descendants of Jalalu-'d-Din, 
 — I mean the adherents of Sufism, which also hails 
 from Persia, and which sets itself forth as the relig- 
 ious philosophy of love, harmony, and beauty. This 
 is what those adherents themselves say — " Sufism 
 will be the future religion of the world to unite the 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 East and the West, the Hindu and the Moslem, 
 Christian and Jew, the Shia and the Suni, whose true 
 happiness lies only in unity. Satan, under the guise of 
 caste, creed, race, religion, and nation, creates prejudice 
 for the downfall of humanity, and thus causes brother 
 to fight against brother. It is Sufism which will open 
 the eyes of mankind by the light of divine wisdom." 
 The primary object of Sufism is defined as being " To 
 establish a human brotherhood with no consideration 
 of caste, creed, race, nation or religion; for differences 
 only create a lack of harmony and are the source of 
 all miseries." Clearly, then, the pure faith of Sufism, 
 consciously and definitely, makes for the goal of 
 World-religion. 
 
 So does the kindred faith of Bahaism — I say " kin- 
 dred" because The Bab and Baha'u'llah hail from the 
 same Persian land as Sufism and Jalalu'-d-Din. Baha- 
 ism declares as its primary object, " To unite all the 
 races and religions of the world in perfect harmony." 
 It holds to the idea of one religion, founded on the un- 
 derlying fact of all existence, the unity of God. 
 
 The same prophetic voice speaks through Indian 
 Theism, saying, "We, Theists, in India, then, with 
 our tradition of religious toleration and catholicity 
 dating from beyond Asoka, must make aWorld-religion 
 of our faith, seeking to fulfil and not destroy all the 
 faiths by which man has lived and died in any age or 
 clime." 
 
 Another witness I call in the person of Mrs. Eddy, 
 the founder of the " Christian Science" Church, and, 
 perhaps we have in its universalism one explanation of 
 the astonishing spread of her form of religion, " One 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 infinite God, good, unifies men and nations ; consti- 
 tutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the 
 Scripture, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.' " 
 
 In the same spirit speaks the spiritual fraternity call- 
 ing itself" The Alpha Union," — " One Real Life per- 
 vades the whole human race, and is pressing forth to 
 fuller recognition and manifestation. We are not really 
 separate independent units, but members one of an- 
 other. I can and do work together with the one Love- 
 Life for its peaceful, harmonious, gladsome and perfect 
 realisation everywhere." 
 
 Finally — and enough for one roll-call — I remind you 
 that the last book given to the world by that wonderful 
 scholar and churchman, Canon Cheyne, just before he 
 passed away, was entided"The Reconciliation of Races 
 and Religions." He himself thus sets forth the aim of 
 the book : " It would fain contribute to the cause of 
 universal peace, and promote the better understanding 
 of the various religions, which really are but one re- 
 ligion." Here is a perfect echo of Jalilu'-d-Din, "all 
 religions are only one religion." 
 
 I believe I used the word " finally." But one seeker 
 more I must produce in the form of modern science 
 — for Saul also is among the prophets of the universal. 
 Keen discussions are on foot in connection with the 
 sciences of anthropology and ethnology — the science of 
 man and the science of race — which promise to end 
 in putting this whole matter of World-religion and 
 World-brotherhood on the firm and assured basis of 
 natural fact and law. 
 
 I believe there is a growing indisposition on the part 
 of science to challenge the fundamental proposition of 
 3 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 religion, the proposition, namely, that man is a spiritual 
 being. But if man is a spiritual being, then by the 
 power of his spirit he can, to some extent, control and 
 direct the physical and chemical elements of his being, 
 can modify heredity, respond to environment, and shape 
 his course towards a definite goal of existence. In its 
 earliest stages Darwinism was too confidently material. 
 That misunderstood thinker, Nietzsche, laid his finger 
 with unerring precision on the weak spot when he 
 said, " Darwin has forgotten the spirit." 
 
 Now, if man is a unity, it follows that he is a spiritual 
 unity; and therefore he must be the subject of a com- 
 mon or universal experience; and it is in such ex- 
 perience that we may find the material for World- 
 religion. We must look for something in the general 
 religious consciousness that tends to become concrete 
 in experience, and to realise itself in practice. And I 
 do not think we shall have to look very far. In that 
 prodigious book, or rather library of books, The Golden 
 'Bough, Professor Frazer has collected the proofs of 
 that common experience and practice; and all we have 
 now to do is to think out and work out the practical 
 conclusions to which his facts point. 
 
 The spiritual unity of man is also an assurance that 
 he can universally respond to the appeal of a common 
 religion. Suppose such a common appeal were some- 
 thing like this. The great Power who holds us in his 
 hand seems to have some kind of purpose and inten- 
 tion with us; nay, even, some care and pity and love 
 for us. It seems also to be his wish that we should care 
 for and pity and love each other. Let us live accord- 
 ingly ! The more passionately that were believed, the 
 
 4 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 more it would tend to express itself in the familiar 
 couplet, The Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood 
 of man ; but I do not know that it would be any the 
 worse for that. Those whose minds ran in other chan- 
 nels would choose other forms of words; but the facts 
 expressed would be the same. In any case, such a uni- 
 versal appeal, sincerely held and simply made, would 
 appear fitted to meet the wants, direct the lives, and 
 fulfil the dearest hopes of the whole family of man. 
 Separated from the metaphysical subdeties with which 
 it has been accompanied, it would be acceptable to the 
 mind of the average man, and not unacceptable to the 
 spirit of the artist, the scientist, and the philosopher. I 
 believe Walt Whitman spoke the mind of culture when 
 he said, "Everything is for the sake of religion! " 
 
 Therefore, I conclude that a World-religion is pos- 
 sible ; and I mean a religion that would be capable of 
 satisfying the mind and sustaining the heart of the 
 human race, and reconciling its sundered tribes. All 
 the prophets are agreed that religion is one ; but if 
 there is only one religion it must be the true religion, 
 and it must be the World-religion, for there can be no 
 other. So much seems clear. 
 
 I have mentioned The Golden Bough. In the first 
 volume of The Magic oArt, Dr. Frazer tells a curious 
 story which helps my argument. Last century, there 
 appeared in Kentucky an impostor who claimed to be 
 the Son of God, the saviour of mankind. He pro- 
 tested that if they did not mend their ways within a 
 certain time he would give the signal, and the world 
 would crumble to ruins. Now it came to pass that a 
 German resident in Kentucky, seeing that his fellow- 
 
 5 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 countrymen did not understand English, besought the 
 new Messiah to announce the dread event in the Ger- 
 man language, so that his countrymen might not be 
 damned merely because they could not understand 
 English. The saviour and Son of God confessed with 
 great candour that he did not know German. " What," 
 retorted the petitioner, "you the Son of God and don't 
 know all languages, don't even speak German ! Come, 
 come, Bedlam is the place for you ! " 
 
 He was right. A God who cannot speak all Ian- 
 guages cannot serve the ends of humanity. Each man 
 must hear in his own tongue the wonderful things of 
 God. A God who cannot speak German as well as 
 English, and Turkish as well as Greek, is no God at 
 all, but a mere idol. But dropping metaphor, what I 
 mean is, that since there is only one God and one 
 humanity, there can be only one religion. And we 
 are now discovering it. 
 
 Our position will be strengthened, I think, if we 
 reflect that all forms of religion arise from the com- 
 mon life and the common ideal of humanity. For all 
 religion manifests the same spiritual capacity — the 
 same potentiality of nature — to use the ponderous 
 but necessary phrase. It is by the emergence of suc- 
 cessive ideals that the moral progress of mankind 
 proceeds. With some races the ideals are higher, with 
 others, lower; with some they come faster, with 
 others, slower; but all the ideals have the same family 
 likeness. They are dull and unformed in savage 
 minds, but they all imply some measure of upreach 
 towards beauty, and goodness and truth. Who does not 
 remember Longfellow's tender lines in "Hiawatha": 
 6 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 Ye whose hearts are fresh and simple, 
 Who have faith in God and Nature, 
 Who believe that in all ages 
 Every human heart is human, 
 That in even savage bosoms 
 There are longings, yearnings, strivings, 
 For the good they comprehend not, 
 That the feeble hands and helpless, 
 Groping blindly in the darkness, 
 Touch God's right hand in that darkness, 
 And are lifted up and strengthened: — 
 Listen to this simple story, 
 To this song of Hiawatha! 
 
 I think it cannot be disputed that the ideals of 
 truth, goodness and beauty, in their lowest as well as 
 highest forms, are the urgent motives which drive 
 mankind along the upward path which leads from 
 cannibalism and fetichism to art and science and 
 poetry and philosophy and music and literature and 
 religion, and to the still alluring pinnacles of civilisa- 
 tion. It is by the urgency of these all-impelling mo- 
 tives that men and women rescue themselves and start 
 anew on the path of progress after they have become 
 embedded in carnality and selfishness ; reminding 
 themselves, in the majestic phrase of Lord Morley, 
 that life is "a great and noble calling — not a mean 
 and grovelling thing to be shuffled through as we can, 
 but a lofty and exalted destiny." 
 
 If we find ourselves able to occupy this view-point, 
 we shall not find the problem of evil trouble us very 
 much ; for we shall be occupied more with the self- 
 7 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 perishmentof evil than with evil itself; with the joyful 
 growth away from evil rather than with the suffering 
 it inflicts. We shall see that evil is not something to 
 be atoned for, but to be out-lived, to be out-grown ; 
 perhaps a necessity of growth ; perhaps the means and 
 condition of growth ; though I am not putting this 
 forward as a complete solution, which is not our pres- 
 ent purpose. If we cannot solve the riddle of the uni- 
 verse, we can at least be willing to look on the bright 
 side as well as the dark one. In the growth of man's 
 spiritual and social nature ; in the increasing fineness 
 of his spiritual nature and social sympathies, we can 
 at least look along the line where the solution is to be 
 found, and have some measure of peace of mind. 
 
 We have to kill the theological fiction that man 
 is naturally an evil being ; averse from that which is 
 good, greedy for that which is wicked ; born in sin, 
 shapen in iniquity, destined to a miserable eternity. 
 We have to pile up and accumulate the evidence that 
 man is naturally inclined to goodness ; that man in- 
 stinctively prefers goodness ; that man has a develop- 
 ing capacity for the pursuit of goodness ; that man 
 finds more joy in doing good actions than evil ones; 
 that the worst of those unfortunates whom society calls 
 " criminals " also display wonderful power of response 
 to kindness, and become kind in return. 
 
 We can believe all this without attributing it to the 
 presence of an indwelling God. We can adopt the 
 idealist theory and say that the idea of God is nothing 
 more than a projection of the human mind idealising 
 itself. Or we can, if we like, adopt the humanist ex- 
 planation, and say it is inherent in human nature; 
 
 8 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 leaving the question as to how it got there for future 
 consideration. Or we can adopt the theistic explana- 
 tion, believing that as man grows in his own spirit the 
 more he grows in the consciousness of a Spirit imma- 
 nent in his own yet transcending his own, infinite in 
 beauty, wisdom, truth, goodness and love. Or we can 
 try to harmonise the two views by saying that while 
 God is with us and within us, yet it is only by our own 
 efforts that we can hope to reach the goal of moral 
 perfection, or attain the life everlasting along the eight- 
 fold path. We have no cause to quarrel over these 
 various possibilities, due to temperament as much as 
 to reason or knowledge, in all probability. We can 
 emulate the sweet Sufi saint, Ribia, who, when asked, 
 "Dost thou hate the devil?" answered "No!" "And 
 why not?" "Because my love to God leaves me no 
 time to hate him! " From all these view-points we can 
 look back and trace the human road by means of his- 
 tory and various sciences. We can mark man's gradual 
 advance towards the moral life, the artistic life, the 
 scientific life, the religious life. And then, turning our 
 faces to the future, we can by inferential faith behold 
 the crown of achievement laid upon his brow in some 
 far-off day. 
 
 I have spoken of the ideals of truth, goodness and 
 beauty as being native to man's spirit, and universally 
 present, even if only in rudiment. How rapidly the 
 proofs accumulate ! We are digging them up from the 
 sands of Egypt, in the shape of tablets and inscrip- 
 tions, testifying to their existence in times that are as 
 yet prehistoric, and in forms of great elevation and 
 comparative purity. We are unearthing them from 
 
 9 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 ancient Babylonia, and discovering the immense debt 
 of the "higher" religions, as we call them, to that 
 ancient womb of religions. We can read it in Homer 
 — the eternal love that abides in the human father's 
 breast, in such a scene as the parting of Hector and 
 Andromache; full of religious sentiment and suggestion. 
 We get it consciously in the Greece of Socrates, who 
 wrote a new chapter in the history of moral conscious- 
 ness, and established the eternal value of personality, 
 sealing his testimony with his life. So also in Rome, 
 from Seneca and the Stoics, we get new developments 
 in the conception of justice and moral obligation. 
 
 I desire to give emphatic repetition to the truth that 
 we have in nature herself the eternal and indestructible 
 foundation of religion. Nature — so long thought to be 
 man's enemy, the machinery set going against him by 
 infernal powers — is now seen to be man's friend, re- 
 plete with wisdom, law-giver and guide, viceroy of the 
 eternal and the infinite, through whom we enter into 
 fellowship with the Father-Mother of our spirits, and 
 with one another. Religion must be as natural as art 
 and science are natural ; and must be completely re- 
 concilable with them. Thus only can religion become 
 a power within the modern mind and world, — a power 
 making for knowledge instead of superstition, for virtue 
 instead of cruelty and cowardice. It is impossible to 
 conceive the life of man — either personal or collective 
 life — without religion; and it is impossible for the 
 modern world to entertain a religion that is not natural; 
 and, being natural, universal. For it is only when re- 
 ligion is in harmony with nature and natural law, that 
 it is above the changes of time, the chances of race, 
 10 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 and the manipulations of the selfish. Root your re- 
 ligion in the spiritual constitution of humanity, and 
 you make it available for humanity in all the length 
 and breadth of its nationalities ; in all the depths and 
 heights of its moral capacity. 
 
 If we pause here, and look back upon our argument, 
 we may reasonably claim to have pardy answered the 
 question, " Is World-religion possible ? " We may claim 
 to have shown, in great part, that the goal of the Free 
 Religious Movement is a possibility, and therefore that 
 the Rebuilding of the World is the next thing. — 
 
 Is it a dream? 
 
 Nay, but the lack of it the dream, 
 
 And failing it, life's lore and wealth a dream, 
 
 And all the world a dream ! 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 Now let us summarize results. We have seen 
 that various groups of religious people struck the 
 universal note, and were consciously and deliber- 
 ately making for the goal of World-religion. Science 
 was also, we saw, advancing in the direction of the 
 unity — even the spiritual unity — of man. We saw 
 that every form of religion came out of the common 
 experience of man; out of the common effort towards 
 the ideal; and therefore religion had its indestructible 
 foundation in nature, in the nature of man. That 
 was the surest evidence of universality. 
 
 Now if I were to use Christianity as an anvil to 
 hammer out my argument, it might be taken to im- 
 ply an opinion that Christianity was less open to the 
 universal than other historic forms of religion. But 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 that would not be correct. The arguments which 
 apply to one apply to all. It is only that we are more 
 familiar with the Christian forms of religion. 
 
 Many and great have been the efforts of our time 
 to recast and revive Christianity, and even to provide 
 this or that substitute for it; but a similar liquefac- 
 tion is going on inside the other great religions. The 
 old order changes indeed, and God is seen to be ful- 
 filling himself in other ways, but there is no longer 
 the ancient confidence that it is to be my way, or your 
 -way, or another's way. Fewer and weaker are the voices 
 -which proclaim themselves as the voice of God. 
 
 For, the doubt of the age has proved to be the 
 doubt of self. The bold missionary faiths have sur- 
 rendered the hope of conquering the world. Christi- 
 anity, Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism — not 
 -one of these now expects to be adopted by all man- 
 kind ; not one of them now dares to call itself " the " 
 true religion, and the others " false " religions. They 
 are beginning to recognise that their only chance of 
 survival is to lose themselves in a larger unity. They 
 are searching for unities rather than contraries. The 
 new science of Comparative Religion has sapped the 
 old presumptions with amazing speed. The compari- 
 son of religions has brought to light the vast extent 
 of the common elements, and driven the old insolent 
 assumptions of superiority out of court. The note of 
 the age is reconciliation. Every wind that floats across 
 the sea brings some new note in the symphony of the 
 universal. Religion is ceasing to be provincial, and is 
 becoming cosmopolitan. The sectarian church survives, 
 true, but is more and more seen to be unfit to survive. 
 
 12 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 The universalist church is passing it by leaps and 
 bounds. Everywhere the master-minds are lifting; 
 themselves above local traditions into fellowship with 
 the general religious consciousness. The great religions 
 are almost ready to acknowledge themselves to be 
 but sects of a larger growth, and their most forward 
 spirits are expressing their reluctance to have merely 
 " a " religion, and their desire to possess " the " religion. 
 They feel that nothing is good enough for them which 
 is not also good enough for the whole world. It is the 
 religion within the religions they are seeking after, in 
 order to develop it in accordance with the facts of 
 modern science and sociology. 
 
 Even trade and politics have become international. 
 Every trading steamer that beats the waters of the 
 seven seas keeps, time to " The Parliament of Man, 
 the Federation of the World," and the guns that 
 thunder across the Somme or through the passes of 
 Transylvania are not sufficient to drown the music. 
 All the world is coming round to the view of that 
 mighty Theistic reformer, Theodore Parker, — "There 
 is but one religion, as one ocean ; though we call it 
 faith in our church, and infidelity out of our church." 
 And, may I add, the disposition to call it faith 
 when it is displayed inside our church, and infidelity 
 when displayed outside our church is disappearing. 
 We are beginning to see that faith is faith when it 
 exists outside this church or that, or all the churches ; 
 and that infidelity is infidelity even when it hides 
 under the cassock of my priest, or flares on the altar 
 of my holy place. 
 
 Some time ago I read a thoughtful essay designed 
 *3 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 to show that World-religion was a possibility, but 
 which failed to establish its argument because the 
 writer was not able to see over the partition walls 
 which Christian ecclesiasticism had erected in former 
 days. So far as he was concerned, there might have 
 been no Judaism a thousand years before Christianity; 
 a Judaism which contained the essential principles 
 and expressed many of the highest sayings of Christ- 
 ianity before historical Christianity was born. There 
 might have been no Paganism, nor Aristotle, nor 
 Plato, nor Socrates : — No Orient with its god-Mith- 
 ras and Zoroaster and Manichaeus; its Gautama 
 and Asoka and Confucius to contribute so im- 
 mensely to the contents of the unwrit Christian 
 scriptures, centuries before Paul and Athanasius. 
 There might have been no Buddhism to anticipate 
 by centuries and in the most startling parallels the 
 ethical and spiritual teachings of the New Testament. 
 There might have been no Gnosticism, or Mithra- 
 ism, to lend their principal ideas and sacraments to 
 that Christian religion which borrowed from them 
 all and hoped to conquer them all. The writer 
 seemed also oblivious to the fact that three of these 
 ancient faiths at least, Judaism, Hinduism and Budd- 
 hism, had continued to live alongside Christianity, 
 apparently as powerful and widespread as of yore. 
 And that a new and formidable rival had even 
 sprung up in the form of Mohammedanism. In 
 the face of these facts, how weak, how futile, it 
 appears, to think of persuading these mighty world- 
 faiths to abandon themselves in favour of some thin 
 solution of Christian rationalism! 
 
 H 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 The writer I refer to bases his hope for the universal 
 survival of Christianity on what he is pleased to de- 
 scribe as the personality of Jesus. But in the day when 
 Christian critics are themselves rendering the historic 
 presentment of Jesus less and less credible, an attempt 
 to build a World-religion upon him seems a peculiarly 
 melancholy waste of ingenuity. If the sectional church 
 built upon the illusive personality of Jesus is already 
 crumbling, how is it possible to build a World-church 
 upon it? If the portrait of Jesus is really an idealisa- 
 tion of human nature, what need is there to build upon 
 the portrait? Why not build upon the human nature 
 that produced the portrait? It becomes more and more 
 apparent that the Christian religion does not centre in 
 Jesus, but merely circles round him. Take him away, 
 and another centre would be found for a wider circle. 
 The wider circle must be one that includes the human 
 race, and the centre must be humanity itself. For the 
 roots of Christianity go down far deeper than the per- 
 sonality of Jesus. They go down deep and wide, with 
 innumerable fibres and offshoots, into the older multi- 
 tudinous faiths I have mentioned. Trace them far 
 enough back and you find they reach to the deepest 
 and innermost recesses of human nature itself. They 
 all came out of human nature. The human soul is the 
 real centre of Christianity, of Mithraism, of Buddhism, 
 of Paganism, of Islam, and all the rest. Therefore the 
 human soul is the only firm and wide foundation for 
 World-religion. The incarnate ideal is neither Jesus nor 
 Gautama, nor Mithras, but humanity; or if Jesus, 
 Gautama, Mithras, Mohammed, and the others at all, 
 then only so far as they are included in humanity. 
 15 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 
 For, mankind are one spirit. Humanity moves to- 
 wards its unseen goal, exciting universal admiration, 
 faith, and hope as it goes. The springs of religious 
 feeling start deep in human nature, and flow from the 
 very dawn of being. From time to time the idealising 
 power of the human soul has constructed demi-gods 
 and saviours, or elevated its heroes to that position; 
 but the saviours and demi-gods have been projections 
 of its own ideals ; and what are man's heroes but the 
 creation of the multitude of common lives ? It must 
 be for ever vain and futile to seek to build World- 
 religion on Moses or Mohammed, or Jesus, or Con- 
 fucius, or Buddah. You can build it only on man. To 
 build on individual men, even if they were historic and 
 not imaginary, would be to emulate the builders of the 
 tower of Babel, to invite further confusion and futility. 
 
 In his effort to explain the mystery of the world 
 about him, man has called in the aid of oracles, seers, 
 " revelations " so called. But is there anything here 
 save the activity of the soul itself? It would be absurd 
 to dispute the fact that some men and women have 
 been more nobly endowed than others ; and that they 
 enriched the general consciousness by their discoveries 
 and examples. But there will never be World-religion 
 till mankind has dismissed every mediator between 
 himself and God. Religion is now independent of 
 book, or oracle, or priest, or substitute. It has the rich 
 results of scientific discovery, about which it is busy 
 with its interpretations. What our fathers called "reve- 
 lation," we call discovery. We can apprehend the facts 
 dug out of the earth, or disclosed in the laboratory, 
 or gathered from ancient parchments ; and we can 
 16 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 spiritually interpret them. No theologian would dream 
 of applying the word "revelation" to the axioms and 
 theorems and propositions of Euclid ; he would speak 
 of them as discoveries. So with Kepler's laws of the 
 motions of the heavenly bodies. So with Newton's 
 Principia. We do not believe that they were super- 
 naturally revealed, but that they were intellectually 
 discovered. It is just the same with the truths of re- 
 ligion; though emotion mingles here more intimately 
 with thought. Religion also is a purely human quest, 
 in which brain and heart are the equal feet. 
 
 We have, in fact, come to see that the supernatural 
 elements which once were supposed to be a help to 
 religion are now a real hindrance. The distinction be- 
 tween "natural" and "revealed" religion, which was 
 once mischievous, is now meaningless. By patient ex- 
 ploration the scientific mind has uncovered the founda- 
 tions of faith and moral order right down in the heart 
 of nature. The exploitation of souls will not much 
 longer be an ecclesiastical possibility. The garment of 
 myth will fall away from a scientifically conceived uni- 
 verse, and the spiritual ideal will be realised in all its 
 simplicity. We are penetrating to the religion within 
 the religions, the spiritual principle underlying all sects 
 and creeds and churches. More and more clear it be- 
 comes that a historic religion cannot be a universal re- 
 ligion. History points to something beyond history. 
 In the last analysis we must search within the soul it- 
 self for an authentic account of religion. We have to 
 cross the gulf which divides the ages of superstition 
 from the age of science. We are called upon to leave 
 the husk for the sake of the kernel. We are called on 
 iy c 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 to distinguish between accident and essence. The 
 universal spirit is conducting us past the sign-boards 
 painted above the doors of the temples, and is usher- 
 ing us into the holy of holies, where the undivided 
 heart of humanity adores the undistinguishing Father, 
 Mother, Creator. 
 
 One caution I must here throw in. Let no one be 
 deceived by shallow notions of a short and easy pro- 
 gress. Far from it. An enormous amount of sapping 
 and mining has yet to be accomplished. For example, 
 the human soul must be delivered from the fetters of 
 priesdy authority. The ancient faiths had a zeal not 
 of God for external authority, and thus bred hatred, 
 discord, and bloodshed. Universal religion must be 
 accompanied by the substitution of internal authorityfor 
 external. Men must be free to follow their natural bent 
 towards unity. From slaves of authority they must be 
 transformed into sons of the spirit. Liberty is the in- 
 dispensable preliminary to unity. When the soul of man 
 is no longer exploited by sect or priest, it will display 
 its real unity. For while religions divide, religion unites ; 
 while religions dehumanise, religion humanises. 
 
 The homes of authority are visible all round, in 
 every land, where magnificent temples and cathedrals 
 continue to be the bulwarks of reaction, and to retard 
 the progress of the World-faith. But the soul is 
 mightier than the temple. Stately cathedrals and cere- 
 monial splendours and vast endowments cannot for 
 ever captivate the aspiring mind of humanity. Bul- 
 warks of the obsolete, the inequitable, and the unjust, 
 they have commonly been. But those sanctuaries of 
 the supernatural shall yet become the forums of the free. 
 18 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 
 Then they will undertake the task of compiling a 
 universal Bible. The outworn, the trivial, and the use- 
 less will be cast away. Their permanent treasures will 
 be gathered from all the ancient scriptures. As for 
 the not less inspiring and precious wisdom of modern 
 times, it may almost defy selection, it is so voluminous. 
 In fellowship with the great Spirit of the universe, man 
 will be able to dispense with symbols, images, and 
 all the materialising impedimenta demanded by the 
 ages of superstition. 
 
 This mighty movement towards World-religion 
 calls for men and women to move it. Progress will 
 be made only as those who become free openly pro- 
 claim their determination to devote themselves to 
 the common faith rather than to any sectarian variety 
 of it. Into that large atmosphere will come increas- 
 ing numbers of those whom truth has set free, and 
 who in freedom have found complete harmony of 
 thought and ideal. Abandoning the departmental 
 religions, such people will identify themselves with 
 that religion which is seen to be common to man- 
 kind; they will magnify that common element and 
 make it honourable. 
 
 Another word of caution ! It is not necessary to 
 prematurely destroy or abolish any of the sectarian 
 varieties of religion. They will rapidly abolish them- 
 selves. They are fleeing headlong from the light of 
 history and science. And their flight is along the 
 road which leads to World-religion. Their course need 
 not be violently hurried. But without antagonism, 
 it is now time to proclaim the religion of nature, the 
 religion of the soul, the religion of man, as the means 
 19 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 whereby the new civilisation may be promoted, and 
 concord produced among the nations. For a long 
 time differences will exist side by side, but such dif- 
 ferences may soon come to be regarded as comple- 
 mentary, not antagonistic — complementary and mu- 
 tually helpful. What an unspeakable blessing could 
 the religions of the East and West come to this 
 mutual understanding! 
 
 And is that all? Far from it. That could not be the 
 final stage. Nor can the final stage be any mechanical 
 amalgamation. It is of unity, not union, I speak. If 
 I might use the language of the schools to make my 
 meaning clear, I would say that final unity will be 
 reached by differentiation rather than amalgamation. 
 Each of the historic sects, Judaic, Christian, Muslim, 
 and the rest, will gradually eliminate the mythical 
 and unscientific and irrational material they contain, 
 and will thus arrive at their common denominator, and 
 that common denominator will be the basis of the 
 World-religion. They will then group and co-ordinate 
 themselves easily and naturally by the law of affinity. 
 
 It is by discovery of the affinities of his own nature 
 that man is to be brought into perfect unison with 
 man. Religious evolution henceforth is to work by 
 affinity. It takes the great historic forces of religion, 
 moulds them and us into a higher spiritual unity, and 
 thus hastens that World-religion which is even now 
 among us, the indestructible element within all the 
 religions, and their complete fulfilment. 
 
 Those who may inquire of us a reason for what 
 may seem to them a breadth of statement and aim too 
 vast for average men and women will find it in the 
 20 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 argument which has gone before. The Free Religious 
 Movement moves apart from names and methods 
 which would lead more definitely and certainly to a de- 
 nominational basis, to the creation of a new church, 
 to the founding, in fact, of another sect. That is pre- 
 cisely what must with determination be avoided. There 
 is no place here for the would-be founders of new sects. 
 The recognition of World-religion will automatically 
 abolish the sects. The greatest of the sects is too small 
 for mankind. We can find a home in no church 
 narrower than humanity. We desire to be the friends 
 of all in order that we may unite all. 
 
 Now you catch the splendour of that great saying 
 from Theodore Parker — "There is but one religion, 
 as one ocean." 
 
 The great historic sects — Judaic, Pagan, Chris- 
 tian, and so forth — may be compared to the vast 
 mountain ranges which divide the countries and con- 
 tinents of the earth into compartments which were 
 once water-tight and insurmountable. There are the 
 Andes and the Himalayas, the Alps and the Pyrenees ; 
 and these appear to afford succour and safety to those 
 who live under their shadow, and to separate them by 
 natural divisions from the rest of mankind. There they 
 stand, apparendy eternal, unmoving and unchange- 
 able from age to age, symbols of the eternal divisions 
 and feuds of the human family. But round them all 
 flows the mighty ocean — the Atlantic ocean of power, 
 and the Pacific ocean of peace — embracing all, carry- 
 ing merchandise and messages to and from all, there- 
 fore uniting all because fluent to adapt itself to the 
 position and needs of all. 
 21 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 
 To those vast mountain ranges we may compare 
 the great historic sects — for this peak is Jewish and 
 that range is Buddhist, and yonder chain is Christian ; 
 and all stand isolated, frowning, and seem to menace 
 each other from land to land and church to church. 
 But the Free Religious Movement is flowing around 
 — yes, and here and there has invaded the interior — 
 called by different names, but having one motive and 
 one aim. Like the all-inclusive sea the Free Religious 
 Movement flows around and into the great sectarian 
 churches, embracing all, bringing tides of freedom 
 and waves of love to all kingdoms and tribes. We 
 lose ourselves in the one ocean of human love, and 
 profess only the one religion which is the desire of 
 all nations. 
 
 Let me recall the noble parable from Goethe's 
 Wilhelm Master, and the words with which Carlyle 
 concludes his essay on "The Hero as Divinity." 
 
 When Meister approached the teacher he inquired 
 the kind of religion which was being taught to the 
 children, and was told it was the religion of the Three 
 Reverences — the Reverence for that which is above 
 us, the Reverence for that which is around us, and 
 the Reverence for that which is beneath us — and 
 that it included all the religions of the world. "To 
 which of these three religions do you specially 
 adhere? "inquired Meister of the teacher. "To all the 
 three!" answered the other: "To all the three; for 
 they by their union constitute the true religion." 
 
 Thus Carlyle sums the matter up — "The past 
 had always something true, and is a precious posses- 
 sion. In a different time, in a different place, it is 
 
 22 
 
WORLD-RELIGION 
 always some other side of our common human nature 
 that has been developing itself. The actual true is 
 the sum of all these; not any one of them by itself 
 constitutes what of human nature is hitherto developed. 
 Better to know them all, than mis-know them. 
 
 " To which of these three religions do you specially 
 adhere ? 
 
 " To all the three ! For they by their union con- 
 stitute the true religion." 
 
 23 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 
 THE Free Religious Movement 
 makes towards the goal of World- 
 brotherhood, as the necessary con- 
 dition of A World Rebuilt. But 
 the sceptic promptly interposes 
 with his arresting "Is it possible?" 
 I answer that it is possible, because 
 it is already here ; it is in human nature ; it is in the 
 scheme of things. What we have to do is to recog- 
 nise it and organise it. 
 
 I introduce some beautiful words from the Indian 
 Scriptures, " Knit together in silken bonds of divine 
 love, Children of God, what ignorance this, that keeps 
 us apart?" I do not know what book of Indian 
 scripture the words come from. They come to me 
 every fortnight from India, as the headline of a stout- 
 hearted litde journal called "Humanity," describing 
 itself as " a fortnighdy journal of light and love," in 
 which affairs both Indian and European are treated 
 with courage and discernment. 
 
 The chosen motto belongs to a high order of 
 religious genius. Bonds of brotherhood do in fact 
 knit men of all nations and races together: but be- 
 cause the bonds are silken they are not discerned by 
 the brutish and the materialised. The world's coarse 
 thumb cannot sense them. It is this dense ignorance 
 of their own nature, and of their true relationship to 
 others, which keeps men and nations apart. The 
 great object of the enlightened and the loving is to 
 persuade men and nations to open their eyes to the 
 truth, to acknowledge the truth, and to weave it into 
 24 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 the social and political fabric of the world. That is, 
 among others, the task of the Free Religious Move- 
 ment, in all its forms, and under all its names. 
 
 In the same spirit as the Indian, the Jewish scrip- 
 tures cry out, "Have we not all one father? Hath 
 not one God created us ? Why do we deal treacher- 
 ously every man against his brother ?" 
 
 To vindicate the spiritual unity of mankind is the 
 function of religion, which derives the ancestry of 
 the one human race from the one Creative Power, 
 and turns that common origin into an argument for 
 justice and mercy. Patriotism is not enough, for 
 patriotism is divisive, and prone to push conscience 
 to the wrong side in a quarrel. In its trend towards 
 brotherhood the human race needs a powerful moral 
 force, a universal motive, which can be furnished only 
 by religion. When religion is sincere and active it 
 always fuses into a unity those who are its subjects. 
 In ancient times Christianity proclaimed that there 
 were neither rich nor poor, bond nor free, Jew nor 
 Greek, but all were one. In modern times Bahaism 
 proclaimed to Jew and Christian, Zoroastrian and 
 Muslim, that they were "all fruits of one tree and 
 leaves of one branch," and persuaded those who had 
 hated each other like true bigots to live together as 
 one family. That was an immense advance upon 
 ecclesiasticism, which included in its unity only " be- 
 lievers " ; only such as were members of the sect. 
 Bahaism includes all the sects in its unity. It is truly 
 universal. It makes for World-brotherhood. It is 
 part of the Free Religious Movement. 
 
 The three principle obstacles to brotherhood are 
 25 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 creed and class and caste — the three C's we may call 
 them ; and therefore it is against creed and class and 
 caste that free religion moves with all its power. 
 Therefore it cannot turn aside from either the church 
 question, or the social question, or the political 
 question. It has to establish the principle of brother- 
 hood in church and state and society, and between 
 the different peoples of the earth. It has to weave 
 silken bonds between the souls of the peoples corre- 
 sponding to those material bonds composed of mil- 
 lions of miles of telegraph wires, vast arterial systems 
 of rail and ocean routes, which unite the lands in an 
 external manner. 
 
 This does not appear so impossible a task to us 
 as it did to our fathers. Both physical and social 
 science are teaching us to regard human nature — 
 not as a fixed and static thing, mosdy sick and in- 
 curable, but — as a thing that grows like other living 
 things ; that can be shaped and directed and changed 
 and improved. It seems to me that the struggle of 
 man's future is not to be against his physical, but his 
 social, environment. Having struck up a bargain and 
 established a kind of balance with nature, he has now 
 to establish a balance in society. Our inter-social 
 relations are yet chaotic and barbarous; our inter- 
 national relations almost more so. The struggles of 
 the past were for independence; the struggles of the 
 future will be for inter-dependence. The human in- 
 volves the inter-human, and the silken threads 
 lengthen and multiply till they reach both poles and 
 all round the equator, weaving the silken robe of 
 love round the entire human family. 
 26 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 
 Let me knot that thread fast by a single quotation 
 from Thomas Huxley. Contrasting the struggle for 
 existence among the animals with the mutual help- 
 fulness slowly developing among men, Huxley, in his 
 Oxford Lecture, said, " The practice of that which 
 is ethically best — what we call goodness and virtue 
 — involves a course of conduct which in all respects 
 is opposed to that which leads to success in the 
 cosmic struggle for existence. In place of ruthless 
 self-assertion, it demands self-restraint. ... It re- 
 quires that the individual shall not merely respect, 
 but shall help, his fellows ; its influence is directed 
 not so much to the survival of the fittest as to the 
 fitting of as many as possible to survive." 
 
 Mark that " fitting of as many as possible to sur- 
 vive." In its lower stages, Nature's- struggle was 
 directed towards the survival of the fittest; but when 
 at last Humanity has been introduced, bringing re- 
 ligion with it, the struggle is directed towards the 
 fitting of as many as possible to survive. 
 
 I said last Sunday that science was beginning to 
 proclaim the spiritual unity of man. We now hear 
 it proclaiming his social unity. Presently, we shall 
 hear it preaching the gospel of political unity. Woe 
 betide the conventional religions in that day! For 
 nothing short of that complete programme is contem- 
 plated by World-religion. It cannot stop one inch 
 short of World-brotherhood. The indwelling in 
 humanity of the Spirit of the Universe is a doctrine 
 on which we can build a religion of unity and sacred- 
 ness extending to the remotest branches of the human 
 family. There we shall find a spiritual centre for that 
 
 2 7 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 higher civilisation which is issuing from the dis- 
 solution and collapse of the older one. It is that 
 which will give meaning and value to life. Hu- 
 manity will be recognised as a mystic living organism 
 which never dies, which demands our homage and 
 service. 
 
 To reconcile the hostile gods is the only sure way 
 to reconcile the warring nations. The unity of God 
 and the unity of man are but opposite sides of the 
 same truth. God, one great Father, man one great 
 child — these are the two semi-circles which form the 
 complete truth of universal religion. Human beings 
 live by two great ideal senses; the sense of Father- 
 hood, or the ideal of God above them ; and the sense 
 of Brotherhood, or the ideal of God among them. 
 For what is religion but the rebinding of the races of 
 men together? That is the meaning and the task of 
 religion. The churches have entirely lost and aban- 
 doned that meaning, and seek only to rebind the 
 races of the earth to themselves, instead of to one 
 another. This is like tying leaves on a winter tree, 
 instead of letting the leaves sprout from the tree by 
 their own energy, according to the fine simile of the 
 Bahaist, "all fruits of one tree and leaves of one 
 branch." The spirit in which we view these things is 
 perfecdy expressed by Walt Whitman in Calamus: — 
 
 I hear it -was charged against me that I sought to destroy 
 
 institutions, 
 But really I am neither for nor against institutions, 
 (What indeed have I in common with them ? or what with 
 
 the destruction of them?) 
 28 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city 
 
 of these States inland and seaboard, 
 And in the fields and woods, and above every keel little or 
 
 large that dents the water, 
 Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, 
 "The institution of the dear love of comrades. 
 
 Yes, that is the mission of the Free Religious 
 Movement. Whatever institutions may come or go, 
 rise or fall, perish or be born, the Free Religious 
 Movement is out to establish in all the earth " the 
 institution of the dear love of comrades." 
 
 Some years ago, a most remarkable gathering was 
 held in London, in the form of the first universal 
 Races Congress. It was the natural sequence of the 
 great Parliament of Religions held at Chicago some 
 years earlier. A Parliament of Races follows inevitably 
 on a Parliament of Religions. It was a true instinct 
 which led the late Canon Cheyne to give his fare- 
 well to the world in the form of a book on The 
 Reconciliation of Races and Religions. If you reconcile 
 the religions you reconcile the races; for when you 
 establish the spiritual unity of man his political unity 
 does not tarry long. In olden times religion and race 
 went together, and you had a number of tribal deities 
 presiding over an equal number of "elect" peoples. 
 The Race Congress was really the burial of those two 
 dogmas — the dogma of select deities and the dogma 
 of select peoples. The doctrine of election simply 
 crumbled to fine dust as it had never done since 
 the days of Abraham. All the king's horses and all 
 the king's men will never stick it together again. We 
 29 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 used to hear good men speak of the "family of 
 nations" — a phrase which ominously went out of 
 fashion years ago. Well, a Race Congress is the reali- 
 sation of that idea. 
 
 The mention of family suggests equality, and the 
 family of nations suggests the equality of nations 
 before law, and the right of every nation to its share 
 of the tree of life. To each according to his need, 
 from each according to his ability, is a motto which 
 applies to nations as well as individuals. Let me re- 
 call the old commentator's moral from the Eve story. 
 When Eve, said he, was created, she was taken, — 
 not from Adam's head to rule over him, nor from 
 his foot to be trampled by him, but, — from his side, 
 to be equal with him, from under his arm to be pro- 
 tected by him, and from near his heart to be loved 
 by him. Thus do the different members of the great 
 family of nations stand to one another, diough it is 
 not always possible to get them to recognise and 
 acknowledge it. That greatest prophet of the uni- 
 versal, Walt Whitman, in " Salut au Monde," sup- 
 plies them with the appropriate expression: 
 
 Each of us inevitable, 
 
 Each of us limitless, each of us with his or her right upon 
 
 the earth, 
 Each of us allow 'd the eternal purports of the earth, 
 Each of us here as divinely as any is here. 
 
 To return to the Races Congress. From facts I 
 
 noted at the time, I gathered that the Congress 
 
 represented fifty nationalities. Never before was such 
 
 an assemblage of thinkers and workers. The whole 
 
 3° 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 world seemed to have got into one room. There 
 were five hundred and seventy-five millions of white 
 or Caucasian people represented, five hundred and 
 twenty millions of yellow or Mongolian people, and 
 one hundred and thirty-five millions of black or negro 
 people. Many of the delegates were professors of 
 international law, others were colonial bishops, a few 
 were British governors, many were members of various 
 courts of arbitration, officially recognised by a score 
 of governments. I call that the most comprehensive 
 handshake in history. As was most fit, the concep- 
 tion of it sprang from the mind of a Jew, Dr. Felix 
 Adler, Professor of Social Ethics in Columbia Uni- 
 versity. The object of the Congress was defined as 
 being "to discuss, in the light of science and the 
 modern conscience, the general relations subsisting 
 between the peoples of the West and those of the 
 East, between so-called white and so-called coloured 
 peoples, with a view to encouraging between them a 
 fuller understanding, the most friendly feelings, and 
 a heartier co-operation." Excellent ! Most excellent I 
 "Jew, I thank thee for that word "! 
 
 Before World-brotherhood can be realised we have 
 all to get rid of a vast amount of race prejudice and 
 race jealousy. The other day, walking down my road 
 at Hampstead, I met a group of convalescent soldiers 
 returning to hospital from an entertainment. Parallel 
 with them walked a negro, also in hospital uniform. 
 But the negro was not on the pavement with the 
 whites. He was walking on the roadway, the Britishers 
 holding no kind of conversation with him, while he 
 looked extremely dejected and unhappy. I confess 
 3 1 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 to feeling disappointed. Even the boasted comrade- 
 ship in arms did not avail, apparendy, to break down 
 race prejudice between negro and white. 
 
 When John Bunyan wrote his "Holy War," he 
 wanted a Diabolus, or Devil, to lead the attack on 
 Mansoul, and he found him in "a mighty giant . . . 
 one of those blacks or negroes, and a most raving 
 prince he was." My family edition of Bunyan is 
 adorned with a ferocious black figure, with black 
 plumes, proving beyond doubt that the devil was a 
 negro ! I daresay the negroes get it back on us by 
 making their devils white ! 
 
 But that is not the worst of it. Race antipathy dis- 
 plays itself in far more mischievous ways than that. 
 Race prejudice has been wittily defined as " that feel- 
 ing which shows that the race which possesses it is 
 afraid that it is not superior." Buddhists in India and 
 Ceylon complain that Westerners make offensive 
 attacks upon their religion in the name of Christianity. 
 Chinese complain that Europeans enter their terri- 
 tories uninvited, and then shut them out of Europe 
 and its colonies. Negroes complain that there is a 
 sharper prejudice against them in the United States 
 of America since the war of liberation, as it was 
 called, because the war forced them into the labour 
 world as competitors with the whites. People who 
 have lived long in the East ridicule Western pre- 
 tensions to teach manners and civilisation to 
 Eastern peoples, — Westerners who do not even 
 teach manners in their schools, while the coolie 
 has the manners of a gendeman, — Westerners 
 who received religion and civilisation from the East, 
 32 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 and gave it little but gunpowder and brandy in 
 return. 
 
 The fiction about " superior races" has to be killed ; 
 for it is the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned 
 dogma of the " elect peoples." It is the old enemy 
 with a new face. And we can kill it only by knowledge. 
 Science — biology and psychology alike— declares the 
 common origin and nature of man. Ethnology and 
 anthropology are establishing his equality. The fiction 
 of " pure" races vanishes before the face of knowledge. 
 What a mingling of the blood of Picts, Scots, Celts, 
 Danes, Goths, Saxons, Normans, to make one 
 modern Briton ! If one reads such a book as Jean 
 Finot's "Race Prejudice," one sees how the sciences 
 unite to expose the ignorant hypocrisy of die claim 
 of the " superior races." 
 
 I have said that the originating idea of the Race 
 Congress came from a Jew. But you also know that 
 no race has suffered more from the prejudice of other 
 races than have the Jews. 
 
 Quoting from a Jewish friend of my own, I give 
 the experience of a Jew, who, while travelling through 
 Italy some years ago, paid a visit to the city of Rome. 
 It was his first visit, and he procured the services of 
 a guide. He found an excellent cicerone in one 
 Antonio, in whose company he visited the art 
 treasures of the imperial city. One day he surprised 
 the guide by telling him that he would like to visit 
 the old Ghetto. While walking up and down this 
 historic district, the visitor asked Antonio, "Are the 
 Jews in Rome to-day of much importance?" "Oh," 
 said the guide, "certainly not." "Are they very rich?" 
 33 D 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 "No, not much." "Are they good patriots?" was the 
 next question. "No, no Jew good. Never was a good 
 Jew. All Jews bad. All Jews wicked. Jews kill God. 
 No good Jew. Never was good Jew," came the reply. 
 The patient Jew bided his time until he came 
 before the great Cathedral of St. Peter's, whose peri- 
 style is adorned by statues of Jesus and the apostles. 
 Pointing to the statue of Jesus, he said to Antonio, 
 "What is that?" "Oh," said he, "you not know 
 that? That Jesus Christ." "Jesus Christ," said the 
 visitor, "who was Jesus Christ?" "Oh, you ignorant 
 man," cried Antonio, "you not know Jesus Christ? 
 Him God, Him greatest of all men. Him Saviour 
 of all men. He great, great God." "Jesus Christ was 
 God," came the surprised comment, "Well, was he 
 born up there?" "Oh, no," said the guide, "you 
 stupid man, don't you know Jesus Christ. He God 
 came down from heaven." "Well, if he came down 
 from heaven, he must have lived somewhere." " Oh, 
 yes," replied Antonio, " he lived in Palestine, in Holy 
 Land." "In Palestine, in Holy Land," pursued the 
 unrelenting Israelite, "is that far from here or near 
 America?" "Oh, no, you ignorant man," said the 
 Italian angrily, "Palestine in Mediterranean Sea not 
 far from here." "So," said the American, "when 
 Jesus Christ was on the earth he lived in Palestine, 
 near the Mediterranean Sea. Did he live there 
 alone?" " No," answered the cicerone, " much people 
 there." " Much people in Palestine," repeated the in- 
 quisitor, "not far from here, in Holy Land. What 
 people were there? Italians?" "Oh no," said An- 
 tonio, "Jesus Christ's people." "Well," continued the 
 
 34 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 Jew, "who were Jesus Christ's people?" "Oh you 
 foolish man," said the guide, "don't you know? 
 Jesus Christ's people, who wrote the Bible." "J esus 
 Christ's people, wrote the Bible," was the next com- 
 ment, with feigned astonishment, "I never heard of 
 Jesus Christ's people, who were they?" "Oh, Jew 
 people wrote the Bible," reluctandy said Antonio. 
 "Oh," was the astonished comment, "Jesus Christ 
 was of the people who wrote the Bible ; then Jesus 
 Christ was a Jew." " Oh, yes, Jesus Christ," sadly 
 admitted the guide, " he was Jew." "And who," pur- 
 sued the tormentor, "is next to Jesus Christ up 
 there?" "Oh, you ignorant man," savagely said 
 Antonio, "don't you know ? He, St. Mark." "Was 
 he a Jew?" queried the visitor. "Oh, yes," said 
 Antonio, quite crushed, "he Jew; all of them Jews." 
 " But," concluded the visitor, triumphantly, " I thought 
 you told me there never was a good Jew; and yet 
 all these men were Jews ! " 
 
 So much by way of illustration. We have pre- 
 pared the way for a definite and forcible conclusion. 
 
 It is one of the primary duties of the Free Religious 
 Movement to foster an international conscience. That 
 Movement is avowedly inter-national, and must in- 
 creasingly become so. Everywhere we hear the joy- 
 ful admission that the modern conscience has vastly 
 improved in general strength and sensitiveness. It 
 has become increasingly alive to those problems of 
 the inner life of peoples which are known as " social 
 problems." But it is lamentably weak in matters 
 international. It is not yet adequate to the grasping 
 of the problems presented by racial divisions. Its 
 35 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 virtues are the virtues of the parish; it is ours to make 
 them the virtues of the planet. It is ours to call the 
 peoples together to closer friendships, mutual faith, 
 and mutual aid. 
 
 I proclaim this World crusade in the name of the 
 Brotherhood of Man ! Brotherhood is in man's nature ; 
 it is in God's plan ; it is in the scheme of the universe ; 
 it is here in principle; we have to make it here in 
 reality. The silken bonds are woven in the spiritual 
 constitution of man. We have to make those bonds 
 strong as iron bands, and grapple our brethren to us 
 with hooks of steel. The proletariat of all countries 
 must unite, according to the former war-cry; yes, but 
 all classes and peoples and communities must unite. 
 The " International" must be reconstituted ; yes, but 
 all forms of international well-being and activity must 
 be reconstituted. Nothing less than World-brother- 
 hood can fulfil the divine plan. 
 
 For your encouragement I proclaim that the psycho- 
 logical hour has come. The world was never so near 
 brotherhood as it is to-day. Look beneath the surface, 
 and believe it ! Look behind the smoke and the fumes, 
 and see it ! Listen to the still small voice within the 
 thunder, and hear it ! International religion is on the 
 wing, with international sociology in its right hand, 
 and international politics in its left. Our thoughts 
 and ambitions expand to a far wider circle than our 
 own selves, our own homes, our own countries. This 
 war has made internationalism inevitable; a necessity; 
 unavoidable; certain as to-morrow's sun. Nationalism 
 is bankrupt, and with it the old patriotism. Brother- 
 hood is the only path of human survival. In a far 
 36 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 deeper sense than that of the French revolutionary 
 nation is calling to nation — Be my brother, or we 
 shall both slay and be slain! Brotherhood is the only 
 escape from mutual extermination and general murder. 
 We have to grasp the facts of international politics. 
 We must have a positive policy making for a condition 
 of life which will make wars unnecessary. That is the 
 miracle men have to organise. And the Free Religious 
 Movement in every land will provide the motive-power. 
 
 Ruined Europe may well echo the noble and 
 immortal words of Edith Cavell, "I realise that 
 patriotism is not enough." 
 
 If I might adapt a great New Testament perora- 
 tion, I would say: — Therefore whatsoever World is 
 wise, will rebuild itself on the rock of international 
 brotherhood. And though rains descend, and floods 
 come, and winds blow and beat upon the world, it 
 will not fall ; for it is founded upon the rock. But if 
 the World is so foolish as to rebuild itself on the sands 
 of mere patriotism and nationalism, it cannot stand 
 when the rains of foreign aggression descend, and the 
 floods of domestic discontent come, and the winds of 
 jealousy and suspicion blow ; but it must fall again; 
 and greater than before will be the fall of it. 
 
 I have said that a miracle has to be organised. 
 What do I mean? I mean that love is the miracle; 
 and that World-religion has to organise World-love. 
 The full miracle is God's love organised ; Man's love 
 organised; it is the same thing. 
 
 In a resplendent passage in Casa Guidi Windows, 
 Elizabeth Barrett Browning calls for " God's light 
 organised." Yes, we are for the organisation of light 
 37 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 too ; the organisation of knowledge, of truth, of reason. 
 We also look forward to the good day when the 
 thinker shall take the place of the fighter, when light 
 shall be organised in the schools and churches 
 and workshops and parliaments of the world. We 
 shall not be hindmost in speeding on the embodying 
 of light in the affairs and institutions of mankind. 
 
 Yet I venture to substitute the word "love" for the 
 word "light." For while it would be quite true to-day 
 to say that what the world wanted was light, it would 
 be truer to say that it wants love more. Any attempt 
 to rebuild the ruined world on any other basis but 
 love, would be to emulate the foolish builders of 
 Ezekiel, who cried " Peace, and there was no peace; 
 and one built up a wall, and, lo, others daubed it with 
 untempered mortar. . . There shall be an overflow- 
 ing shower . . . and great hailstones ... so will 
 I break down the wall that ye have daubed with 
 untempered mortar . . . and it shall fall .... the 
 wall is no more, neither they that daubed it." If 
 shattered Europe should think to daub its broken walls 
 with the untempered mortar of narrow nationalism and 
 patriotic suspicions and fears and jealousies and exclu- 
 sions, it will fall never to rise again, neither they that 
 daubed it. 
 
 But love is not a mere sentiment, not only an 
 emotion within, a warm feeling, a heart-throb. Love 
 is yet more an activity, a propaganda, a policy, a pro- 
 gramme. To employ a big word of the day, love has 
 to be institutionalised. Therefore the great task of 
 religion, sociology, industry, politics, and what-not — - 
 their great task is to organise love. 
 38 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 
 I quite realise that to some minds, on first men- 
 tion, the idea of organising love will be distasteful. 
 Love is so ethereal, so rosy, so phosphorescent, so 
 gready a thing of rainbows and starbeams, that to 
 organise it would be to vulgarise it. I have already 
 disposed of that. 
 
 Bethink you ! Have we not already organised love 
 to some extent? What is marriage but the social 
 organisation of love? Every family is a small love 
 organisation. So is every church, every school, every 
 doctor's practice, every nation. So ought every factory 
 to be, every shop, every trade union, every business 
 concern, and every political system. It is for the ex- 
 tension of love to all human concerns that I am to 
 plead. Love must be made organic. Love must be 
 made articulate. Love must get a body, and feet, and 
 hands, and a tongue and brain, and nerve centres, 
 and an arterial system spreading through the entire 
 human race. Love has to be organised. 
 
 Bethink you again! The world has contrived to 
 organise hate. Mankind have harnessed the thunder 
 and lightning to their guns. They have beaten their 
 ploughshares into swords. They have militarised 
 their money. They have mobilised their food. They 
 have organised their women for war-service, in train, 
 tram, van and motor; in field, munition factory and 
 batde-plain. The pens of their scribes and the tongues 
 of their preachers and the brains of their professors 
 incessantly write and speak and scheme for the better 
 organisation of hate. Their chemists and engineers 
 incessandy plan for the better execution of the de- 
 signs of hate. What has been done in the interests 
 39 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 of hate has now to be done in the interests of love. 
 The same skill and power and inventiveness dedi- 
 cated to the destruction of the human race must 
 henceforth be devoted to its salvation. All that the 
 world needs is a new direction. A new goal. A new 
 motive. Everything else is there. The love is there 
 too. All we have to do is to organise it ; to give it 
 more effective machinery. 
 
 One fair summer — ah, me, but a few short years 
 ago, yet how far away it seems ! — I was a joyful par- 
 ticipant in an International Congress of free religious 
 people in Paris. From all parts of the globe were 
 assembled six hundred delegates, representing seventy- 
 five different religious societies and twenty-five 
 nationalities. That was one of the currents making 
 for the goal of universal love so powerfully, so patheti- 
 cally pleaded for by Tolstoy in the last love-letter he 
 wrote to the world from his dying bed. But why do 
 I speak of one Liberal Religious Congress ? And of 
 one Universal Races Congress? I read that before 
 the war there existed more than five hundred inter- 
 national associations of one kind or another. Less or 
 more, these were love organisations. In every one of 
 them was the spirit of mutuality, union for aims 
 thought desirable and for the common good. Of 
 these five hundred associations, two hundred and 
 twenty had formed themselves into a Union of 
 International Associations, with head-quarters in 
 Brussels. So much I read in statistics. 
 
 Not despicable was the organisation of love ! But 
 the organisation of hate had been going on side by 
 side with it, and proved too strong for it. The 
 40 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 machinery of hate got out of hand, and smashed 
 the ineffective machinery of love, which now lies 
 broken on the battle-plains of Europe and Asia. 
 
 The duty of all wise men and women, good men 
 and women, is to look ahead to the approaching day 
 when the hate-machine will have spent its destructive 
 power, and the love-machine will be put together 
 again, made mightier, bigger, irresistible for good as 
 hitherto the hate-machine has proved irresistible for 
 ill. In this reconstruction of love I know of no kind of 
 people who could play a more useful part than those 
 who make up the Free Religious Movement, in one or 
 other of its forms, in this or that part of the world. 
 
 For, always remember that the Free Religious Move- 
 ment is not a sect. It utterly disclaims every intention of 
 creating a new sect. It is something quite different from 
 the hundreds of shattered fragments which make up 
 the Christian world. It is in vital spiritual com- 
 munion with all sects and peoples. It is not a sepa- 
 rate religion, but the essence of all religion, universal 
 religion. It cannot help being catholic and universal. 
 In its idea, religion and humanity are interchangeable 
 terms. It is for religion in and above all the churches ; 
 and for humanity in and above all the nations. 
 
 To organise love throughout the world implies the 
 possession of faith; faith in human nature and the 
 power of the human will ; faith that mankind love 
 love. To the Hindu it is Brahma's love made mani- 
 fest among men. To the Buddhist it is the love of 
 the Buddha. To the Christian the love of the Christ. 
 To the Muslim the love of Allah. The name of the 
 deity makes no difference to the reality of the thing. 
 
 4 1 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 
 As it is not bound up with the name of any 
 deity, neither is it with the name of any particular 
 saint or hero. It is the diffused ideal of all the saints 
 and heroes and sages and teachers and reformers of 
 all lands, all races, all ages. It belongs to humanity. 
 The dogmatists used to speak of " The body of 
 truth." But truth is not a body at all. Trudi is a 
 spirit. And a New Testament writer properly says 
 that men have access to one another and to their 
 common Father by one spirit. Love does not define 
 opinions in order to divide from those who differ. 
 Love searches for its likeness in others. Love does 
 not submerge all beneath one, but merges all into 
 one. All the most absolutely precious things are 
 held in common by all good men and women every- 
 where. Love sets itself to organise the unity which 
 exists amid differences ; to organise harmony out of 
 discord. -Its business is to unite the children of the 
 All-father in the common service of him and of one 
 another. 
 
 It is the possession of this faith in man, in the 
 essential goodness of human nature, which stimulates 
 and sustains us in the endless task of organising love 
 throughout the world. 
 
 I ask you to note an important distinction between 
 the issues of hate and of love. The machinery of 
 hate organises itself on the theory of human de- 
 pravity; it presupposes the incurable ignorance, 
 selfishness and stupidity of man. The machinery 
 of love is built on the theory of human goodness ; 
 and will be put together from material supplied by 
 the unselfishness, compassion, and boundless capacity 
 
 4 2 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 for self-sacrifice which are proved to be native to 
 the angel heart of man. Let the Kalmuk turn his wheel 
 as long as he must; as long as he imagines that prayer- 
 wheels help him to the life of love. But all the time 
 it is the life of love that matters, not the wheels. 
 
 By another class of mind, we are told that dog- 
 matic theology is a " necessity of the mind." Well, 
 if it helps towards the life of love, let those enter- 
 tain it who need it. The test is, How far does it 
 avail to make love effective and real in human affairs ? 
 
 That question brings us up against a very grave 
 consideration. I am far from decrying the noble 
 qualities which have been devoted to the upbuilding 
 of ritual and dogmatic forms of faith. I know some- 
 thing of the wealth of thought and aspiration which 
 have been poured out on those inferior altars. It is 
 precisely to avert and remedy such soul-waste that I 
 speak. The majestic powers of human nature have 
 been diverted from the service of the eternal to that 
 of the temporal, and from the inward to the out- 
 ward. It is our invigorating task to bring them back 
 to their proper allegiance. Would it not be wiser to 
 take the great forces of brain and heart which have 
 been lavished upon the construction of ordinance 
 and creed, and employ them in the upbuilding of 
 the soul ? For while there are many religions there 
 is only one religion, which is the essence of them all. 
 Our task is to recall men from the religions to 
 religion; from peculiarities to essentials; from the 
 letters to the spirit; from devotion to idols of their 
 own making to the worship of the true and living 
 God who manifests himself in the souls and lives of 
 43 
 
WORLD-BROTH ERHOOD 
 his children. There is but one essential faith, which 
 is to all human souls what the one sea is to all its 
 fishes, the one atmosphere to all its birds, and the 
 one heaven to all its stars. 
 
 I am well aware that, to narrower types of mind 
 this will appear "nebulous," merely because it is wide, 
 and " indefinite " merely because it is universal. There 
 are minds so constituted that they strive to reduce 
 the immeasurable dome of heaven to the dimensions 
 of an egg-shell. Then they think they understand it. 
 Such minds are not able to see that definition arises 
 from too little faith, not too much. Dogmatism is 
 caused by believing too litde rather than too much. 
 The people who believe much, who have much faith, 
 are not afraid of liberty, which is the reason they are 
 called "liberals." The primary duty of religion is to 
 organise love. 
 
 Thus far had I written in the preparation of this 
 discourse when a strange thing happened. The mid- 
 day post came in bringing, with much else, the 
 December number of the Islamic Review, containing 
 an appreciative article on the Free Religious Move- 
 ment, which incidentally confirms the objects towards 
 which we are striving. After quoting many of our 
 "beautiful words," the editor goes on to affirm that 
 they " simply mirror a Muslim heart." And he con- 
 tinues," We have only to substitute the word 'Islam' 
 for the words 'The Free Religious Movement* . . . 
 and the words of Dr. Walsh will befit the lips of a 
 preacher of Islam . . . Dr. Walsh and his worthy 
 coadjutors, in their noble cause of constructing a 
 universal church to bring all humanity within its 
 
 44 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 fold, freeing it from all kinds of sectarian ideas and 
 creedal prejudices, could not think of anything better 
 than what has already been pronounced in the Qur-an 
 . . . preached by Muhammad, who, as he says, was 
 prophet 'to the red and the black as well as to the 
 white and the coloured.'" 
 
 That is a notable testimony to the essential one- 
 ness of religion; and is to be added to those given 
 in the address on World-religion. I return upon the 
 evidences with which these addresses commenced. 
 
 If there were no other witness the opinions of the 
 Islamic Review would go far to justify my argument, 
 that, as Lowell puts it, "mankind are one in spirit," 
 and that spirit is love; and the principal business of 
 religious people is to organise love throughout the 
 world. But there is much similar testimony. 
 
 An exponent of the Positivist philosophy writes 
 that he finds very litde practical difference between 
 my expositions of truth and those approved by him- 
 self; and that one of my addresses might have been 
 delivered by himself, without change, in the Church 
 of Humanity. What does this show? Why, that 
 religion is essentially one behind all its names ; and 
 that to organise love throughout the world should be 
 an easy task. Many have been the forerunners pre- 
 paring the way of the Lord of Love. 
 
 When I was privileged to address the members of 
 the Sufi order, on the conclusion of my speech I was 
 hailed as a genuine Sufi. Why? Again, because I 
 spoke — not of the religions which divide, but — of 
 the religion which unites, that is, the religion which 
 sets out to organise love throughout the world. 
 45 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 
 A similar experience has attended me elsewhere. 
 
 When I have proclaimed religion among Theoso- 
 phists, I have been enthusiastically proclaimed as a 
 Theosophist. 
 
 So when I preached in the great temples of Reform 
 Judaism in the United States, I was acclaimed as a 
 true " Son of Israel." Why ? Simply because my 
 message was of the religion which is the essence ot 
 all the religions; in which therefore all recognise 
 their own; proving that all have love and brother- 
 hood at their hearts; and that it is possible to 
 organise love throughout the world. 
 
 It was just the same when I worshipped with 
 Indian Theists. My Universalism was seen to con- 
 tain the essence of Brahmoism, and I was hailed as 
 a brother Brahmo. Brahmoists in India have printed 
 several of my utterances as expositions of their own 
 principles and desire me to send more. Why do I 
 say this — in the spirit of boasting? No, but that 
 the grace of the Universal Spirit may be glorified in 
 us; and to demonstrate to the slowest and least 
 believing of hearts that the soul of the world is love, 
 and that love is waiting to be organised from East 
 to West, and from South to North. 
 
 It has not been otherwise within the borders of 
 the Christian religion. How often have I been told 
 that if what I was teaching was not Christianity, it 
 was so much the worse for Christianity ; but that it 
 was, in sooth, the very essence of the religion of 
 Jesus ; because it was, in fact, the religion of love ; 
 of love organised throughout the world. 
 
 Enough ! I consider the case proved. 
 46 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 
 All that remains is to justify Mrs. Browning's — 
 and my own — preference for describing the spirit of 
 light and love as "God's" light, and "God's" 
 love. 
 
 If religion has its source in the human soul, then 
 religion exists wherever the soul reaches up towards 
 ideal perfection ; which ideal perfection is God. The 
 name given to ideal perfection is of no consequence 
 whatever. But the human soul obviously had some 
 Father-Mother, some Creator and Author; which 
 some call Brahm, or Allah, or Jehovah ; while others 
 speak of Nature, or Law, or Evolution, or Life-force, 
 or Cosmic Consciousness; but which many of us 
 prefer to call God. The name is matterless. That 
 talented Scotswoman, Lady Florence Dixie, searched 
 about for a name to suit her own mind, and found 
 it in "The Inscrutable." Very well, I have no 
 objection. God is " The Inscrutable." Lady Dixie 
 objected that the term God was "a short, podgy 
 name, suitable only for those wooden and metal 
 images worshipped by pagans and barbarians." The 
 poet William Watson, in " The Unknown God," 
 complains that he 
 
 ". . . . must use a speech so poor 
 It narrows the Supreme with sex." 
 Well might we say with Romeo's Juliet, What's in a 
 name! Tennyson adores "The Nameless of the 
 hundred names." In a Pacific storm a Japanese said 
 he was not afraid, for Buddha was with him. " Christ 
 was with me," says the Christian. "Allah was with 
 me," says the Muslim. " God was with me," says 
 the Theist. All mean the same thing. They mean 
 47 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 the goodness at the heart of things. They mean the 
 universal Love, the Father-Motherhood by and in 
 and through whom are all things, ever present in 
 the mind and soul of humanity, whose being we 
 have to make visible and effective in the institutions 
 of religion and civilisation. 
 
 A great New Testament saying has it that " all 
 
 things work together for good to them that love God." 
 
 True. But it is also true that all who love God work 
 
 together for good. The feeling of a universe whose 
 
 source is love begets motives of love, so that we strive 
 
 to project the love which is within us into deeds of 
 
 love outside of us ; into the edifice of love around us. 
 
 In closing let me remind you of the prophet 
 
 testimony of John Ruskin, who loftily prophesied, 
 
 " There is no wealth but life, life including all its 
 
 powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That 
 
 country is the richest which nourishes the greatesl 
 
 number of noble and happy human beings." Yes, 
 
 here is the true task of the patriot. In this country. 
 
 and every country in the world, it is the great task 
 
 of religion, — the task of so organising love as tc 
 
 nourish the greatest possible number of noble and 
 
 happy human beings. To that end our religious 
 
 system must be changed from a basis of sect to the 
 
 basis of humanity. Our political system must be 
 
 changed from a basis of fear and force to a basis oi 
 
 faith and love. Our commercial system must be 
 
 changed from a basis of competition to a basis oi 
 
 co-operation. Our industrial system must be changed 
 
 from a basis of wage-serfdom to a basis of co 
 
 partnery; and these immense changes can be accom- 
 
 48 
 
WORLD-BROTHERHOOD 
 plished only by the power of love; of God's love; 
 of God's love organised. 
 
 This is our task. Let us be brave and strong to 
 achieve it. Let us recall the words of that gallant 
 discoverer, Commander Peary, when, after many 
 attempts and failures, he at last reached the goal of 
 his ambition, the North Pole. Writing of his 
 sensations, he said, " As I watched the flag fluttering 
 in the crisp air of the Pole, I thought of the twenty- 
 three years of my life which I had spent in labouring 
 towards the goal." 
 
 If a world-explorer thought himself well rewarded 
 for twenty-three years of hazard and hardship by 
 the discovery of a spot of frozen and fruitless land, 
 how great should be our zeal who make for the 
 Pole Star of a world made fruitful as the fabled 
 Eden by the consecrated ingenuity of love. 
 Edwin Markham speaks the brave word, — 
 We men of earth have here the stuff 
 Of Paradise. We have enough ! 
 We need no other things to build 
 The stairs into the Unfulfilled — 
 No other ivory for the doors, 
 No other marble for the floors, 
 No other cedar for the beam 
 And dome of man's immortal dream. 
 Here on the paths of every day — 
 Here on the common human way 
 Is all the busy gods would take 
 To build a heaven, to mould and make 
 New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime 
 To build eternity in time! 
 
 49 e 
 
Ill 
 
 A WORLD-CHARTER 
 
 IN connection with the " Day of Intercession," 
 members of Christian Churches were recently 
 invited to pray, amongst other things, for "the 
 preparation of ourselves and our fellow-citizens 
 for the tasks of the new time." 
 But since men could, for the most part, 
 answer their own prayers, they would, in fact, 
 be more usefully employed in working, rather 
 than praying, for a better world. It is therefore 
 incumbent upon me to show how we can set to work 
 upon the "tasks of the new time"; and how best 
 "prepare ourselves and our fellow-citizens" for their 
 successful accomplishment. 
 
 I consider that I cannot discharge my responsi- 
 bility better than by directing attention to three great 
 constructive after-the-war schemes upon which our 
 minds had better get to work with all diligence ; and 
 upon which, as a matter of fact, some of the most 
 forward minds in the world are already at work, and in- 
 deed were at work long before the war. I refer to the 
 projects for a World-Charter, a World-Centre, and a 
 World-Conscience. Firstof all, letme briefly outline and 
 commend a plan for the creation of a World-Charter. 
 At the very outset I am met by an objection which 
 I cannot state better than in the words of a recent 
 correspondent — the objection, namely, that there are 
 people who " cannot admit that such things as . . . 
 pacific international relations have anything religious 
 about them . . . any religious movement should 
 address itself to individual character." 
 
 5° 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 
 If this correspondent were correct, the interceding 
 Churches were all wrong; for they contemplated 
 preparing themselves and their fellow-citizens for the 
 tasks of the new time by religious exercises. I cannot 
 admit that religion has to do only with individual 
 character. I consider that religion has to apply 
 itself to public as well as personal affairs. The 
 moment religion says, "Love your neighbour," it 
 becomes social, national, international, and has to do 
 with the arrangements of society and the organisa- 
 tion of the world. The Jewish religion recognised 
 that when it contemplated a Theocracy — that is, 
 government according to the law of God. The 
 Christian religion recognised it when it set about 
 establishing a "kingdom." I cannot labour the 
 point now. I content myself with submitting, in all 
 respect, that the views of my correspondent seem to 
 me to savour of pietism rather than piety; and to 
 have their proper home in the monkish cell rather 
 than " the world's broad field of battle." 
 
 Take, for motto, a phrase from Tennyson's won- 
 derful and prophetic poem, Locksley Hall — "The 
 Parliament of Man, the Federation of the world." 
 
 More would I desire to have coined that phrase 
 than to have built the pyramids. Few sayings of 
 our time have sunk so deeply into the brain and 
 heart of all ranks and classes of men. Few have been 
 so influential. Few have been so formative, so in- 
 spiring, so alluring and educative to the ardent and 
 progressive reformers of the last sixty years. Pulpit and 
 platform and professor's chair have alike made that 
 pictured goal the climax of their deliverances. It has 
 5i 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 been equally at home in church and parliament; in 
 socialist gatherings and trade union demonstrations ; in 
 college functions and youthful debating societies and 
 peace congresses. All have found it the natural and 
 sufficient formula by which to define their vision of 
 the world's good future. I have heard it fall from 
 the lip of culture, and roll from the mouth of labour 
 with equal unction and conviction. In one dialect or 
 another I have found it equally sweetand persuasive — 
 whether expressed in fluent Welsh or rich Irish or 
 rugged Scots or softer English. And why? Why 
 this universal appeal? Why this immense vogue and 
 popularity? Why this power to move all hearts and 
 persuade all minds? By what chance or inspiration 
 did the poet find this key to the general heart? By 
 what instinct or magic did the poet's hand light on 
 and pull out this thunderous stop in the grand organ 
 of the human soul? You ask why? I will tell you 
 why. It was because the poet was sensitive to feel 
 the thrill of the Time-spirit and responsive to express 
 its import in the passionate language of poetic genius. 
 It was because even then — even so far away as the 
 date of Locbley Hall now is — the Time-spirit was 
 stirring the soul of man to seek a way of escape from 
 the anarchy of nations to a World-realm of order and 
 law and peaceful striving and worthy emulation in 
 the humane arts. It was because to Tennyson was 
 given the insight to interpret and the genius to ex- 
 press the message of his age — the message which, 
 generations before then, had been coming to con- 
 sciousness in the soul of the world — the message 
 which, since then, has leaped out of the World-soul 
 52 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 flamingly conscious of itself, demanding to be in- 
 corporated in the religious and political movements 
 of the modern world. It was the message suggested 
 to the delighted mind by the music of an earlier 
 poet — Dryden — and he but a later echo of a yet 
 earlier and stronger-voiced singer of Israel — who 
 yearned and trembled to feel 
 
 The people's prayer, the glad diviner's theme, 
 The young men's vision and the old men's dream. 
 
 Of that prayer and theme, of that vision and dream 
 the World-Charter is a direct product. The particular 
 form of it which I have in mind, and which has come 
 direcdy out of the furnace of the present war, is that 
 formulated by Paul Odet, the distinguished Inter- 
 nationalist. It is the World-Charter connected with 
 his name I would desire to commend to your study. 
 I cannot in this address describe it, except in barest 
 oudine. 
 
 I have already indicated that the present scheme 
 does not stand alone. It is connected with the past, 
 and grows out of the past. There were brave men 
 before Agamemnon. So there were pioneers before 
 Otlet. We recall the great names of Hugo Grotius, 
 the Dutch jurist, and the giant hand with which he 
 endeavoured to lay a foundation of law amid the 
 weltering anarchy of the nations ; — of Henry IV. of 
 France and his minister the Duke of Sully, and the 
 Abbe St. Pierre, who conceived and set forth " The 
 Great Design" of a united Europe; of Immanuel 
 Kant, who propounded his mighty plan for securing 
 "perpetual peace." 
 
 53 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 
 So also must we connect the World-Charter with 
 those numerous movements — congresses, arbitration 
 treaties, international courts — which have their mighty 
 symbol in the First and Second Hague Congresses, 
 and which have raised the international question to 
 the first rank among the concerns of mankind. On 
 the back of all these came the great war. 
 
 But this World-Charter has nothing to do with 
 the war. One must keep that perfectly clear. It has 
 to do with the peace which is to follow the war. 
 That is now the most important question which can 
 occupy the mind of man. The boldest of us might 
 almost be forgiven the wish to die rather than face 
 the task of constructing the new world which must 
 rise out of the ruins of the old. Listen to the words 
 of a powerful writer describing the period which we 
 are now about to confront: 
 
 The new period will be a hard, an iron one — a period of 
 blown-up bridges and broken bonds. It is no use indulging 
 in self-deception and illusions. Can it be expected that the 
 world should become gentler and more harmless after this 
 most terrible of all wars? That the nations should, on the 
 conclusion of peace, lay aside the hatred and the bitterness 
 which they have stored up in their hearts against one 
 another, in the same manner as actors do their masks? Will 
 any treaties bind anybody? No; when the nations awake 
 once more they will find between them mountains of corpses, 
 devastated countries, ruined cities, annihilated prosperity — 
 in short, an impoverished and a shattered world. And this 
 world, shaken to its very foundations, will yet tremble for 
 many a day, and for many days to come there will be no 
 question of a real peace. Be the victory never so complete, 
 another and no less strenuous struggle will begin afresh. New 
 difficult problems will arise, new and grave dangers and temp- 
 tations will appear. 
 
 54 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 
 There are two possible ways in which peace may 
 be soughtin that "impoverished and shattered world." 
 There may be a treaty in which the victor will im- 
 pose his terms on the vanquished, without discussion, 
 as the diplomats think fit according to their narrow 
 views and short sight. That may be described as 
 peace through force, and as providing only a breath- 
 ing-space for yet deadlier and more appalling struggles. 
 That is evidendy the way anticipated by the foreboding 
 writer I have just quoted. That way madness lies. 
 
 The other way is peace by agreement, arrived at 
 by a World-Congress constituted of belligerents and 
 neutrals alike. The business of such a congress would 
 be to consider how to get furthest away from the 
 dread possibility of worse things, and with that view 
 to proceed to the settlement of the vast political and 
 economic questions involved in the better ordering 
 of human affairs. For such a congress of all States 
 there are good precedents, but if there were none it 
 would be the world's duty to create one. Clearly 
 understand that this has no reference to immediate 
 peace terms, which is an earlier and entirely separate 
 question. The World-Charter has nothing to do with 
 the setdement of peace terms as between the bel- 
 ligerent governments. It has to do with the wider 
 and larger question of the settlement of the whole 
 world on a peace basis, organised for peace through 
 a charter declaring the rights of humanity, organising 
 the union of States, and setting forth the necessary 
 provisions in a solemn league and covenant which 
 shall take precedence of all national constitutions, and 
 include all the legitimate interests common to man- 
 55 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 kind. That is a task which must continue long after 
 the immediate question of peace terms has been dis- 
 posed of. 
 
 But even with a World-Charter we have not yet 
 reached the World-State. It is necessary to under- 
 stand that the World-Charter does not contemplate 
 or even suggest one vast World-State, which is an 
 inference only too likely to be made, to the prejudice 
 of the whole scheme. It does not proceed by amalga- 
 mation. 
 
 The World-Charter is perfecdy Tennysonian. It 
 proposes a simple federation of States. "The federa- 
 tion of the world." It would constitute a society of 
 nations, a sisterhood of the peoples. The union would 
 indeed be a world-wide one, extending to all States 
 without distinction, and including all their possessions, 
 colonies, and protectorates ; but the individual States 
 would continue to exist as independent, self-govern- 
 ing nations, except in so far as their sovereignty should 
 be limited by the supernational authority established 
 under the Charter; even as it is now limited by treaties, 
 and such elementary law as exists between States. 
 
 The plan lends itself to quite simple and practical 
 explanation, so that mistake is impossible. I have 
 spoken of the pioneers who proposed the creation of 
 a federated group which might be called The United 
 States of Europe. Already we have the United States 
 of America. An American has gready said that to 
 its Declaration of Independence his country must add 
 a Declaration of Interdependence. The step to The 
 United States of the World appears therefore to be 
 a comparatively small one. 
 56 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 
 It is the child's first step which is the miracle and 
 the wonder to its mother. All the million steps of a 
 long after life will not be so wonderful as that first 
 step ; though they will be productive of far more prac- 
 tical results. Now then, we see that the child 
 Humanity has taken the first step towards the United 
 States of the World ; it has even taken other steps ; 
 yea, it has even been advancing towards the goal, and 
 is now conscious of its great aim. 
 
 Just think of the strides already taken. The Hague 
 Congresses and the International Court of Arbitra- 
 tion are not the only steps. Let me remind you of the 
 Parliamentary Union numbering twelve thousand of 
 the members of the various constitutional countries. 
 Think of the two hundred or more Arbitration treaties 
 already in existence. Think of the Universal Postal, 
 Telegraph, and Wireless Telegraph Unions, with 
 their growing international vocabulary. The inter- 
 nationalising of transport both by land and sea was 
 well on its way when the war broke out, and the 
 process must be resumed. So with the standardising 
 of weights and measures. International agencies for 
 the preservation of health and the stamping out of 
 plagues have come into existence. Scientific research 
 has also become largely international. Charts, signal- 
 ling, and the rule of the road on the high seas are 
 international. International Congresses on all con* 
 ceivable subjects and for all conceivable purposes have 
 been organised. As has been wittily said, a new pre- 
 position has crept into common use — the preposition 
 " inter." It has given us such words as "inter-com- 
 munication," "inter-dependence," "inter-state," "inter- 
 57 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 national," " inter-religious," " inter-racial." Better still, 
 the words stand for great and growing realities. We 
 may be said to have developed even a kind of " inter- 
 patriotism." Inter-patriotism may be described as the 
 love of all countries ; the love, say, of the countries 
 of the world federated as a grand sisterhood under 
 the World-Charter. The federated nations will look, 
 not on their own things, but on the things of one 
 another. They will provoke one another to nothing 
 save love and good works. For that World-patriotism 
 has Thomas Hardy sighed in his poem "Departure " — 
 When shall the saner softer polities 
 Whereof ive dream, have play in each proud land, 
 cAnd patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand 
 Bondslarue to realms, hut circle earth and seas ? 
 Now then, may we not argue from that which is 
 to that which may be? If so much is already accom- 
 plished, may not the whole be accomplished? What 
 insuperable obstacle is there in the way of a World- 
 Charter constituting a juridical union of States, with 
 a supernational authority ; and guaranteeing the 
 rights of man, the rights of peoples, the rights of 
 religions and churches, the rights of international 
 associations, the rights of social groups, the rights of 
 States the world over? No such obstacle exists. On 
 the contrary. From the international measures already 
 concerted, it is an easy gradient to an international 
 budget with an international bank ; to international 
 free trade ; to international culture adequately financed ; 
 to an international press subject to penalties for the 
 crime of national slander and strife-provoking ; to an 
 international flag flying over an international Capital 
 58 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 or World-Centre ! It is of that World-Centre I shall 
 treat in my next address. 
 
 Difficulties, does one say ? Why yes, difficulties of 
 course ! But not insuperable difficulties. Can the 
 ingenuity of man not go higher yet ? I am sure it 
 can. A very slight exercise of imagination and faith 
 in, — I will not say God, but, — man will convince any 
 doubter that there is nothing inherently difficult in 
 the establishment of a legislative power consisting of 
 delegates from the national parliaments, and repre- 
 sentatives of other great economic and intellectual 
 interests; and of a judicial power exercising the func- 
 tions of mediation, conciliation, judgment and arbitra- 
 tion ; and of an executive power directing and admin- 
 istering World-interests within the limits of the law. 
 
 The logical and thorough-going mind of M. Otlet 
 adds a fourth power, which he describes as a "sanction- 
 ing "power, by which he means a military power to en- 
 force world-law ; an international army formed from the 
 national armies, and directed by a central general staff. 
 
 I wish regretfully to say that, personally, I cannot 
 hold with that proposition. To me, and many more, 
 the value of a World-Charter would be precisely that 
 it rendered any form of war unnecessary and im- 
 possible. It is impossible here to argue this big 
 question which divides the ranks of reformers. I 
 have heard and read many discussions of it, and 
 believe I know most that can be said on both sides. 
 I can only here say that the evils of war would not 
 be less evil though sanctioned by a super-national 
 authority. An international army to enforce peace 
 would be merely one more army added to those 
 59 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 national armies which already existed. It is difficult 
 to see how an additional army could lead to the dis- 
 banding of armies, or even to any general measure of 
 disarmament. The proposition may be defended as 
 a paradox; but it can also be attacked as a blunder 
 of the first magnitude. Unless there is to be a new 
 spirit we dare not hope for much from new methods. 
 On this point, no doubt, M. Otlet expects divergence, 
 and invites discussion, which he will get in plenty, 
 beyond any doubt. I leave it there. 
 
 There is so much that is great and hopeful in the 
 project that one is glad to point it out. There is the 
 neutralisation of the air, for example, and of the high 
 seas, and of the African continent. Here is a 
 sensible reduction of war's possibilities and horrors. 
 
 Before we reject such a scheme as this, we must 
 ask ourselves, What are the alternatives ? Practically, 
 there are only two. The first is a despotism, calling 
 itself "benevolent" of course, as despotisms always 
 do. This necessarily and inevitably leads to struggles 
 for supremacy, for empire, and to the effort to make 
 such empire universal, with a continual succession of 
 rebellions and bloody arbitraments. It is, in fact, the old 
 struggle for hegemony — the compelling cause, beyond 
 doubt, of the present war. But the hope of imperialism 
 is now shattered both by land and sea. By that proud 
 and gory path the human race will never be saved. 
 
 Then there is the system of the "balance of 
 power," which prevailed up to the outbreak of war, 
 and which the war has also finally discredited and 
 disposed of. The conditions of modern civilisation 
 now make such an equilibrium impossible. 
 60 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 
 There remains only the " more excellent way " of 
 arrangement and order and law and the supremacy of 
 reason. It is the organisation of love, as I have 
 already pointed out. The happiness of mankind can 
 be advanced and secured only in proportion as some 
 such international arrangement as the World-Charter is 
 devised. Certain types of mind may be repelled by 
 the boldness of M. Otlet's scheme. To me its bold- 
 ness is its recommendation. Proposals less compre- 
 hensive and radical appear more likely to fail. Europe 
 is past tinkering. Asia is a brooding and mysterious 
 potentiality of tragedy. Africa is a savage possibility. 
 It seems to me that international organisation has 
 advanced so far, that the safest course is to go straight 
 on and complete the process by some such scheme 
 as I have roughly presented. 
 
 O ye of litde faith, wherefore do ye doubt ! In 
 1896 that distinguished Chinaman, Li Hung Chang, 
 wrote in his diary, " There are always wolves where 
 there are sheep. It is the same in the life of man and 
 the lives of nations." But he was wrong, as the 
 pessimist and the unbeliever generally is. It is not 
 true that there are always wolves where there are 
 sheep. In civilised countries there are many sheep but 
 no wolves. Wolves disappear before civilisation. In 
 like manner will the wolf of war disappear before law 
 and order and the organisation of human brother- 
 hood. The death which now reddens the sea and 
 darkens the air and makes Europe a charnel-house is 
 branding arguments for reason and law upon the very 
 soul and brain of mankind. The public opinion of 
 the world may be expected to rise like a giant out of 
 61 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 nightmare, and demand a rational way of adjusting 
 human differences. 
 
 As I have pointed out, many secondary measures 
 have already formed themselves spontaneously in the 
 direction of universal organisation. It only needs to 
 extend somewhat that which already exists, and focus 
 it in some central organisation such as the World- 
 Charter seeks to establish. We need but the will to 
 organise on the basis of reason and on the basis of 
 love, according to the social law so finely commended 
 by Emerson in the last paragraph of his essay on 
 "Politics." The powers and materials we already 
 have. Social evolution is moving in that direction. 
 The soul of Humanity is travelling in that direction. 
 As we have it from that Scotsman born in Germany — 
 Immanuel Kant — nature herself guarantees the coming 
 of perpetual peace, through the natural course of 
 human propensities. That mighty psychologist — that 
 profound and unprejudiced student of human nature 
 and human affairs — argued from nature's guarantee 
 to human duty; since what was within the guarantee 
 of nature could not be a chimera. We have but to 
 lend ourselves to the superior agencies to find our- 
 selves almost spontaneously at the goal. 
 
 Upon leaders of thought and action lies a heavy 
 responsibility. It is theirs to rouse and educate public 
 opinion, and direct it towards permanent World-peace. 
 
 I know that there are many who fear what they 
 describe as a false and inconclusive peace. The in- 
 stinct is a sound one. The fear is natural and justifi- 
 able. But what is the surest way to secure a peace 
 which shall be sincere and lasting? Is it not the way 
 62 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 of international co-operation? Is it not the way of 
 universal agreement and law and order? Any peace 
 must be false and inconclusive which does not lead to 
 the setting up of international machinery for the 
 better regulation of human affairs. It is the noble 
 task of men and women of good-will to create that 
 body of opinion which will be sufficient to effect the 
 necessary transformations, and to influence and sup- 
 port governments in the work of positive construction. 
 
 O, man of the world, " practical man " as you are 
 vain to describe yourself, dismiss not this noble effort 
 with the elusive and easy word " Utopian " ! All 
 known and setded lands were once undiscovered and 
 " Utopian." All accomplished things were once 
 deemed impossible and " Utopian." But the lands 
 were discovered and settled. The deeds were done. 
 The creation of a World-Charter is a project which 
 should eminently commend itself to the " practical 
 man." It is nothing more than an enlargement of 
 national arrangements already familiar to us and in 
 working order. It makes no essential innovation. It 
 does little more than project the national beyond the 
 frontier into the international. Is it not unscientific 
 and impractical to act as if the existing stage were the 
 final one ? We must follow the path of sociological 
 development. The world is driving onward towards 
 the goal, and we must follow it ; we must at least get 
 out of its way, or it will roll over us and destroy us. The 
 existing dislocation of all eartlily things is an imperious 
 call for us to arise and effect that definite readjustment 
 which will make peace setded and secure for ever. 
 
 To you who tremble lest we finish only with a 
 63 
 
A WORLD-CHARTER 
 premature, false and inconclusive peace — to you I 
 call ! The time is ripe and rotten-ripe for change ! 
 You desire a peace which shall be timely and sincere 
 and enduring? Then arise and think ! Arise and act ! 
 We have taken the sword to slay: Now let us take 
 the trowel and build! 
 
 Say that we dream ! Our dreams have woven 
 
 Truths that outface the burning sun : 
 The lightnings, that we dreamed, ha-ve cloven 
 
 Time, space, and linked all lands in one ! 
 Dreams ! But their swift celestial fingers 
 
 Have knit the world with threads of steel, 
 Till no remotest island lingers 
 
 Outside the world's great Commonweal. 
 
 Dreams, are they ? But ye cannot stay them, 
 
 Or thrust the dawn back for one hour ! 
 Truth, Love, and Justice, if ye slay them, 
 
 Return with more than earthly poiuer : 
 Strive, if ye 'will, to seal the fountains 
 
 That send the Spring thro' leaf and spray; 
 Drive back the sun from the Eastern mountains, 
 
 Then — bid this mightier movement stay. 
 
 It is the 'Dawn ! The T)awn ! The nations 
 
 From East to West have heard a cry — 
 Through all earth's blood-red generations 
 
 By hate and slaughter climbed thus high, 
 Here — on this height — still to aspire, 
 
 One only path remains untrod, 
 One path of love and peace climbs higher, 
 
 Make straight that highway for our God. 
 
 ALF%ED NOT£S. 
 64 
 
IV 
 A WORLD-CENTRE 
 
 CITIES are the visible symbols of 
 civilisation. Cities are the growing 
 and culminating result of man's 
 struggle against the elemental forces 
 of the natural world. They register 
 nature's continuous surrender to her 
 children's demand for shelter, food, 
 society, safety, comfort and beauty. 
 The history of cities is the history of the human 
 advance towards the flying goal of religion, science 
 and the arts. It is the story of man's associated 
 efforts. It is the record of man's constructive genius. 
 It is a diary whose days are centuries — the diary of 
 man's rise from savage individualism through family 
 and tribal life to the multitudinous fellowship of great 
 nations, and finally to that "federation of the world" 
 which is its now glimmering consummation. 
 
 Since that dim day when the nomads of Shinar, 
 under Nimrod their chief, paused in their wanderings 
 and said, " Go to, let us build us a city " — the social 
 instinct has expressed itself in cities more and more 
 populous, more and more costly, more and more 
 strongly fortified and defended. 
 
 The monumental cities of the world form the 
 letters which spell out the age-long story. So are the 
 monumental books, or pages of books ; of which I 
 might point out two examples, — Whitman's "Great 
 City," and the "New Jerusalem" of John the divine. 
 In John's vision of the unseen things, he beheld 
 the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God 
 65 F 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 out of heaven ; having light as of a clear jasper ; 
 with twelve foundations and twelve gates, every gate 
 one pearl ; the walls of jasper; the city of pure gold 
 like unto clear glass ; — " And they shall bring the 
 glory and honour of the nations into it." You will 
 tell me that was only a subjective vision ; that it was 
 all in the mind of the seer himself. Granted ; but 
 that it was therefore devoid of reality does not follow. 
 Supposing the seer — as is most probable — had actual 
 knowledge of Athens and Alexandria and Rome and 
 Jerusalem, we have but to infer that he permitted 
 his faculties of imagination and faith, of poetry and 
 prophecy to play upon the civic structures in which 
 Greece and Egypt and Rome and Judea had em- 
 bodied earth's growing conceptions of art and learn- 
 ing, of law and religion; and, further, that he 
 involuntarily projected his mind into the future, and 
 drew the sublime inference that grander cities would 
 yet arise, visualising the wider victories and the nobler 
 ideals of generations yet unborn. 
 
 If, in thought, we could transport ourselves back- 
 wards and stand by his side on that lone isle, we 
 might, as from a peninsula in the sea of time, throw 
 our minds forward to our own age; yea, to ages yet 
 more distant, and behold the materialisation of the 
 vision. As from their towers of observation astronomers 
 sweep the heavens through their telescopes and bring 
 into view stars and suns and systems and clustered 
 lights and flying glories quite invisible to the naked 
 eye, yet none the less real, none the less active, none 
 the less subject to the reign of law, none the less kin 
 to the earth and related to the life of man — so we 
 66 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 might in spirit behold the increase of mankind in 
 intelligence, in purpose, in direction, in power, in 
 mutuality of helpfulness and love, till our delight 
 broke bounds in the ecstatic certainty of Walt 
 Whitman, "There the great city stands!" 
 
 It is of just such a city I am now to tell; a city 
 which has been conceived in the brain of a living 
 man, who has reduced his idea to physical dimensions, 
 and embodied it in the ground-plans and architectural 
 drawings of a great city designed to constitute a 
 World-Centre, to be the head-quarters of the human 
 family in all those matters which are essential to 
 human well-being. 
 
 The name of this aposde of civilisation is Hendrick 
 Christian Andersen, who, from the ancient city of 
 Rome carries forward a cultured and influential and 
 world-wide propaganda for the creation of a new city 
 which shall be a worthy symbol and organ of a higher 
 and more humane order than was the case with the 
 cities of the old world. 
 
 The idea of this apostolic man is to create a 
 World-Centre of Communication of which we may 
 say that it literally fulfils the vision of the Seer of 
 Patmos, since " they shall bring the honour and glory 
 of the nations into it." The scheme is so wide in its 
 scope and so detailed in its plans as to defy descrip- 
 tion in any utterance that is possible on this occasion. 
 One knows not which to wonder at more — the vast 
 and comprehensive design of it, or the elaborate 
 detail. One is bewildered where to commence a 
 description of that which seems to hold out no 
 prospect of an end. Such a cursory glance as our 
 67 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 limits compel must be regarded as an invitation to 
 enquire, not an attempt to delineate. 
 
 The splendidly audacious plan is nothing less than 
 this, — to persuade the nations of the earth to select 
 and set apart as neutral ground — belonging to none 
 in particular in order that it may more peculiarly be 
 the portion of all — some sufficient section of the 
 earth's surface, and to erect thereon a mighty civic 
 home of international interests ; a hive of international 
 activities; a head-quarters of international thought 
 and purpose, and of such universal projects as are 
 seen to be of vital import to the entire human family. 
 The particular spot of earth to be so signally honoured 
 is a matter to be determined by general consent, by 
 geographical and historical considerations : — Belgium, 
 Switzerland, Holland, France, The Riviera, San 
 Stefano, Rome, The United States, all have their 
 peculiar qualities of fitness. 
 
 Such a scheme represents an endeavour to meet 
 the unrealised feeling and demand for harmonious 
 relations between the different nations and peoples 
 of the earth, to provide a meeting-place for all, a 
 place of interchange, a general centre of communica- 
 tion. Here would all the common interests of man- 
 kind be centralised and housed; and the best that 
 was thought and known and done would be taught 
 and displayed for the general good. Science would 
 here be presented in its universal aspects; so would 
 religion and art and industry and physical culture and 
 education and politics, and everything that was proper 
 to the highest life of mankind. In the belief that 
 friendship between nations may take the place of 
 68 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 enmity, it is proposed to consecrate one great spot of 
 earth to the friendly association and interchange of 
 all peoples, to register their gains and combine their 
 efforts so as to make possible those further advances 
 which are embraced in the hopes of all good men 
 and women. 
 
 What a mighty advance is here made upon the 
 earlier efforts of the striving race of men! There are 
 those who affect to question the real progress of the 
 human race, pointing to this failure or that defect as 
 evidence that life is nothing but a see-saw, now up, 
 now down, now forward, now backward, but main- 
 taining a pretty even course throughout its strange, 
 eventful history. But if we open the book of the 
 pioneers and read of their earlier strivings, we shall 
 find that the city of their dreams was always a limited 
 and a tribal one ; that it was always to be a place of 
 defence against enemies who in like manner had their 
 walled and fenced cities as bulwarks of defence against 
 other supposed enemies. There was no dream of a 
 universal city, except through military conquest or 
 spiritual domination. Every such dream in ancient 
 times presupposed the political subordination or the 
 spiritual submission of those who did not belong to 
 the favoured race and the chosen people. 
 
 But the modern man's sober proposal goes far 
 beyond the earlier man's most delirious dream. In 
 cool blood, and as a business proposition, he proposes 
 a grander and richer civic creation than any the world 
 contains ; he leaves it unwalled, unfenced, undefended, 
 without forts or battlements, or munitions of war; 
 and as evidence of his sincerity and his faith in the 
 69 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 practicability of his plan, he calls in the most able 
 architects, and spends many years of life in produc- 
 ing the designs, and submitting them to the judgment 
 of the world's most practical workers and men of 
 affairs, who in hundreds, from every civilised nation 
 under heaven, have testified their appreciation and 
 approval. I submit that the universality of the concep- 
 tion and the practicalness of the method manifest a 
 prodigious advance upon the hopes and plans of the 
 ancient world. To the ancients, the world was a house 
 of many apartments, divided from each other by walls 
 of iron, defended against each other by such machinery 
 of fear and distrust and hate as each age permitted, 
 and having litde communication except that which was 
 expressed in war and mutual destruction. To the 
 modern man the world has become a single-roomed 
 house, inhabited by the races of mankind as a single 
 family. And he sees no real difficulty in the realisa- 
 tion of his idea. Assuredly not. It is the idea itself 
 which is the difficulty. Once the idea comes to birth 
 in the mind of a thinker, its materialisation is only a 
 matter of time. I know that the pushful man of 
 affairs is apt to dismiss such projects as mere moon- 
 shine. He will curdy wave the World-Centre aside as 
 nothing but a dream-city, a phantom of imagination, 
 a vanishing mirage. And yet I think I can see 
 that even that type of mind is coming round to see 
 the utility of such projects, the utility of the ideal, if 
 I may so put it. Let me give a concrete instance. 
 
 Some years ago, when visiting the city of Chicago, 
 I had the honour of being invited to a public luncheon 
 where an exhibition of limelight views was to be given 
 
 7° 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 by a leading architect The function took place in the 
 largest and richest hall of a great hotel. The views 
 consisted of architectural designs for the town-planning 
 of Chicago, which would make it practically a new 
 city. I afterwards inspected the original plans and 
 drawings on the walls of one of the civic exhibitions. 
 The scheme was to take long years, perhaps genera- 
 tions, to complete, and was to cost untold millions of 
 dollars. Yet it was received and discussed with favour; 
 as a possible thing ; even as a quite practical thing ; 
 yes, even as a necessary thing. That impressed me as 
 a very significant circumstance. Here were some hun- 
 dreds of the busiest men in one of the busiest cities 
 of the world, come together in the middle of the busi- 
 ness day, willing to spend a couple of hours in con- 
 sidering how to make their city a place healthful and 
 beautiful to live in ; and willing to face the prospect 
 of great cost to themselves in the carrying through 
 of the scheme. Oh no ! let it not be said that the 
 romantic spirit has fled from the human breast. Let 
 it not be said that poetry has perished. Let it not be 
 said that heroism is dead. Let it not be said that the 
 flowers of human nature have all withered Believe it 
 not ! It is a false and hollow creed. Believe it, and die ! 
 Reject it, and live ! Not alone in the exploits and 
 sacrifices of war does the divine soul of humanity 
 express itself, but also in the ardours and enthusiasms 
 and unselfish abandonments of peace. 
 
 Well, I argue from Chicago to the World-Centre. 
 The same motives and feelings which would prompt 
 the citizens of a single city to rebuild it more health- 
 fully and more magnifioendy, would move the citizens 
 7 1 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 of the world to create a World-Capital to be the centre 
 and headquarters of its greatest interests, and the 
 clearing-house of its most important concerns. 
 
 Who that has followed thus far does not desire to 
 know more of this wonderful project? But in so short 
 a space such eager enquirers can be gratified only a 
 very little way. The plans may lie on the table while 
 one writes, but it is impossible for one to describe 
 them. 
 
 Here is a vast monumental area planned in detail 
 like the heart of the world, to which the vital powers 
 would flow from the uttermost circumference of the 
 earth, and be sent back again enriched and strengthened 
 to inform and quicken the furthest continent and 
 islands of the sea. Grouped along and around a 
 broad avenue, surrounded by a navigable canal, I see 
 a harmony in stone of all the great interests and 
 concerns of mankind. Here is a science centre, there 
 an art centre, yonder a physical culture centre. On 
 one side is a vast World court of justice, on another 
 a World university, on another a World library, in 
 yet another a World bank or clearing-house. There 
 are great buildings and offices devoted to agriculture 
 and medicine and law and invention and industry 
 and music and drama and hygiene and Olympic 
 culture and an international Press. Here also is a 
 temple of religions, a universal temple; and a vast 
 World-conscience building. Beyond, stretching away 
 into the distance, are the residential and industrial 
 and transport districts of the city. 
 
 Such, in briefest outline, is the proposed great 
 city, to build which is considered by not a few to be 
 7* 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 one of the after-the-war tasks, as one of the im- 
 perative reconstructions demanded by the new time. 
 Demanded also by our children, to whom we owe 
 some reparation for the ruined estate we are handing 
 down to them. Demanded as some compensation 
 for the immense suffering and loss this erring genera- 
 tion has inflicted upon the unborn innocents. 
 
 To suggest questions of cost, really, is almost 
 grotesque, in view of the immeasurable wealth which 
 is now being poured out from Boulogne to Bagdad, 
 and from the Nile to the North Sea. Magnificent as 
 the design is in scope and outline, it is probable that 
 one Dreadnought from each of the nations of the 
 world would cover the cost One week of Europe's 
 war would cover it. I venture to suggest that if for 
 every pound of war expenditure the nations were to 
 set apart a single penny for a World-Centre — a 
 penny for a pound — they would be repaid by the 
 creation of a city that would beggar the dreams of all 
 city-builders from Nimrod to Alexander, and would 
 outshine the combined splendours of Constantinople 
 and Paris and London. Impossible, you say! May 
 be, yet awhile, seeing we are what we are. But I 
 present it to you as the scheme of a sagacious man 
 who has put his whole life and all he has into it. 
 Such an idea and such an offering is not to be lightly 
 dismissed. 
 
 Lately, I came across a letter written by a nurse 
 from a French hospital ; the nurse being a woman of 
 culture and literary ability. Here is her cry of 
 anguish. Listen! "As I patrol my huge dormitory 
 I curse, and curse, and curse — not only our enemies 
 73 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 (that were too easy a task for the tragic impulses 
 that possess me), but still more the general conditions 
 of European society that has left us without any 
 nobler method of settling our differences but that of 
 general torture and destruction!" There in that 
 French hospital that strong-souled woman realised 
 what a hell-broth man's stupidity had prepared for 
 himself to sup. 
 
 "I curse — and curse — and curse!" 
 
 Well, the large-minded author of this scheme 
 is one who would put an end to the nurse's curse 
 by putting an end to the conditions which bring 
 about such "general torture and destruction." He 
 would put an end to those conditions which 
 tend to the destruction of human life and treasure, 
 and introduce conditions which tend to the 
 guardianship of life and treasure. He considers 
 that this war has shown no nation to be self- 
 sufficient; that no longer by isolation, but only 
 by collaboration can the nations of the earth be 
 secure. In other words, patriotism is bankrupt ; has 
 broken down ; has shown that it can no longer afford 
 security. Patriotism must now lose itself in a larger 
 unity. Love of country must merge into love of 
 humanity ; and of that love the World-Centre would 
 be the most majestic and impressive symbol. By the 
 very force of nature the peoples of the earth will 
 continue to grow and expand; and since to kill them 
 off is the stupidest and most disgusting of all methods 
 for disposing of surplus populations, it is evident that 
 the nations cannot escape recurring and ever fiercer 
 conflicts except by combining in such general efforts 
 
 74 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 and ends as will cause them to move with one another- 
 in concert, instead of against one another in conflict. 
 It is now demonstrated that under modern conditions 
 military preparations cannot protect the individual 
 State ; and therefore the combination of States has 
 to be substituted for the competition of States. Such 
 combination necessitates for its highest expression a 
 World-Centre of Communication ; a World-Capital 
 for the discussion and administering of the united 
 interests and common ends of the human race. 
 
 Supposing, for example, the nations were to take 
 advantage of existing circumstances to create the 
 historic and beautiful city of Constantinople a neutral, 
 or international zone — the meeting-point of three 
 great continents ; the geographical bond between East 
 and West ; the sea-port for free communication 
 with all the world — is it not clear that the races of 
 the earth would at once rise into the consciousness 
 of a new headship, a new unity, a new fraternity, and 
 a new peace ? The neutralising of Constantinople, 
 with the waters around it, could be accomplished 
 without dispossessing any people of its territory or 
 nationality. In such a World-Capital, the World- 
 Charter drafted by M. Paul Otlet would be fittingly- 
 promulgated and administered. It is certain there 
 never will be world-peace as long as the existing State 
 anarchy continues. We may preach disarmament till 
 the crack of doom, but it is certain that States will 
 not disarm until some sure way of peace and safety 
 is adopted by the human race as a whole. M. Odet's 
 World-Charter administered in Mr. Andersen's World- 
 Capital offers the necessary substitute, by providing 
 75 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 the machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes. 
 Such a World-Centre would indeed be a city of refuge 
 from the furies of war. 
 
 In ancient Hebrew tradition we read that when the 
 children of Israel divided the Promised Land, they 
 appointed six cities which they called cities of refuge. 
 When one man killed another, whether by accident 
 or intent, the slayer might flee to the nearest city of 
 refuge and be safe till the elders of the city decided 
 his innocence or guilt. For those were the days of the 
 blood-feud ; and the next of kin could slay him if 
 overtaken before he reached the gate of the city of 
 refuge. Behind him was the avenger of blood, but 
 before was the city of refuge ! 
 
 Is it not a miniature of the vaster blood-shed of die 
 modern world, and the vengeance which must over- 
 take that world unless it flees to some city of refuge 
 and is safe ? It needs but litde imagination to see the 
 avenger of blood pressing close on the heels of blood- 
 stained Europe, which now begins to realise that it 
 must go and sin no more, for so a worse thing will 
 come upon it 
 
 Not long ago, a sad book was published bearing 
 the picturesque title, " The People who run." The 
 title is, I believe, English for a single Russian word. 
 The people who run are the hapless refugees who 
 seek safety in Russia ; but we may equally apply the 
 words to the wretched and unfortunate refugees from 
 the other litde countries, the number of whom has 
 cruelly increased as the war has rolled on its devas- 
 tating way. From the workshops of Belgium and the 
 farmsteads of Poland; from the seaports of the Baltic 
 76 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 and the plains of Lithuania and the valleys of Transyl- 
 vania; from Serbia and Montenegro and Galicia, 
 they have run, they have run, seeking refuge from 
 the demons of the batde-field. Towards France and 
 Russia and Switzerland and Italy they have run, they 
 have run — The People who run — -decimated, im- 
 poverished and despoiled, disabled, diseased, starved, 
 bereaved, sick, mad — they have run, they have 
 staggered, they have dropped the dead babe from their 
 arms, they have themselves dropped dead in their tracks ; 
 or the blood-feud has overtaken them in their flight, 
 and the gates of the cities of refuge were far away. 
 "O, horrible! O, horrible! most horrible!" 
 Yet before my mental vision I see a vaster horror 
 still. I see the avenger of blood in pursuit of the 
 people who made the people run. Everywhere I see 
 the avenger of blood at the heels of this helter- 
 skelter of warring nations. I see him in the garb of 
 poverty and disease, of demoralisation and depopula- 
 tion, of distress and devilment and deathin a thousand 
 unspeakable forms — hot, hot upon the heels of all 
 those peoples whose evil policies made the people run ! 
 But before them all I see rising the spires and 
 towers of the city of refuge. Let them turn aside 
 from their wild career of mutual slaughter. Let them 
 lay deep and broad the foundations of a city of peace. 
 Let them rear the shining walls of the World-Capital. 
 Let them bring forth the copestone with shoutings of 
 Grace, Grace unto it ! Let them adorn it with their most 
 precious arts, fill it with their most triumphant music, 
 sanctify it with their most equitable laws, consecrate 
 it with their purest religion, dedicate it to the widest 
 
 77 
 
A WORLD-CENTRE 
 and truest human brotherhood, and devote it to the 
 sublime ministries of perpetual peace. 
 
 Let them bring the glory and honour of the nations 
 into it ! 
 
 Then will the races of men turn their faces towards it 
 rfrom the four quarters of the globe, and hail it with awe- 
 . struck and delighted accents. — There the greatcity stands! 
 Among the most beautiful of the ancient myths 
 are those which set forth the building of the walls of 
 the great cities of Thebes and Troy. 
 
 When Apollo had invented the lyre, so sweet- 
 compelling were its notes that the very stones moved 
 in enchanted response, and built themselves up to be 
 the walls of the mighty Trojan capital. 
 
 When Amphion sought to build the walls of the 
 'hundred-gated Thebes, he received from Hermes a 
 harp which not only charmed the stones into motion, 
 but whirled them into harmonies of place till the 
 ^encircling walls were complete. 
 
 We are reminded of those legends of the Mother- 
 Age when we plan to Rebuild the World, and to rear 
 a vast World-City as its Centre and Capital. When 
 the god of war has completed his destructions, we 
 •must summon the gods of harmony to restore the 
 arts and architectures of civilised men. The strains of 
 Hermes and Apollo and Amphion have passed away 
 like the sighing breeze over windy Troy ; but new chords 
 are struck, and diviner cities rise. Mightier is the music 
 •of love and brotherhood, of unity and peace which is be- 
 ginning to sweep through the bosom of Humanity, in 
 delighted harmony with which will rise a World Rebuilt, 
 •with a World-Capital set like a gem upon its bosom. 
 78 
 
V 
 A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 
 1HAVE now shown the practicability of a 
 World-Charter promulgated and administered 
 in a World-Centre. Let us admire the greatness 
 of that human nature which can conceive such 
 ideas and plan such measures ! If it was a great 
 thing for Thomas Jefferson to frame the Declara- 
 tion of Independence, which was virtually the 
 first draft of the Constitution of the United States, 
 it is a greater thing for Paul Odet to frame a Charter 
 of the United States of the World, and for Hendrick 
 Christian Andersen to plan a World-Capital as the 
 head-quarters of the federated nations. 
 
 Yet to-day I declare a greater thing still: I declare 
 the advent of a World-conscience. Without a World- 
 conscience the wisest and most comprehensive World- 
 Charter were nothing but a " scrap of paper " ! With- 
 out a World-conscience the most noble and beautiful 
 city — John's New Jerusalem itself — were no better 
 than a slum. 
 
 If we turn to ancient books for illustration, we find 
 a parallel in the prophet Jeremiah. He also spoke of 
 new cities ; but they could be inhabited only by people 
 with new hearts. Before they were fit to build and fit 
 to inhabit such cities they needed to have the divine 
 law put in their inward parts and written in their 
 hearts. When the moral law came to be universally 
 honoured and obeyed — when all of them knew the 
 Lord, from the least of them to the greatest of them, 
 then the city would be built. Not till then. 
 
 For, as I have indicated, cities are a true reflex of 
 79 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 man's inward condition. We can accurately gauge 
 the depth and quality of human nature at any par- 
 ticular stage of its development by the cities it builds. 
 In other words, the city corresponds to the citizen. 
 The civic edifice is a projection of the civic soul. 
 And he who takes a believing survey of human 
 society, even in this tragic hour, will be forced to the 
 conclusion that the soul of humanity is making for a 
 greater social unity; that the international spirit is 
 seeking an international centre as the expression of 
 its inward unity. We shall be encouraged to set apart 
 a portion of the earth's space to the city of peace in 
 proportion as we believe that peace is coming into 
 the soul of man. 
 
 Some centuries ago, in the Scots city of Dundee, 
 flourished a great town-clerk who, when inscribing 
 his name and style in the city records, added this 
 much more in the Latin tongue, — inspired as it would 
 seem by classic reminiscences of Epictetus on the one 
 hand, and democratic anticipations of Walt Whitman 
 on the other, — 
 
 "If it be thy design to ornament the City by thy 
 gifts, be thou thyself dedicated, in the first place, to 
 whatsoever is loveliest, and of Clemency, Justice, and 
 Beneficence thou shalt raise aloft the best and most 
 memorable monument within the Republic, not 
 merely an inconsiderable building. For if Reason 
 should rule in cities, it is better certainly for great 
 souls to inhabit small houses than for mean slaves to 
 lurk in magnificent mansions : — The Euboeans and 
 Spartans did not build and repair their walls with 
 stones only, but with Discipline and Zeal for Good 
 80 
 
■A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 Morals, which are the visible ornaments alike of 
 cities and of rulers. Flourishing, truly, and peaceful 
 they made the Republic, by uniting together, not logs 
 and stones, but living souls." 
 
 Yes ; that is the true music of the gods, whereby 
 the Republic of Man will be built up. 
 
 If we ask ourselves what is the guarantee of a 
 better future for the human race, we must answer 
 that it consists in living souls, and a better conscience. 
 There can be no new order without a new spirit. A 
 new life requires a new idea of life. Things change 
 for man in obedience to the changes in his conscious- 
 ness. It is true that mind operates on material 
 things very slowly, but it is the only thing that 
 operates at all. Therefore the great ethical demand 
 of religion is for a change of heart. Ye must be born 
 again. Ye must become new creatures. The most 
 superb structures and institutions are of no value 
 except as they index a noble state of human idealism. 
 Men must first reform their characters; then they 
 will be able to reform their institutions. When 
 character deteriorates, the grandest monuments of 
 civilisation fall to pieces. 
 
 The peculiar horror of this war is due to the fact 
 that our external achievements had outrun our moral 
 character. Hence the things we made turned and fell 
 upon us. Our material advance had outpaced our 
 spiritual ; and therefore our material things fell before 
 a declaration of war, and now lie in ruins across the 
 face of Europe. In the recent words of a distinguished 
 scientist, it would appear as if the Supreme Power 
 were reproaching us, "I have given you a beautiful 
 81 G 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 world, an intellect capable of fathoming the stars, a 
 capacity for god-like virtues, and men of genius to 
 guide you; but all you do is to cut each other's 
 throats in the mire." 
 
 For, let us remind ourselves that crime does not 
 exist apart from the mind of the criminal. A simple 
 truth is it not, easily learned, but easily forgotten ? 
 Yet how true ! how necessary for our guidance ! The 
 writer whom I have just quoted, declares in the same 
 place — the review of Science ''Progress — that this war 
 is primarily due to the intellectual crimes of humanity, 
 and therefore it has now become our punishment. 
 The mind of man appears to have outrun his morals, 
 so that he has become a kind of intellectual monster 
 who creates only to destroy. The wonderful fabric of 
 civilisation he reared up in Europe throughout the 
 nineteenth century, and of which he was so vain, has 
 toppled over on him, and all but buried him in its 
 ruins. He had no moral strength to sustain his 
 intellectual pyramid. His things have got into the 
 saddle, and ride him. As the passing of Arthur was 
 accompanied by sore pangs of mind because he now 
 found that he had " but smitten with the sword in 
 vain," and that all his " realm reels back into the 
 beast, and is no more," — so defeated, and in such 
 moral ruin, does the Republic of European Culture 
 now find itself. 
 
 How could it be otherwise ? In the phrasing of 
 the old psalm, we have followed after vanities and 
 gone after leasing (lying). We have been going further 
 and further from the love of truth, and nothing but 
 ill could come of it. The most afflicting impression 
 82 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 of my lifetime for many years has been the never- 
 absent feeling that nearly everybody around me was 
 content and happy with any kind of pretence and 
 sham and counterfeit and excuse for anything and 
 everything; for any unjust policy of State or any 
 untrue dogma of religion ; provided only it enabled 
 them the more easily to lead the pleasurable kind of 
 life they wanted to live ; provided only the lie was 
 comfortable and convenient, enabling State or church 
 to turn awkward corners with some show of plausi- 
 bility. Therefore the terrific things that belong to that 
 sort of mind have come upon them according to the 
 graphic Christian scripture — " Upon the earth distress 
 of nations, with perplexity ; the sea and the waves 
 roaring ; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for 
 looking after those things which are coming on the 
 earth." 
 
 I have just been communing with a man who told 
 me that the most bewildering feeling he had in these 
 abnormal times, was the feeling of unreality. He felt, 
 he told me, like a man walking in a land of shadows, 
 vexed with vain dreams, deceived by appearances, 
 confused by mists and wraiths and vapours, cheated 
 by voices, mocked by echoes. He could hardly feel 
 sure of anything or anybody. The world seemed to 
 be an illusion, given over to deception and the father 
 of lies, to whose family he and the rest of us all 
 belonged. He did not know whom to believe, or what 
 to believe. The world seemed full of lies and liars. 
 Everybody seemed to be lying to every other body. 
 The nations shouted lies to one another. The military 
 people lied to mislead their enemies. The newspapers 
 83 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 lied to mislead the public and to prove the others to 
 be liars. The diplomatists lied to make out their case. 
 The preachers lied to back up the politicians and 
 keep themselves in the main stream. He seemed, he 
 told me, to be walking in an atmosphere of false- 
 hood, to be breathing falsehood, to be taking false- 
 hood in at ear and eye and lung ; so that he came 
 to wonder, like a man in nightmare, whether he were 
 not himself thinking and speaking falsehood. He 
 thought he was sure of God ; but he could not feel 
 sure of anybody, not even himself. " And," said he, 
 " that state of mind, spread throughout Europe and 
 the world, appears to me to be more horrible than 
 any of the more material horrors of the time." He 
 concluded by quoting the terrible words of the weep- 
 ing prophet, "The prophets prophesy falsely, and the 
 priests bear rule by their means ; and my people love 
 to have it so; and what will ye do in the end 
 thereof?" 
 
 I have mentioned religion. Let me ask this ques- 
 tion — Has the religion of Europe shown itself to be 
 k a sustaining and ennobling power in this general crash 
 of civilisation? I venture to reply in the negative. 
 Not only did the religion of Europe fail to keep it 
 out of war, but it has not availed to prevent it sink- 
 ing lower and lower into the depths of bestiality and 
 barbarism. It is the function of religion to inspire 
 men with pity and the fear of God ; but now, with 
 the utmost shamelessness, those very motives are dis- 
 avowed, and religion speaks no word, or speaks but 
 to approve. Far be it from me to dispute the sincerity 
 and power of religion in the souls of many indi- 
 84 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 viduals, — whether of soldiers at the front, or citizens 
 in the rear. But so far as the official religion of 
 Europe is concerned, it has proved to be but salt that 
 has lost its savour, fit only to be cast out and trodden 
 under foot of men. 
 
 All this I have said in order to anticipate an objec- 
 tion that might rise in some minds with regard to the 
 religious nature of the World-Centre. For the World- 
 Centre, mark you, has planned to place among its 
 noblest edifices a great World-conscience Building, to 
 provide for the free utterance of ideas of international 
 import. This building is planned to be of generous 
 proportions, with main lecture hall, smaller halls for 
 conference, libraries, galleries of painting and sculp- 
 ture. Its definite function will be the voicing by the 
 lips of great teachers and artists of those ideals which 
 are of most import to the higher life of man ; invit- 
 ing to the service of true culture the highest talent, 
 and enlisting human genius in the expression of that 
 which is most akin to the divine. 
 
 From this World-conscience Building, as from a 
 living fountain, would flow an exhaustless stream of 
 sympathy and love and inspiration to all the ends of 
 the earth. Congresses of the wise and good would 
 uncover the deeper and purer motives of human 
 character and conduct ; while the principles of inter- 
 national morality and the light of international ideals 
 would make manifest the richer virtues and the 
 higher mission of each nation and people, thus weav- 
 ing and interweaving those silken ties of love which 
 would be found more mighty to keep the peace of 
 the world than all the pacts and treaties and cove- 
 85 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 nants to which the diplomacy of the world had ever 
 set its hand. 
 
 Here also — and more definitely — will be seen the 
 Temple of Religions, corresponding to the Inter- 
 national Court of Justice, and separated from it only 
 by the mighty Tower of Progress which, like an 
 appealing arm, climbs towards the heavens, as if 
 embodying Humanity's endless quest of Truth, Jus- 
 tice, Knowledge and Love. According to plan, the 
 central part of the Temple of Religions is occupied 
 by an immense amphitheatre for conference on the 
 greatest themes of human interest. To right and left 
 are smaller halls, corridors, colonnades and courtyards 
 leading to the Temple Gardens, while the rear is 
 occupied by a vast library with adjoining reading- 
 rooms and rooms for the study of all the sacred 
 books, writings and manuscripts which will be 
 treasured here for safe-keeping. Spacious museums 
 will house and display all the available religious sym- 
 bols, paintings and statues which illustrate the 
 religious progress of all nations and times. The 
 Temple of Religions would interfere with no church 
 and promulgate no new doctrine. But it would col- 
 lect in its museums and libraries the symbols and 
 bibles and sacred writings and relics of past and 
 present, so as to illustrate the growth and develop- 
 ment of religions from magic and ferichism, through 
 all the historic faiths, up to the latest modern develop- 
 ments. Thus might religion, which has been the 
 source of many wars, become an instrument of peace 
 and harmony. Here would be manifested the common 
 origin of religions and their common outlook on 
 86 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 human destiny. Here would be the natural home 
 and headquarters of the spiritual activities of man- 
 kind. The assembling here of the world's great saints 
 and sages might be expected to show the connection 
 between the past and the present, the seen and the 
 unseen, the mortal and the immortal, and to make 
 apparent the spiritual unity of man. It would mobilise 
 the spiritual forces of the world, bringing order out 
 of confusion, trust instead of suspicion, knowledge in 
 place of ignorance, and infinite charity where now 
 prevail antagonism and intolerance. 
 
 Thus would the Temple of Religions constitute — 
 not only a symbol of the essential unity of man, but 
 — a means of more truly and fully realised unity. 
 As every point of arrival forms also a point of new 
 departure ; as the terminus of a journey constitutes 
 the starting-point of another and further journey ; so 
 the dedication of such a spiritual resort for the whole 
 human race would be an evidence of unity, but also 
 a means of securing a deeper and more conscious 
 unity. Here would be no question of the dominance 
 of one religion over, or its triumph at the expense of, 
 another. No ; but the sisterhood of all the faiths 
 would be displayed by the exhibition of that funda- 
 mental principle which was common to them all. 
 And when the spiritual unity of man was demon- 
 strated, his political unity would follow as a matter 
 of course. Community by love would reign where 
 now prevails barbarism by force. All the races would 
 rejoice to acknowledge themselves citizens of the whole 
 world instead of this or that section of it. Above all 
 nations would be humanity. They would discover 
 87 
 
A WORLD- ONSCIENCE 
 that their citizenship was even in heaven — not a 
 doubtful and future heaven in the skies, but — the 
 heaven of higher things on this very planet, and at 
 this present rime; the heaven of freedom, justice, truth, 
 and peace. 
 
 If, by contrast, we regard this International Temple 
 as the fulfilment of all national temples and cathedrals, 
 we shall see how potent it would be to promote the 
 spiritual and political solidarity of mankind. National 
 temples are partizan. Patriotism even at its best is 
 only partizanship. For what is the spectacle we behold 
 taking place in the interiors of the national cathedrals 
 of Europe ? What are the offerings presented on the 
 national altars of the world ? What are the prayers, 
 what the incense, what the Te Deums filling the 
 long-drawn aisles ? The prayers are merely petitions 
 for victory over enemies who, in a similar way, are 
 presenting similar prayers to the same Deity for vic- 
 tory over them ! The anthems are inspired by the 
 pride of victory, and the incense is the smell of the 
 blood of slaughtered millions. But if the human race 
 owned a vast International Temple or Cathedral, 
 those competitive petitions would be impossible ; they 
 would die away on the tongues which attempted to 
 offer them. Realising their unity in the one Creative 
 Spirit, they would in unison of desire reach upward 
 towards their common Source and Goal, and pray 
 only for those blessings which were common to all, 
 and consistent with the good of all. 
 
 In such an International Temple, moreover, a true 
 estimate would be placed on spiritual values. No 
 form of religion would assume superior airs towards 
 88 
 
A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 another. None would say, " Stand by, I am holier 
 than thou." Spiritual domination would give way to 
 spiritual democracy, the sense of equality before God ; 
 and the spirit of persecution would languish to its 
 death. No form of religion would be a competitor 
 for the exclusive favour of a tribal Deity, but all would 
 be co-operators in the worship of a common God, 
 and the service of a common humanity. When the 
 religious representatives of the world met in common 
 counsel, the various factors in religion would be re- 
 valued ; elements which appeared to conflict with one 
 another would be re-adjusted; and the only Te 
 Deums would be those sung over great discoveries 
 in science, great achievements in art, great displays 
 of human magnanimity and unselfish sacrifice, the 
 successful accomplishment of great enterprises for the 
 common good, the happy reconciliation of conflict- 
 ing interests in the spheres of industry and labour 
 and economics, the peaceful solution of international 
 differences, and the glorious adventures of a united 
 race as co-workers with the Eternal in the age-long 
 task of subduing the earth. Any other form of praise 
 and thanksgiving would be esteemed unholy, and a 
 blasphemy of that Spirit of Love in whom the sun- 
 dered races had at last found unity, and whom all 
 delighted to adore. 
 
 For, consider ! What is it that more than any- 
 thing else has provoked wars ? Has it not been the 
 divided nature of man's life ? The geographical and 
 tribal divisions of mankind, more than anything else, 
 have bred fear and suspicion and strife. Separation 
 involved conflict, because it involved ignorance. But 
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A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 now, we may suppose, the division of the earth is 
 accomplished. The flags of civilisation have been 
 hoisted at both poles. The enterprise and enthusiasm 
 of mankind may now be directed towards the victories 
 of mind and spirit, chief among which is the union 
 of nations for the purpose of making the most of 
 the planet given for their home. In these mental and 
 spiritual adventures the genius and courage and 
 originality of human character may be expected to 
 far surpass its earlier displays on the material planes 
 of war. Indeed, it may be confidently predicted that 
 when it is directed towards ideal ends, the united 
 spirit of humanity will accomplish the most surpris- 
 ing results in modifying its earthly environment, and 
 making the world at last a place really fit to live in. 
 The causes of poverty and physical weakness, and 
 criminality, and mental defect will be searched out by 
 the most curious and competent minds, united in 
 sympathetic study, over-passing all boundaries of 
 nation and all barriers of race, quickened by the 
 workings of the World-conscience, and declaring in 
 a yet grander sense than the ancients, Nothing that 
 is human is alien to us I 
 
 I have said that man's conquest over nature has 
 been his true and proper task. A very brief glance 
 at his past will satisfy us that it is so. The combina- 
 tion of human forces against the elemental forces has 
 been the grand method of human progress. It was 
 doubtless his contact with those mysterious powers of 
 the universe — those powers which seemed so much 
 alive and so hostile — that provoked early men to 
 sacrifices and prayers, and gave rise to religious forms. 
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A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 Continued progress has been made in the teeth of 
 Nature's apparent hostility ; though, when we have 
 conquered her, as we say, we make the further dis- 
 covery that she is really on our side, and is only 
 waiting to become our servant. With the develop- 
 ment of mind and with fuller social sympathies, man's 
 victories have gone on from stage to stage, till he is 
 now confronted with the possibility of taking the 
 last and greatest step of all — the step towards the 
 complete federation of all his tribes, the complete 
 organisation of all his thinkers and workers, the com- 
 plete inventory and application of all his resources. 
 That brings him up against the necessity of a World- 
 Centre, governed by a World-Charter, and sanctified 
 by a World-Conscience. And that is the next step 
 in the grand march of human progress. 
 
 For what, if it comes to that, is a World-Con- 
 science ? It is nothing but the general sense of man- 
 kind gathering itself up, and expressing itself through, 
 the handful of its representative minds. And as 
 I read, I learn that the representative minds are 
 getting ripe for the transition to World-unity. The 
 organisation of the world is tending that way, as I 
 have shown in earlier pages. The trend of evolution 
 is that way. We have science and sociology on our 
 side as well as religion. Nay, we have even politics ; 
 for during these last weeks have not the political 
 powers of Europe, even those which are locked in 
 fatal strife, been declaring with unanimity and 
 emphasis that they are seeking such international 
 arrangements as will make the peace of the world 
 safe for ever ? They have. Well then, the stars in 
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A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 their courses are fighting for us. Greater are they 
 who are with us than all who can be against us. The 
 old, feckless lament about the backwardness and 
 weakness of human nature is now seen to be irrelevant. 
 Human nature is proving itself competent. The 
 spirit of man is adequate to its destiny ; and its 
 manifest destiny is to become one in one kingdom, 
 or vast republic of kingdoms. 
 
 I take an illustration from a recent book on 
 " Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War." It is 
 there argued that the instincts of the lower animals 
 survive among the nations of to-day ; some resemble 
 the wolf-pack and some the tribal ape; some the 
 stinging wasp and some the hive of bees. True, so 
 far. But though the instincts may survive they do 
 not dominate. For over and above them man has 
 acquired thought and reflection and morality and a 
 mind that looks before and after. He is capable of 
 reverence for the things above him and around him 
 and beneath him. He has become hopeful and faith- 
 ful and aspiring and imaginative and resourceful. He 
 can make new departures, which bees and wolves are 
 incapable of doing. He can make engines to run 
 where he cannot go. He can build ships to sail where 
 he cannot swim. He can create machines to fly where 
 he cannot leap. These things wolves and baboons 
 cannot do. More, he can speculate on his origin and 
 on a hereafter, and fashion marvellous theories of 
 angels and gods and immortalities and heavens of 
 endless bliss. Can such a being not build an Inter- 
 national City with an International Temple sanctioned 
 by an International Conscience ? Do not tell me ! 
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 But of course he must use the means. He knows 
 that, however, and may be trusted to use them when 
 the moment comes. He has to perfect his inter- 
 national organisation. That is all. An American 
 professor has written a book on the international mind. 
 Another has suggested that the international mind 
 is out in search of a body. That exacdy hits off the 
 situation. We do not need to create an international 
 mind. It already exists. We have merely to find a 
 suitable embodiment for it. The pioneers whose 
 names and schemes I have introduced to you these 
 past pages have shadowed forth such embodiments. 
 And the World-Conscience Society is well on its way, 
 including hundreds of the world's leaders, who have 
 set their names to the great project of the World- 
 Centre. The World-Conscience Society will assuredly 
 multiply its numbers. It will become attractive, 
 cohesive, consolidated. And the dream will become 
 a reality. It cannot be doubted that unity and peace 
 on this earth are in the social destiny of man. From 
 the beginning the end was there, and nothing can 
 prevent its fulfilment. The self-murder which Europe 
 is now inflicting on herself cannot defeat it ; nay, will 
 defeat itself. For the horror and ruin of the war are 
 bringing into fuller relief the imperative necessity of 
 World-union, and a demand that it become actual in 
 the political re-organisation of the world. 
 
 " Do not fear " — writes one of the fighters in the 
 front of the battle — " that the life of the spirit is 
 dying in us, nor that hope or energy will be spent. 
 To some few of us at any rate the hope of helping 
 to found some ' City of God ' carries us away from 
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A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 these present horrors, and beyond the graver intoler- 
 ance of thought as we see it in our papers. We shall 
 not faint, and the energy and endurance we have used 
 here on an odious task we shall be able to redouble 
 in the creative work that peace will bring to do." 
 
 So, then, the guns which shatter the architectures 
 of Europe are laying the foundations of the City of 
 Man. Every mangled corpse lying out on the plains 
 of Europe is a plea for the solidarity of man. The 
 conflagration of human passions is burning up the 
 last arguments for isolation and national selfishness, 
 and clearing the ground for the building of a World- 
 City, demanded by the World-Conscience. 
 
 The reference to the conflagration of war reminds 
 me that the city of London had its great fire, which 
 two centuries and a half have not erased from the 
 memory of its citizens. London needs no monument 
 to perpetuate that which was esteemed a great disaster 
 in its time. 
 
 And yet, looking back upon its great fire, London 
 came to realise that it brought something of a bless- 
 ing with it too. For it came hot on the heels of the 
 great plague. It purified London. It burned up the 
 plague-spots. It made possible a better and healthier 
 London. 
 
 And yet again, with the great fire London missed 
 a great opportunity. It missed the opportunity of 
 building a greater and more beautiful London. For 
 the builder of St. Paul's Cathedral, Christopher 
 Wren, urged London to seize the opportunity to re- 
 build the city on broader, more generous and more 
 commodious lines. He actually drew up plans of the 
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A WORLD-CONSCIENCE 
 new and greater city. But again private interests pre- 
 vailed over public good. London turned away from 
 its great opportunity, and became — what its city men 
 know it to be. 
 
 The world will presently be confronting its great 
 opportunity to build a vast World-Centre and World- 
 Conscience Building and its mighty Temple of 
 Religions to be the spiritual and political head-quarters 
 of the human family. May the world not imitate the 
 short-sightedness of London ! O that the repentant 
 and reunited peoples of the earth may join hands to 
 lay the foundation of a City of Celebration — a City 
 to celebrate the Great Peace ! Purged of a guilty con- 
 science, quickened into a world-wide social conscious- 
 ness, may the humbled and purified peoples unite in 
 a great and worthy offering to Posterity, in the form 
 of a Capital and a Temple to be the spiritual and 
 political centre for the ages of Peace to come ! 
 
 As the citizens of the world come from all its four 
 corners to their vast World-Centre, they will behold 
 the great dome of the Temple surmounted by its 
 gold-bronze statue of Peace, and upon the columns 
 that adorn the exterior will survey the statues of the 
 great religious teachers of all ages and races ; and 
 they will realise that the times of separation and 
 strife have come to an end, and the epoch of unifica- 
 tion has arrived. Then the vision of the ancient seer 
 shall be fulfilled, when the house of the Eternal shall 
 be established among the hills, and all nations shall 
 flow unto it : — When many people shall go and say, 
 Come ye, and let us go up to the house of the 
 Eternal, and he will teach us of his ways, and we 
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 will walk in his paths : — And the Eternal shall judge 
 among the nations, and shall rebuke many people; 
 and they shall beat their swords into plow-shares, and 
 their spears into pruning-hooks : Nation shall not 
 lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn 
 war any more. 
 
 Then — in that World Rebuilt — they shall teach 
 no more every man his neighbour, and every man 
 his brother, saying, Know the Eternal ! For they 
 shall all know me, from the least of them unto the 
 greatest of them, saith the Eternal ! 
 
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