Religion and Civilization

This lecture was a five minute speech given at the opening session of the World Fellowship of Faiths at the second Parliament of Religions, held in the Morrison Hotel, Friday, August 27, 1933, Chicago, Illinois.

Religion is not a command from without, but a growth in ourselves. It is a being-becoming , growing in life from within like an endogen, drawing substance also from without.

Religion is to be in tune with the infinite. It is the budding forth of the lotus of the heart, the correspondence with the environment of the soul, the opening out of the fountains from within, the setting a flow of the waters of life that proceed from the throne of the Most High.