As has been related in the last volume, Swami Vivekananda completed his second season of teaching in New York City in the last week of February, 1896. It had been a season of great harvest, to be matched only by that which was to come in London in the fall of this same year. During the months of December, 1895, and January and February, 1896, he had produced, largely through the medium of his classes, the books Karma-Yoga, Bhakti-Yoga, and Raja-Yoga, as well as The Science and Philosophy of Religion, which consisted of his advanced New York classes on jnana yoga. In addition, seven of the pubic lectures that he gave during this period constitute today a good part of the book we know as Jnana-Yoga and provide, when read in chronological order, his step-by-step presentation of the Vedanta philosophy. Besides these, he delivered during this period a number of other important lectures, including "The Claims of Religion," "Bhakti or Devotion," and "My Master."

Ever since Swamiji's return from England in the early part of December of 1895, he had been planning to visit Detroit and to hold classes in that "dynamic city" of the Midwest, if only for a short period. His previous visit in Detroit had taken place in February and March of 1894 and its nature, in keeping with the first period of his Western mission, had been dramatic and necessarily public. He had to a large extent concentrated, as he had throughout his midwestern tour, on counteracting through his many lectures the highly distorted and denigrating pictures that Christian missionaries had given of the complex, highly diversified, and exquisitely refined culture and religion of India.

Needless to say, Swamiji's lectures in Detroit had also contained stirring teachings on the philosophy of Vedanta-whether or not he called them by that name for first and foremost he was a teacher of spirituality; indeed, he was above all a prophet of the highest magnitude, standing among those rare visitors to this earth whose advent creates a spiritual tide in the currents of world thought. Throughout his travels in the Midwest he bestowed his blessings without effort or deliberation upon the thousands of people with whom he came in contact. One might say, for lack of a better English term, that he shone upon them. Perhaps if Swamiji had done nothing else in the Western world, this silent aspect of his mission would have been enough to turn the direction of Western culture toward a spiritual goal. But in this rationally oriented and highly practical age, it was also important that he be philosophically explicit; thus came the period of concentrated work in New York City, a period of teaching during which his mission struck deep roots and which he wanted now to extend to the Midwest.

Swamiji, with his faithful and efficient secretary-disciple, Josiah J. Goodwin, arrived in Detroit on the night of Tuesday, March 3,* a day later than expected but well in time to hold his first class, which was scheduled For the following morning at eleven o'clock. Two of Swamiji's Detroit disciples, Christina Greenstidel (Sister Christine) and Mrs. Mary Funke, had engaged a parlor and two bedrooms for him and Goodwin at the Richelieu Hotel-"a kind of combination between an apartment house and an hotel, in the best quarter of the City._x000d_ * Swamiji had been expected in Detroit on the night of Monday, March 2. As it happened, however, his good friend Mrs. Florence Adams of Chicago gave a lecture that evening in New York, and he had stayed over to attend it. According to Swami Kripananda, then in Detroit, this twenty-four hour delay in Swamiji’s arrival caused no little anxiety among his Detroit students, who feare, Kripananda informed Mrs. Bull, that he might not come at all.

It is today a matter of history that in 1894 Swamiji had silenced the bigots of Detroit simply by his undeniable spiritual eminence. It had been abundantly clear that the country whose religion he represented and whose son he was, could hardly be a totally benighted land of dark and idolatrous creeds. Swamiji had won the day without effort. But his enemies, though publicly silenced in America, did not give up. Was he, after all, a true representative of Hinduism? One or two hostile Indian newspapers, anxious to discredit him, declared that he was not. Many American newspapers diligently quoted such reports, all of which put Swamiji in an extremely awkward position, for at that time he had had no official backing from his fellow countrymen. It was not until months after his first visit in Detroit that word reached America of his public recognition by the important Hindu communities of India as an accredited representative of Hinduism and as an honored sannyasin. In the fall of 1894 the news was duly published in the newspapers of New York, Chicago, Boston, and other large cities of the United States except, it would seem, those of Detroit. Indeed, as late as March of 1896 the Detroit newspapers were not only in the dark regarding Swamiji's total and unquestioned vindication, they were still living in the days of his first visit to the city and spoiling for another fracas over the Heathen Monk. If Swamiji now wished to avoid as far as possible the newspaper "blazoning" that he so much disliked, his entrance into the city should have been, so to speak, on tiptoe.

You ask about Krapananda [sic], & I am afraid that you will be surprised to hear he left on Wednesday evg for Buffalo, with the intention of proceeding this (Thursday) evg. To Detroit. He came back from seeing you off, & told me that he was to stop in Buffalo, & would not be going on to Detroit, but changed his mind within the next half an hour. . . ._x000d_ Krapananda is taking a room at Detroit in a different house to that in which the Swami will be.

In Buffalo Kripananda visited Mr. and Mrs. Tralles, both of whom he had initiated into brahmacharya the previous year. He spent two happy and peaceful days in the company of these devoted disciples, and then, fatally, moved on to Detroit, where he arrived in the early afternoon of Saturday, February 29.

It does not seem probable that Swamiji would have requested Kripananda to announce his arrival in Detroit to the local newspapers. Yet that is the first thing Kripananda did. As he wrote to Mrs. Bull, he "called at the principal newspapers to have the announcement of the Swami's arrival published in the Sunday paper: ' Nor was this all. "It occurred to me," he continued, "to call on Miss Hamilton [a half disciple of his, of whom more later] as she might introduce me to some reporter of the Detroit Free Press where I wished to have published the Swami's coming. And thus Kripananda, barely off the train, set in motion a newspaper hubbub, which though meaningless, was disagreeable and for a time disruptive to the private and serious classes Swamiji had wanted to hold.

This two weeks' visit, during which he intended to hold two classes daily, morning and evening, was to be more or less private. News of his classes, which were meant for serious students, would inevitably and rapidly spread by word of mouth among his friends. There was no need of publicity; nor did Swamiji want any. Two years earlier his presence in Detroit had provoked a religious storm, rocking the pulpits, alarming missionary societies, and delighting every newspaper editor in town. The heated controversy-the wordy virulence of the more orthodox clergymen, who saw Swamiji as a threat to their credibility and power, the eloquence of more liberal thinkers, both lay and clerical, who saw him as a champion of their cause-made heady copy. And that controversy had been in dead earnest; Swamiji's enemies would have destroyed him if they could; they were not merely talking.* His friends, for their part, were fighting not for Swamiji alone but for humanity itself._x000d_ * The missionaries had good reason to be afraid of Swamiji’s eloquence, brilliant intellect, and manifest spirituality. And what ther feared did indeed come to pass. Headlines of an article in the Chiago Inter Ocean of April 6, 1896 Itwo and a half years or so after Swamiji’s appearance at the Parliament of Religions), proclaimed: CRISIS IN MISSIONS – EVANGELISTS CANNOT RETURN TO THEIR WORK IN INDIA – TEACHERS OF THE GOSPEL MUST REMAIN INACTIVE BECAUSE THERE IS NO MONEY IN THE TREASURY. (See also Swami Vivekananda, His Second Visit to the West, Second Edition, pages 663-65/)

This was the frenzy into which the newspapers had worked themselves when Swamiji arrived in Detroit on the night of Tuesday, March 3. It is not likely that anyone met him at the depot (for he had not sent word of his delayed arrival); nor is it likely that he read the local papers at that late hour. It may not, then, have been until the following morning that he learned of the commotion in the press and not until he came down to the parlor at the Richelieu Hotel to greet, as he supposed, his assembled friends, that he received his first shock. It was a stunning one. In the large crowd that awaited him there was only one familiar face. The rest were strangers, curious, sensation-seeking.

How the attempted rearrangement of Swamiji's classes worked out is not known. But as the days went by a natural selection very likely took place: Swamiji's old friends must have soon learned to arrive early, and those strangers not seriously interested must have soon dropped away. Meanwhile, many of those who had been strangers became friends, and the classes remained crowded. Indeed, it was not altogether unfortunate that so many newcomers had been pushed by curiosity into the Hotel Richelieu; for they returned again and again, caught up in the radiance of the "Hindoo priest." How many must have exclaimed, as had Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke two years before, "If we had missed this !

Although the city's population was under three hundred thousand, its church life represented in concentrated form the religious thought prevalent throughout the Midwest-a section of the country in which religion was taken with intense seriousness. On the one hand, Detroit seems to have contained more than its share of "old-time" ministers and missionaries who were afflicted with minds as tight and hard as clenched fists, minds gnarled with suspicion of and hatred for anything beyond their own small purview. On the other hand, it was not an unsophisticated or culturally backward city.

Detroit's wealthy citizens looked toward the East Coast for intellectual stimulus, and among the young a liberal outlook was growing fashionable; the "old-time religion" was rapidly losing ground to the universe of science with its expanding horizons and astounding revelations. Even before Swamiji's first hurricane like descent upon the city in 1894, Detroit was a battleground of the old and the new, and many a bystander was caught betwixt and between. Educated truth-seekers could no longer listen to old-fashioned preachers without acute uneasiness of mind, but neither could they listen to more modern, secularly oriented ministers without uneasiness of soul. Caught between a creed they could no longer believe and one that substituted a doctrine of social service for a living faith, they experienced a profound restlessness. They wandered, as had Christina Greenstidel and Mary Funke, from one lecture or sermon to another, seeking they knew not what. In the 1890s every American city contained such religious nomads; but Detroit seems to have been abundantly supplied. In no other large city had people flocked with the almost frantic eagerness of the half starved to hear Swamiji, and, significantly, in no other American city had he been so violently opposed. But now, two years after he had decisively won his battle, only the ill-informed and ill-advised Mr. Thoburn, egged on by the newspapers, was foolish enough to stand against him. The Reverend Mr. Thoburn was, one might say, the last of the Missoos. *_x000d_ * In his unedited letters to Mary Hale Swamiji referred to Christian missionaries of the Rev. Mr. Thoburn breed as the Minsoos. The term was a pleasantry of the era.

Swamiji had many friends in Detroit. To those he had made in 1894, among whom were Mrs. John J. Bagley, the Honorable Thomas W. Palmer, and Mr. Charles Freer, he had since added many others, including a Mrs. Speers, who lived at the Richelieu, a Mrs. Phelps (whom he may have met earlier and who had tried in September of 1895 to help Kripananda), Christina Greenstidel, who lived with her mother and four younger sisters at 418 Alfred Street, the heart of the city's German district, and Mrs. Mary Funke, who lived nearby with her husband, Charles, a well-to-do wholesale and retail grocer. Then there was Stella Campbell, one of Swamiji's students at Thousand Island Park, who had now secluded herself on a small island in one of the many lakes around Detroit. Although Stella was determinedly reclusive, it is hard to think that she did not come into the city at least once to see her guru. But the closest of his earlier friends-she in whose home he had been an honored guest for many weeks. And who had bravely and devotedly championed him when he had been maligned was not in the city. Mrs. Bagley was in Colorado tending a daughter, who was recovering from tuberculosis. She was never again to see Swamiji; before his next visit to America she would die, still in Colorado, from an attack of appendicitis.

Holding classes morning and evening and giving interviews in the afternoon, as was generally his custom, Swamiji had less time than he had had in 1894 to accept formal invitations. Yet no doubt he often dined informally at the homes of his close friends, and no one could be as delightfully informal as Swamiji. _x000d_ The teacher who held crowds of people spellbound by the very transcendence of his personality and whose majesty of bearing could inspire awe, could also play with the lightheartedness of a child. The simplest occasion became in his presence a joyous festival, where all formality and shyness disappeared. The life tells us of an unplanned dinner at the home of one of his Detroit friends:

On a certain occasion he went to the house of one of his admirers and, with that unique sense of freedom and frankness which was his, asked to be allowed to cook an Indian meal himself. The request was immediately granted, and then to the amusement of everyone present, he gathered from his pockets some score or more of tiny packets filled with finely ground condiments and spices. These had been sent all the way From India, and wherever he went these packets went with him, At one time, one of his choicest and most prized possessions was a bottle of chutney some gentleman had thoughtfully sent him from Madras. His Western disciples delighted to have him cook his own dishes in their kitchens. They helped him also in this, and thus time would pass by in merriment and making new experiments. He would make the dishes so hot with spices that they were not palatable to a Western taste, and many times the preparations took so long that when the food was ready to be served the party was literally raven-ous, Then there would be much talk and laughter, and he would take the keenest delight in seeing how the Western tongue stood the hot-spiced dishes of distant Hindusthan. They were, no doubt, soothing to his high strung temperament and tired nerves, but certainly not "good for his liver" as he insisted they were.

There is no way of knowing how many disciples Swamiji made in Detroit, but that many people became his followers is certain, and to be a direct follower of his was no small matter. No one who came close to him could have ignored, or ever forgotten, the fact that such a man actually existed. Henceforth, if only unconsciously, all other experience would be judged by the touchstone of his being and the direction of one's life would tend toward that which he had so vividly and unmistakably personified. The experience of coming face to face with Swamiji would have been in itself a kind of initiation, a plunge into the current of spiritual life. Nor can one doubt that he bestowed his liberating blessing upon all whom he met, silently, permanently removing deep-seated obstructions that had long blocked their paths; one cannot doubt that he thus turned hundreds of lives toward freedom, for to do so was in his power.

It is probable, however, that in Detroit several men and women, if not many, became his formal disciples and that some took their first monastic vows. In Kripananda's letter of March 22 to the Brahmavadin one reads, "In Detroit, too, several persons joined the children of Sri Ramakrishna. It is interesting to note that at least one and a half of those who received the vows of brahmacharya from Swamiji had been Kripananda's own disciples. "Two Brahmacharyas were made," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 11. "Miss Hamilton half the Swami's disciple and half my own pupil took the vow of Bramacharina and so did Mr. Edwards, my disciple.

One wonders how Swamiji felt about having only half a disciple in Miss Martha Hamilton. Perhaps, if he knew of it, he let it pass so as not to give more pain to Kripananda, who was to be sorely in need of the sympathy and friendship that Miss Hamilton could and would offer him.* The hopes that Swamiji had held for his sannyasin disciple had been shattered; much as he loved Kripananda, much as he recognized his good qualities and potential strengths, it had become impossible for him to introduce him to Detroit as his successor, as he had intended. Kripananda had not only inadvertently triggered a newspaper war, which was forgivable enough, but had talked, apparently with malice and certainly with indiscretion, against the officers of the New York Vedanta Society. _x000d_ * Miss Martha Hamilton had evidently met Swamiji at Greenacre in the summer of 1894. She had also met Mrs. Bull there.

There has been so much misrepresentation not only of myself but of everyone in New York, here,that I want to ask you to let me pay my own expenses in coming here & while here. The Principal charge made before we reached here was that the Swami had been systematically "robbed" in New York. This was the word used. The charge went further & said that he had not even been allowed carfare, & that I had been sent here by the Vedanta Society to act as a spy over him & get what I could out of him for the Vedanta Society. It was also carefully circulated that I was getting $18 a week here & had been throughout, & was in the general movement. I suppose I need not tell you who was the author of this, (Kripananda) who added that he had lived &, had his meals away from the Swami in New York rather than be a party to the robbery. He even went so far as to say that he had given the Swami the proceeds of anything he had written [news] papers about the Swami's work in New York. The Swami has since let this cat out of the bag (unintentionally) & has admitted that Kripananda has had hundreds of dollars from time to time, & that he even paid his fare to Detroit.

But the chief point is this,that nothing on my part shall be allowed to lend color of truth to the charge, & with your permission, to avoid this, I should like to refund to you my part of the expenses.

After months of smoldering, the fire of Kripananda's jealousy seems to have totally destroyed his judgment; one can only think that a sort of madness possessed him. But however explainable (and forgivable) his conduct may have been, it could not be overlooked. Swamiji could not possibly endorse the charges Kripananda had publicly made against the officers of the New York Vedanta Society by sponsoring him in Detroit as a religious teacher. There seems to have been an element of self-destruction in Swami Kripananda that defied any amount of grace; at least so it seemed during this difficult stretch of his life, when almost nothing he did was right.

There was, for instance, his teaching of the "Tattvas" ¬whatever those may have been. On March 9 Mr. Goodwin, who lost few opportunities to criticize poor Kripananda, though not without justification, had written to Mrs. Bull:

I really am afraid the Swami will make a mistake in doing as he proposes-letting him [Kripananda] go his own way. Mrs. Phunke, Miss Greenstidel, & two other ladies here, whose names I do not remember, have told me that he has been systematically preaching Tatvas, entirely unknown to the Swami, & they are confident he will continue this directly the Swami's back is turned. This would be degradation of the Swami's teaching & would not only not lead to spirituality, but would make the road to spirituality harder & more obscure. I do not wish to pose as a saint. I have nothing of saintliness, but I do say that this teaching has got a firm enough hold on me to make the idea of such a result as Krapananda's connection with the work seems to promise thoroughly repugnant to me.

What the young Mr. Goodwin thought of Swami Kripa¬nanda's connection with Swamiji's work was, of course, neither here nor there. But Swamiji himself, while never forbidding his disciples to teach in accordance with their own understanding and temperament, could not authorize the preaching of the "Tattvas," which, as the Detroit ladies had correctly surmised, Kripananda was intent upon. As far as can be understood, the term Tattvas, as Kripananda and others were using it, signified a type of Kundalini yoga with emphasis on various stages of psychic experience. (See note for Volume Three, .chapter five, page 379.) This was a kind of teaching Swamiji strongly advised against; yet, for all the fuss the ladies made, Kripananda's "Tattvas" do not seem to have been on the dark or left-hand side or to have warranted the disapproval Mrs. Bull conveyed when she later rebuked him for having "tampered with unclean books & taught from them.

Kripananda's stars seem to have been particularly awry during that month of March 1896-or, if one prefers, his bad karmas seem to have been pelting down upon his head like apples from a shaken tree. Before the month was out even an earlier indiscretion dropped its missile fruit. As was seen in the last volume, one of Kripananda's duties was to write a monthly letter to the Brahmavadin, reporting upon the progress of Swamiji's work. In January of 1896 his newsletter from New York had consisted in large part of a heated diatribe against Theosophical and spiritualist groups, as well as other "religious and irreligious monstrosities" that then abounded in America. "In this Bedlam of religious cranks," he wrote, "in this devil's kitchen of fraud, imposture and knavery, the Swami appeared to teach the lofty religion of the Vedas, the profound philosophy of the Vedanta, the sublime wisdom of the ancient Rishis. . . . He denounced fraud and superstition in whatever guise they appeared, and all those untrue and erratic existences hid them¬selves, like bats at the approach of daylight, in their haunts before this apostle of Truth.

It is not likely that in those busy New York days Swamiji had taken the time to read Kripananda's long and acrimonious letter before it was sent off to Madras. It was published in the February 15, 1896, issue of the Brahmavadin, and in the last part of March returned in printed form to America, where it came to the attention of one of Swamiji's New York friends and supporters, William Joseph Flagg.* Mr. Flagg wrote the following letter to Swamiji on March 23 :_x000d_ * For information about William J. Flagg see Burke, Swami Vivekananda in the West, New Discoveries: His Prophetic Mission – Part Two (Hereafter called Prophetic Mission-2), chapter nine, section two.

My dear Master,_x000d_ I enclose a cutting from the last Brahmavadin, to which I beg to call your attention. I am sure you would not sanction the insulting flings at¬_x000d_ 1 Americans in general._x000d_ 2 The 6 million spiritualists._x000d_ 3 The equally numerous "healers, scientists &c." _x000d_ 4 The Theosophical Society._x000d_ - which some indiscreet friend has been indulging in. "We do not catch bees with vinegar"_x000d_ There can be no good done by making enemies, I do not think there is one fraud in a thousand of them. (except paid mediums)_x000d_ I don’t object to giving a scolding to the Scribes and Pharisees, and sinners in general, but do the sincere millions whom Mr. K is trying to kick deserve the epithets he flings?_x000d_ You know they don't hit me, for I am neither a healer, a spiritualist, nor a Theosophist. All these naturally lean towards you, for they are all occultists & look upon India as the home of occultism. I see no good in driving them away._x000d_ I trust to see you on your way through: If you are subject to sea-sickness I have a specific for it. Yours most truly.

A letter you published from Kripananda in the Brahmavadin was rather unfortunate. Kripananda is smarting under the blows the Theosophists [not "Christians" as in the Complete Works)* have given him and that sort of letter is vulgar, pitching into everybody. It is not in accord with the tone of the Brahmavadin. So in future when Kripananda writes, tone down everything that is an attack upon any sect, however cranky or crude. Nothing which is against any sect, good or bad, should get into the Brahmavadin. Of course, we must not show active sympathy with frauds._x000d_ * In his original letter to Alasinga (RKM, Belur), Swamijis’s word was Theosophs. One of Swami Kripananda’s difficulties was the amount of criticism he had been receiving from the members of the Theosophical Society in New York, from which he had resigned in early 1895. A little later he had written to Mrs. Bull: “I severed my connections with the [Theosophical] society and my associates, so that not the least particle of my time and devotion should be robbed on the Swami and his cause. I became his servant, his slave, his shadow, and I was ready to bear – and the Lord only knows how much I have all the slander and abuse heaped on me by my former associates on account of my following the man who I regarded as the embodiment of divine truth” (Kripananda to Sara Bull, April 16, 1895, SCB). But Kripananda’s acidulous letter of January, 1896, to the Brahmavadin was a means of retaliation against his former associates at the expense of Swamiji’s cause of tolerance. There was, to be sure, much truth in his depictin of the religious, or quasireligious, groups in America that confronted Swamiji, and for this reason the Brahmanavadin letter has been quoted in various editions of the Life since 1913. Only recently has it become clear that this was the polemic to which Swamiji had objected in his letter dated March, 1896, to Alasinga, (Complete Works, 7:490).

You know that the Swami, far from helping me to continue his work here, did everything to frustrate the very purpose for which he had me come to Detroit. Not only did he not announce to his classes that I would resume his work, but by his actions and talk showed that I was entirely estranged to him, so that even the few friends I had here turned away from me, and his very followers made me the subject of slander and calumny warning everybody not to avail themselves of my teachings. Some persons who had learned of my being in the city and desirous to take lessons went to ask at the Swami's residence of my whereabouts were purposely denied my address by the Landlord who from the Swami's public utterances implied his dislike for me. I know this as a fact.

What Kripananda knew as facts were, particularly when his emotions were involved, largely fantasy. There is little doubt, however, that the estrangement between him and Swamiji in Detroit was apparent to everyone. Yet for the sake of his work, as well as for the sake of the disciple whom he loved and with whom his relationship was many-leveled and beyond our probing, there was surely nothing Swamiji could have done other than what he did.

The difference was a subtle one, but it was not lost upon Sister Christine, who had attended his Detroit lectures in 1894, been with him at Thousand Island Park, and now knew him well enough to detect different aspects of the same benevolent force. In a portion of her memoirs that has been recently made available to us by Mrs. Boshi Sen, Christine recalled Swamiji's Detroit lectures:

Vivekananda was to visit Detroit once more, but this time for only a short farewell visit._x000d_ When asked what preparation he made for speaking, he told us none but neither did he go unprepared. He told us that usually before a lecture [no doubt during his first visit in Detroit] he heard a voice saying it all. The next day he repeated what he had heard. He did not say whose voice he heard. Whatever it was, it came as the expression of some great spiritual power, greater than his own normal power, released by the intensity of his concentration. This may have been quite unconscious. No written words can convey the vitality, the power, the majesty that came with his spoken words, What might happen to one's ideas, values, personality if this current of power were let loose upon them! It was great enough to move the world, let alone one little human personality, which was but as a straw upon its mighty current. It was force that could sweep everything before it. Old ideas would change, the purposes and aims of life, its values would change, old tendencies would be directed into a new channel, the entire personality would be transmuted. . . ._x000d_ . . . The spiritual force generated at such times was so great that some in the audience were lifted above the normal state of consciousness, so that it was possible to remember only the beginning of a lecture. After a certain point, there seemed a blank. The normal mind was no longer functioning; a higher state of consciousness, beyond reason and memory, had taken its place. Long after, perhaps, it would be found that during that period when the mind seemed blank, a specially deep impression had been made. . . ._x000d_ . . . After giving (his course of classes at the Richelieu Hotel], he was invited by his friend Rabbi Grossmann to speak at the Temple Beth-El on the last Sunday of his stay in Detroit. An hour before the time appointed the Temple was filled to its utmost capacity and it became necessary to close the doors. Hundreds were turned away. Others, refusing to be shut out, hammered on the doors and tried by every means to gain admittance. Just as the lecture was about to begin the clamour became so great that it seemed as if the mob would storm the place. But when he appeared on the platform a hush fell over the audience. I heard a foreign voice near me gasp, "How beautiful he is!" And indeed never was beauty more ethereal. At this time the power was not so obvious. It had been transformed into a diviner radiance and a deeper compassion for the world which he was soon to leave. So India often pictures her gods-robes and turbans of concentrated sunlight, complexion of gold, a divine radiance lighting the face, an inner stillness as of a deep pool. He rose and poured forth majestic truths in a voice which completed a beautiful harmony of appearance, voice, and message. Not a gesture was there to detract the mind from the intense concentration into which he had plunged his hearers.

His last public appearance in Detroit was at the Temple Beth EI of which Rabbi Louis Grossman[n], an ardent admirer of the Swami, was the pastor. It was Sunday evening and so great was the crowd that we almost feared a panic. There was a solid line reaching far out into the street and hundreds were turned away. Vivekananda held the large audience spellbound, his subject being . . . "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." He gave us a most brilliant and masterly discourse. Never had I seen the Master look as he looked that night. There was something in his beauty not of earth._x000d_ It was not until the eve of Swamiji's departure from Detroit that the city caught up on the news of 1894. One guesses that he had deliberately waited until his work in Detroit was over before making available to the papers the letter written to him by the Chairman of the Calcutta Meeting, which had long since been published in the papers of many other American cities. Coming at this late hour of his visit in Detroit, the letter acclaiming his work in America was obviously not published as a rejoinder to Thoburn and his kind, but as his parting assurance to his supporters that their trust had not been given to an impostor. That he felt he owed this to his friends was characteristic of his humility; yet the timing of his release of this letter to the Detroit papers had about it the immense dignity of the elephant passing through the marketplace, unmindful of the barking at its feet.

.. . He was accompanied by his stenographer, the faithful Goodwin. They occupied a suite of rooms at The Richelieu, a small family hotel, and had the use of the large drawing-room for class work and lectures. The room was not large enough to accommodate the crowds and to our great regret many were turned away. The room, as also the hall, staircase and library were literally packed. At that time he was all Bhakti-the love of God was a hunger and a thirst with him. A kind of divine madness seemed to take possession of him, as if his heart would burst with longing for the Beloved Mother. His last public appearance in Detroit was at the temple Beth-El of which the Rabbi Louis Grossman, an ardent admirer of the Swami was the pastor. It was Sunday evening and so great was the crowd that we almost feared a panic. There was a solid line reaching far out into the street and hundreds were turned away. Vivekananda held the large audience spellbound, his subjects being "India's Message to the West", and "The Ideal of a Universal Religion". He gave us a most brilliant and masterly discourse. Never had I seen the Master look as he looked that night. There was something in his beauty not of earth. It was as if the spirit had almost burst the bonds of flesh, and it was then that I first saw a foreshadowing of the end. He was much exhausted from years of overwork, and it was even then to be seen that he was not long for this world. I tried to close my eyes to it, but in my heart I knew the truth. He had needed rest but felt that he must go on.

... In spite of the many attacks of the missionaries, his classes and public lectures were attended to overcrowding. Rabbi Grossman proffered the use of the temple Beth-El, which could not hold the great crowd, so that hundreds of people had to leave without hearing the great Hindu preacher. The Rabbi, in other respects too, proved his liberality and great friendship for the Swami by taking up his defence against the attacks of the clergymen in the newspapers. His introduction of the Swami in the temple was one grand eulogy of the Hindus and Hinduism....

"The attacks of the clergymen in the newspapers", mentioned above, had reference to a newspaper battle that was raging between the Swami's detractors-specifically a diehard antagonistic Christian missionary and his ardent supporters. This heated newspaper controversy gave so much publicity to the Swami's presence in Detroit that his classes, originally intended only for earnest students of Vedanta, were at the beginning packed with strangers and curiosity seekers. All but a few of the Swami's friends were crowded out. To remedy the situation, three of his classes during his stay in Detroit were opened to the public; the rest were kept private. It was in order to give rejoinder to those who attacked him that the Swami delivered his third and last public lecture in Detroit on Sunday, March 15. His subject, as we have seen, was "India's Message to the World".

On Sunday morning, March 1, the Detroit .News-Tribune printed the following announcement:_x000d_ _x000d_ _x000d_ KANANDA COMING_x000d_ ________________x000d_ The Hindoo Philosopher Will Revisit Detroit_x000d_ _x000d_ Swame Vive Kananda, who created a stir in Detroit's social circles when he was here two years ago, will revisit Detroit this week for the purpose of instructing classes in his religious doctrines. He will arrive in the city sometime Tuesday._x000d_ There will be six of these classes. The first one will be called together at 11 o'clock Wednesday morning, when everybody is invited to be present and listen to the teach¬ings of the Hindoo. In accord with Swame's life there will be no charges whatever for the lessons. The second class will meet Wednesday night at 8 o'clock. All the classes will meet at the Richelieu, 420 Second avenue, where apartments have been engaged for Kananda. In addition to the classes Kananda will probably lecture once or twice in the unitarian church._x000d_ Actually, Swamiji intended to remain in Detroit for two weeks and to hold far more than six classes. Kripananda was not well informed in these matters. Yet he talked on-and not entirely about Swamiji.

On the same morning the Free Press, one of the leading newspapers of the city, ran the Following: _x000d_ _x000d_ VIVEK ANANDA COMING_x000d_ ________x000d_ _x000d_ The Swami Will Once More Visit_x000d_ This City._x000d_ He Will Give Free Classes In_x000d_ The Hindoo Religions._x000d_ Swami Kripanande Arrived In_x000d_ Detroit Yesterday_x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ The Latter is the Translator of "The_x000d_ Unknown Life of Christ."_x000d_ Swami Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk who excited much interest here two years ago, will arrive in Detroit to-morrow. The Swami's precursor, Swami Kripanande, disciple and brother "Sanyasin," reached the city last evening. He is domiciled at the Utopia. Vive Kananda will give public lectures and free classes in Yoga and Vidante philosophy. The first lecture will probably be given in the Unitarian church March 8. The free class lessons will begin Wednesday, March 4, and will be held at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m. at the Richelieu, 420 Second Avenue._x000d_ Swami Kripanande is the translator of that work which attracted so much attention, "The Unknown Life of Jesus." The old documents were found at Lhasa, in India, in an old monastery and purported to have been written about the time of the Savior. Max Muller cast ridicule upon the work._x000d_ Last night Swami Kripanande said to a Free Press representative: "You can publish that I have received word from Vive Kananda in this important matter. He announces that a brother `Sanyasin' has investigated the documents in the old monastery and guarantees their genuineness."*_x000d_ "And why should not India throw light on the Savior's life?" added the visitor. "India is the country where nearly all religions had birth; she is the mother of religions and has herself the oldest and most enduring religion of all."_x000d_ In this connection the eastern philosopher [i.e., Kripananda] added: "All religions are true. The goal is the same, though the methods may vary. The principal methods are: Karma Yoga, Bhakte, Raga and Gnana. _x000d_ Karma Yoga is the religion of unselfish work; Bhakte indicates devotion to God, or faith; Raga signifies control of mind and Gnana, knowledge. Different temperaments assimilate different methods, but the goal is the same. The heart method, the mind method, the spiritual method¬all tend to the same end. All are good. The Karma Yoga is the oldest order and the one to which Buddha belonged."_x000d_ Swami Kripanande is a linguist of rare talents, having about ten languages at his command._x000d_ * The old documents that Nicholas Notovich, author of The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, claimed to have found in a Tibetan monastery tell of how Jesus traveled in his fourteenth year to India, where he studied Vedic and Buddhist scriptures and then proceeded to convert a large part of the country to Christianity, preaching in the best missionary manner against idolatry, the divine origin of the Vedas, the caste system, sun worship, and so on, recalling, the book sayass, “the true God to the people that were in deparavities.” Far from giving credence to this work, Swamiji scoffed at it. “It is nonsense to say that Notovich’s book is genuine,’ he wrote on March 2, 1896, from Detroit (not from Boston as in the Complete Works, 6:359) to Swami Trigunatita, who had written to him on the subject.

On Sunday afternoon, Kripananda had yet another interview with a representative from the Free Press, to whom Miss Hamilton may have introduced him. During this "chat" Kripananda delivered a creditable lecture on the harmony of religions, which was duly printed the following morning (March 2) together with two drawings: one of Swami Vive Kananda and the other of Swami Kripananda, the latter of which has been reproduced in the previous volume. The headings and opening paragraphs of the article read as follows1/3/2014:

ALL FAITHS ARE GOOD_x000d_ ________x000d_ _x000d_ JUST AS IT WAS SAID ALL ROADS_x000d_ LEAD TO ROME._x000d_ ________x000d_ _x000d_ METHODS MAY DIFFER, BUT THE_x000d_ END IS THE SAME._x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ HINDOO RELIGION HAS ALWAYS _x000d_ RECOGNIZED THIS._x000d_ ¬¬¬_________x000d_ _x000d_ Chat Yesterday Afternoon With Swami _x000d_ Kripananda._x000d_ _x000d_ Swami Kripananda, who is in Detroit, is domiciled a the Utopia. His brother in faith, Swami Vive Kananda will be here today and will give a course of free lectures._x000d_ Swami Kripananda, in speaking of religious matters, said yesterday to a representative of The Free Press:_x000d_ "All roads lead to Rome; and so all religions lead to God. The various religions are, as it were, so many universal dramas in which one and the same actor ¬God-appears in different roles-Yehova, Allah, Krishna, Jesus, and so forth-but in all alike good, grand, and perfect… "_x000d_ [The remaining paragraphs were devoted to Kripa¬nanda's talk on the harmony of religions.)

In the meanwhile, the Evening News had not been idle. Sniffing a good wrangle in the wind, that journal, always hostile to Swamiji, lost no time in calling on the Right Reverend J. M. Thoburn, a Christian missionary whose contempt For all things Indian could be counted on. This particular reverend had not engaged directly in the frenzied attack against Swamiji in 1894 (he had not been in Detroit)* but had taken a prominent part in a controversy that had raged in several widely read periodicals during the last part of 1894 and the first part of 1895 on the subject of Hinduism and Christian Missions. Mr. Thoburn did not disappoint the Evening News. Blazoned on the front page of the Monday evening (March 2) edition were the headlines:_x000d_ _x000d_ * During the years 1893 and 1894 the Reverend Mr. Thoburn had been pastor of the Methodist Episcopal church in Duluth, Minnesota.

SWAMI'S NAME_x000d_ ___________x000d_ _x000d_ REV. THOBURN SAYS VIVE KANANANDA_x000d_ BORROWED ONE._x000d_ ___________x000d_ _x000d_ THE HINDOO PRIEST WAS AN OBSCURE _x000d_ LAWYER IN CALCUTTA._x000d_ __________x000d_ _x000d_ SO THE PASTOR OF THE CENTRAL_x000d_ M. E. CHURCH DECLARES._x000d_ _______x000d_ _x000d_ WHAT AN INDIAN PAPER HAS TO SAY_x000d_ OF THE MISSIONARY.

Illustrating the article that followed was a drawing two columns wide of Sri Ramakrishna, taken from the photograph that shows him seated in meditation posture. The caption read: "Head of the Sanyasen Order to which Swami Vivekananda Claims to Belong." The intent of publishing this likeness of Sri Ramakrishna, which in the 1890s would have appeared too scantily clad, was clearly malicious. Its use as a weapon against Swamiji came as a surprise to Kripananda, and, to his credit, he was not slow to object. "Kripananda was greatly disturbed," the Evening News blandly reported the following day, "because the picture of the holy man Ramakrishna had been printed in connection with the attack."

Rev. J. M. Thoburn, pastor of the Central M[ethodist] E[piscopal] church, was from 1885 to 1888 pastor of the largest christian church in Calcutta, Ind., the home of Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo missionary who comes to Detroit tonight to conduct a series of meetings and classes for the spread of the faith which he represents. He was asked this morning if he had known Vivekananda in India._x000d_ "No," he replied, "and neither did anyone else. I was well acquainted with natives of all descriptions, both Hindoos and Mohammedans, but I never heard of this man there. From what I can learn, however, he seems to have been an obscure lawyer there at that time or not long before.

Mr. Thoburn then showed The News a copy of the Indian Witness of Calcutta, the largest religious [Christian missionary] paper published in India, which has a circulation throughout that country as well as Burma and Ceylon. The issue of Saturday, Feb. 9, 1895, says, editorially:

"[We] note with some surprise that first-class English journals take the trouble to give a careful analysis of what they call `the new Hinduism,' as taught by Vivekananda. If the English editors correctly understood the character of the man and his teachings they would not give him the compliment of a three-line paragraph. . . . Neither his own life nor his statements of Hindu religious thought give him the slightest claim on the attention of serious-minded men, of any race or any religion."

Did He Borrow His Name. _x000d_ "In another issue of the same paper," said Mr. Thoburn, "it was stated that the name Vivekananda was not the one by which this man was known while practicing as a lawyer in Calcutta. In fact, it was alleged that he had borrowed the name and the monkish title `Swami' from a Madrassi monk, and came over here to the congress of religions as the self-appointed representative of a Hindooism existing in his own mind only.

"Mr. K. C. Banarji, one of the leading Bengali barristers at the high court of Calcutta, in an address delivered in Calcutta in June, 1894, on the effect of the congress of religions in India, referred to Vivekananda as `the self-styled Swami.'_x000d_ "This title belongs to an order with which he has no more connection, either by blood or otherwise, than you have. To my personal knowledge, at the time he was being so lionized in this country and figuratively borne on the shoulders of certain impressionable people here, the Calcutta papers were making all manner of sport of the gullibility of Yankees who were taken in by the glib fellow. He appears to have a peculiar fascination for a certain class of women in this country, particularly women of wealth and leisure, who are in a very uncertain state as to their religious views."

Converted Kripananda._x000d_ Swami Kripananda, the advance agent of Swami Vivekananda, has been in the city two days, stopping at the Utopia. He talked enthusiastically of his brother, and of the work he has been doing in New York, and hopes to do here._x000d_ "I have always been a seeker for truth," said he. "I studied many religions and found some truth in all, but all too much encrusted with superstition, until I became a materialist, and remained so until I met the swami in New York just after he came here, and was helped to find the truth. I have lived with him three years since, and learned to know that religious experiences are as capable of demonstration as any other fact in science, that they can be proved, that we may see God. I am an American citizen, and was educated in Germany and France. I have lived in this country for years. I used to have a paper in the south myself, and was later connected with one of the largest dailies in New York._x000d_ "The swami will remain here about two weeks, holding classes at 420 Second avenue [the Richelieu Hotel], at 11 a.m. and 8 p.m., every day, beginning Wednesday. They will be free. Religious teaching cannot be sold for dollars and cents. He has had great success in New York for the last three months, holding daily classes with large attendance, and bringing many to the truth. He will go to Boston from here and Harvard, then after a week in Chicago he goes to England, where Lady Dudley and others have long been interested.

Will Go Into A Cave. _x000d_ "He will spend the summer there and then return to India, where he will retire to a cave for maybe two or three years for contemplation and introspection, as pious monks do. I was initiated by him to the order of Sanyasens, or announcers of the truth, and will remain here after he goes, to continue his work._x000d_ "Haw will I live? I will get some work to earn enough to keep body and soul together. We take three vows before we are initiated-poverty, chastity and homelessness. `Not I, but you,' is the watchword of a sanyasen. We work for the love of the good. Religion should not be made a profession."_x000d_ Swami Vivekananda has written a book and some pamphlets on the faith which Kripananda admitted would be sold, and the receipts used for the benefit of the poor among the Swami's disciples.

T

ROASTS KANANDA._x000d_ Rev. J. M. Thoburn Never Heard of_x000d_ the Hindoo in Calcutta_x000d_ The Free Press, which should have known better, followed suit:_x000d_ BABOO N. N. DUTTA, B.A._x000d_ IS THIS VIVE KANANDA'S TRUE AND_x000d_ ONLY NAME?_x000d_ _x000d_ Rev. J. M. Thoburn Will Deliver a Sermon_x000d_ About Him._x000d_ . . . "I regard the Swami as a very dangerous man," said the pastor. "He is more dangerous than Bob Ingersoll, because he is more subtle. He received his education from the Christians and came near being a Christian at one time. Mr. K. C. Banarji, one of the leading barristers in Calcutta, referred to him as the `self style Swami.' "_x000d_ "I intend to preach a sermon on the matter. Next Sunday," said the pastor. "I think it my duty to open the eyes of the public regarding the character of this man."_x000d_ The Reverend Thoburn's ill-informed attempts to discredit Swamiji were scarcely worth a direct rejoinder. Even in the early days, Swamiji's consistent reply to those whose purpose was to destroy his reputation and his work had been silence; he had, moreover, asked his followers in India to refrain from giving battle. "Tell my Friends that a uniform silence is all my answer to my detractors . . .," he had written to Alasinga in September of 1894. "Tell them that the truth will take care of itself, and that they are not to fight anybody for me."6 (Thoburn's virulence, it may be noted here, was too much for Alasinga. Reading Detroit newspaper clippings, he wrote a long and forceful letter in Swamiji's defense to the editor of the Detroit Evening News. It was printed by the ,News-Tribune of Sunday, June 7, 1896, and is given in full in Appendix A.) Kripananda was, of course, well aware of Swamiji's policy of silence in the face of even the most outrageous slander; yet one cannot blame him too much for wanting to somehow get matters under control before his guru arrived in Detroit. "The Swami, as you will see from [the] last clipping sent to you, has now more advertisement than he cared for," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on March 3. "I, too, unvoluntarily am drawn into the controversy; but of course, though I would be indifferent to attacks on myself, I can not suffer untruths to be spread concerning the Swami without refuting them. The Rev. Thoburn . . . Announces a sermon for next Sunday about the Swami.

CHANGES NAMES_x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ SANYASENS ALWAYS TAKE _x000d_ MONKISH TITLES._x000d_ ¬¬__________x000d_ _x000d_ KRIPANANDA EXPLAINS AWAY REV._x000d_ THOBURN'S CHARGES._x000d_ ¬¬¬__________x000d_ _x000d_ GRECE SAYS VIVEKANANDA IS _x000d_ WELL KNOWN IN INDIA_x000d_ __________x000d_ _x000d_ Detroit Lawyer Found the Prophet _x000d_ Honored at Home._x000d_ _x000d_ Swami Vivekananda missed his train yesterday, but is expected today. Swami Kripananda, his advance agent, seemed little disturbed by the attack made upon his master by Rev. J. M. Thoburn in yesterday's News._x000d_ "It is true," said he, "that the name by which we know the Swami is not that by which he was known when studying law in Calcutta. His real name is Baboo Norendra Nath Dutta. So, my real name is not Kripananda. When one becomes a Hindoo monk he takes a monkish name, the same as do those who join some of the orders in other churches. Swami is the title the same as `reverend' or `brother' or `father.'_x000d_ These attacks we expect. The militant spirit seems to be strong in the missionary world. It is not christian. I call a christian one who lives the life of Christ. There is very little religion among some of these people. They stir up strife. I suppose they fear the Swami may interfere with their collections for Indian missions. The Swami never answers slanderous attacks. They only react upon those who assail him. He lives his life for the good of others. He knows God, and these petty things cannot disturb him. "As to the Swami not being known in India, Mr. Kripananda said: "Why, the rajahs worship him as a holy man. Those who have touched his garments dare not tell a lie, and a maharajah is proud to wash his feet."_x000d_ Kripananda was greatly disturbed because the picture of the holy man Ramakrishna had been printed in con¬nection with the attack. He considered it blasphemy._x000d_ Edward S. Grece, of Detroit, recently returned from India, says:_x000d_ "I have noticed in The News the statement of Rev. M. Thoburn, regarding Vivekananda. It was my pleasure to meet many in India who know him and words of commendation and praise were always given in his behalf. On his return to India after his tour through America, and his grand reception at the world's congress of religions, he was received everywhere, except by the Christian mis¬sionaries, with open arms. (Mr. Grece erred: Swamiji had not returned to India.]_x000d_ "At Madras he delivered an address which was printed in pamphlet form and circulated everywhere. I have a copy of this address. The people of India are not much given to recognizing frauds, and knowing Vivekananda as well as he is known in India, it is not likely he would be received and loved as he is there, even among the orthodox Hindus, if he were other than what he has heretofore been known to Americans and Europeans._x000d_ "Is there not room in our midst for the teachings of these eastern sages? If they have the truth can we not tolerate it? And if what they say is false, surely the people may judge. Nothing is gained against such men by calumny._x000d_ "Let me add that while at Adyar, near Madras, I was called upon to address an audience of intelligent Hindoos on Vivekananda in America."_x000d_ ("Mr. Grece is a lawyer highly respected in this city," Kripananda explained to Mrs. Bull, to whom he sent a clipping of the above article. "He and his wife had returned a short time ago from a trip to India. He had called on me and told me of all the good things he had heard about the Swami when in India, and when the slanderous attack appeared he readily consented to my request to refute the false statements made therein.

A CLEVER HINDOO BOOK AGENT. _x000d_ _x000d_ Whether or not the Swami Vivekananda that we know here in Detroit is the only genuine blown-in-the-bottle Swami Vivekananda of unpronounceable Hindoo birth and surroundings, is not of the slightest consequence. The Hindoo-Brahmin-Buddhistic fad of an effete and rotten orientalism has run its course in the west, and it has been found that there is nothing in it. The statement can be proved by the infallible test of personal experiment. Before the world's congress of religions at Chicago, a, great deal of attention had already been given by western scholars to the "ethnic religions" of the east, and already the new learning had begun to filter down among the commoner sort of students so that everybody had a smaller or larger smattering of the system of Confucius, Zoroaster, Gautama and the rest of 'em. Half the people of the country who affect a degree of intellectuality in these matters had come to think half way that the old religions of the east contained a good deal of truth and beauty that christianity knows nothing about._x000d_ After all these eastern isms had had their say, there was a regular mania throughout the occident for the religions that had done little for the masses of their votaries but to make dirty, lazy beggars of them. Detroit was specially favored by the presence through a formal course of lectures of one of the high priests of one of these old systems. He told not a single truth that does not form a stone in the foundation of our own western faith, but whenever Kananda said a pretty and truthful thing which may be heard in christian pulpits every day, he was applauded to the echo by people who know so little about the religion of their own fathers that they actually thought this brown-faced Hindoo was making a new revelation to them-such honor have the prophets away from their own countries!_x000d_ Now here is the test and the challenge. The News challenges anybody in the state of Michigan to name a single new truth or thought or religious idea which Kananda gave him, and which is not a part of the already existing common stock of our own christian knowledge, and which the person challenged has taken into his life for his mental and moral enlargement. In other and briefer words, we challenge a man or woman to point to a single spiritual benefit he or she has derived from this Hindoo which was not accessible in the treasuries of christian learning. Kananda had come to be forgotten and his work had utterly perished with him. And now he is back again! His very presence as a representative of an effete system ¬with his personality we have nothing to do-is no com¬pliment to the intelligence or the religious stability of Detroit. Kananda has not a thing of value to offer to people trained in christian modes of thought. But the clever Hindoo has, according to his advance agent, some books and pamphlets for sale and therein probably lies the true reason for his return to Detroit. The modern book agent is a wonder._x000d_ On the same page in a column of brief and caustic comments one could read: "If Swami Vivekananda really wants converts here he won't be too sudden about introducing the Ramakrishna style of apparel." It was also noted that Professor Max Muller could "converse in 18 different languages," which threw Kripananda's ten into deep shade.

The Swami reached here at about half an hour before midnight on Tuesday & yesterday gave two lectures ¬morning & evening, both of them The Ideal of a universal Religion. There has been considerable confusion here I am sorry to say. When we arrived we found that a news¬paper war had been in course of progress. Charges had been made against the Swami & they had been, injudiciously, refuted. The consequence was that his arrival had been made thoroughly public property, &, the classes which he had intended as entirely private to friends, degenerated into public classes. At the first, indeed, only one of his friends was present, & the room was filled with strangers. It has been decided, to overcome the difficulty, to give three public classes, & to confine the remainder to his friends. The unfortunate part of the matter was that the Swami himself was very much upset at the miscarriage of intentions, but the rearrangement has put him more at ease. I hope that there will be no more difficulty & can assure you that anything I can do to help the ladies here to that end will be done?.

VIVEKANANDA'S PHILOSOPHY_x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ He Would Have Many Kinds of _x000d_ Religion._x000d_ _x000d_ Vivekananda, the Hindoo missionary, lectured at the Hotel Richelieu last night. The parlors of the private hotel were filled to overflowing with a crowd of ladies. When Vivekananda arrived at the hotel it was with difficulty he worked his way in. He went upstairs and very shortly came down again robed in a purple gown, caught about the waist with a purple cord.

Vivekananda in his talk said that there were various religions and each believer thought his religion the only true religion. It was a mistake, he said, to suppose that all should have the same religion.

"If all were of the same religious opinion," said he, "there would be no religion. No sooner does a religion start than it breaks into pieces. The process is for the religion to go on dividing until each man has his own religion, until each man has thought out his own thoughts and carved out for himself his own religion."

Vivekananda will remain in Detroit about two weeks and will give classes every morning at 11 o'clock and every evening at 8 o'clock at the hotel. The announcement was made that his next public lecture would be Monday.

While Swamiji had been upset by the large number of strangers who flocked to his classes, crowding out his disciples and friends, the absurd newspaper attack on his integrity was in itself harmless and did not disturb him. When asked why he did not defend himself against the Thoburns,* who threatened to "hound him out of Detroit," he replied, recalling Sri Ramakrishna's counsel, "The dog barks at the elephant, is the elephant affected? What does the elephent care? But the flagrant misuse of his Master's sacred photograph was another matter. When Swamiji saw it printed with malign intent on the front page of the Evening News he cried out, "Oh! This is blasphemy! _x000d_ * Writing of Swamiji’s reaction to this unpleasant episode, Sister Christine refers to “the machinations of a family of missionaries long connected with Calcutta” (Rem., pages 202-3; italics mine).

Swamiji was not pleased with his disciple. "When he arrived here," Kripananda wrote in retrospect to Mrs. Bull, "not a question he asked if I had a place where to lay my head upon¬ how I lived, whether I had any means to live-and he knew very well that I had not means. But instead reproaches.

Actually, Swamiji knew very well that his disciple had means for at least a week; he himself had given him more than enough money for this Detroit sojourn; Kripananda was not destitute just then. Yet he suffered, understandably enough, from corroding jealousy, and Swamiji's apparent indifference was magnified by his mind into rejection. Josiah Goodwin, young and competently filling the place Kripananda had earlier deserted, did nothing to help matters. "In Detroit I was a perfect stranger to [Swamiji)," the latter continued in the same letter, "and when I dared to call on him, I had to leave after five minutes stay carrying with me away the bitter feeling of humiliation. By his new favorite I was insulted and put to public shame in the most outrageous manner. (By "public" Kripananda generally meant that there was a third person present.)

In view of the serious charges reflecting upon his stand¬ing and character in his representative capacity, it would seem to devolve upon the Hindoo monk, "Swami Vivek¬ananda," to vindicate himself if he can and prove beyond the possibility of a doubt that he is what he represents himself to be. The charges preferred brand him as an impostor and the testimony offered by those who make the charges is of a character which cannot well be ignored. If he is an impostor, it is due to those who are being imposed upon to know it. If he is not, it is due both to him and the public that the proof of his sincerity be at once established. . . ._x000d_ The world is too largely populated with innocent fools and clever rascals to make it a barren field for impostors to work in but it is nevertheless our duty to save as much pasture as possible for the true and worthy.

I have received this morning a copy of a Detroit paper [Miss Waldo wrote to Mrs. Bull from New York on March 6 containing a savage attack on the Swami, and in the midst of it, a picture of Sri Ramakrishna "the head of the order of Sanyasens to which Swami Vivekananda belongs." I cannot help deploring the publication of this picture. It is the very last thing that Sri Ramakrishna himself would have wished. I do not know who was so ill advised as to give it to the papers, but I think all friends of the movement will greatly regret such very undesirable newspaper notoriety for such a man. Perhaps you will also receive a copy of the paper & can judge for yourself. These cheap and claptrap methods of advertising the Swami, as if he were some variety performer, seem to me to be entirely mistaken, but perhaps I am wrong. They certainly are undignified, and unworthy of the great teachings he comes to present.

Miss Waldo, needless to say, had her own idea of who had given the photograph to the papers. So also had Mr. Goodwin. "I sincerely hope," the latter would write to Mrs. Bull on March 9, "the newspaper cuttings will not get into the papers in Boston, especially one in which a portrait of Ramakrishna was given in conjunction with an interview with Kripananda, in which not a word referred to the Swami himself. This comment was not altogether fair of Mr. Goodwin. While it was true that Kripananda had talked a great deal about himself during the three and a half days he was alone in Detroit, he had also mentioned his "brother sanyasin" several times.

Surrounding him in various attitudes of rapt adoration were a cluster of fashionable women in informal evening dress. Two potted palms, which may have been part of the décor of the Richelieu parlor, completed the picture. Across the top were the words: "VIVEKANANDA’S FERTILE MISSIONARY FIELD." At the bottom, a caption read: "Where The Apostle of Hindoo Mysticism Seeks Converts in the City of the Straits." This was an old trick, used as early as 1893, when Swamiji's detractors had sought to belittle his success by pointing out that his audience consisted primarily of women. In what sense this was a discredit to him, neither the women of America nor Swamiji himself ever understood.

Mr. Goodwin gave his own version of what must have been this same scene in a letter of March 9 to Mrs. Bull. "I am avoiding all unpleasantness with Kripananda," he wrote, "altho I did once lose my temper & accuse him of self advertisement _x000d_ If Kripananda's self advertisement, if such it was, had been his only indiscretion during the three and a half days he had been on his own in Detroit, peace might soon have been restored. He was not to blame, after all, for the malice of Swamiji's enemies. But as will be seen later, his bitterness of mind had led him to further and more serious mistakes, which seemed almost deliberately self destructive.

And then on March 8 the Reverend Mr. Thoburn gave the Sunday sermon he had promised. It was not, as he had promised, on the character of Swamiji, but was replete nevertheless with "a half hour prelude with the stereoptican, wherein pictures [were] shown which [he] brought from India, contrasting Brahminism and Buddhism with Christianity, particularly in the temples and people these different systems have produced.

KANANDA'S CREED_x000d_ IT WAS ROASTED HARD BY REV. J. M._x000d_ THOBURN._x000d_ HIS RELIGION IS DEGRADING_x000d_ It Makes Slaves of Women, and American Women _x000d_ Should be Slow to Favor It._x000d_ _x000d_ Rev. J. M. Thoburn spoke of "Comparative religions" at the Central M.E. church last evening, denouncing the religions of India, and particularly those taught by Vivek¬ananda, although the latter's name was not mentioned._x000d_ Rev. Mr. Thoburn lived in India for four years, and he stated that he felt capable of talking intelligently on the subject. . . ._x000d_ "The fact is [Thoburn said], Hinduism has gone into partnership with sin. No vice is ever rebuked at her altars. `The brides of Krishna' are 10,000 fallen women. Oh! if our American women only knew what slaves the religions of India made of their sisters there, they would be very slow to crowd the audience of a mystic pundit who dares to champion such degrading superstitions._x000d_ ". . . How men and women of culture and intelligence can rave over the mental and rhetorical gymnastics of an aristocratic yogee from the plains of Hindustan is a freak which cannot be accounted for on any other basis than cataleptic hysteria._x000d_ "The renaissance of Sanscrit literature, Edwin Arnold's poetry and the religious menagerie held at Chicago during the world's fair are responsible for the oriental religious fad which has swept over England and America. I have lived in India for four years. I have witnessed its blight on character and truth. I have seen the kind of people it produces, and have viewed with horror its deified vice. A pigsty looks artistic under the magic of moonshine, when you are at a safe distance from its odors. Hinduism enamors only those who have never gotten up close to it."

In addition, the Evening News, the first paper to have interviewed Thoburn, now promptly interviewed Rabbi Grossmann, certain of an entertaining commentary on the missionary's empty and abrasive rhetoric. The article in which the rabbi was quoted appeared on March 9 and read in part:

ROASTS THOBURN_x000d_ _x000d_ Rabbi Grossmann expressed some pointed views this morning about Rev. Dr. Thoburn's roast of Buddhism last evening at the Central M.E. church.

"I cannot suppose," said Rabbi Grossmann, "that since Dr. Thoburn was during his four years' stay in India in the devout communion of the christian missionaries and was religiously preoccupied with the salvation of souls, he had much leisure to go to the literary and metaphysical sources of the counterfeit religions he saw there, but he quotes from the Hindu Tract society, and that sort of literature seems very satisfactory to him. But there was one thing in which Rev. Dr. Thoburn has profited very much, and he must have edified his congregation very much indeed, and they must have regarded him as very powerful. I confess I relished his eloquence; it is so churchy, you know. Listen to his list of arguments: `Perversion, distortion, mythological shadows, demon-worshiper, re¬volting mystic, degrading godless, nauseating compound, paganism that was dumped, emasculated, mental and rhetorical gymnastics, aristocratic yogee, cataleptic hysteria,' and-this was probably the climax of his christian zeal-`pigsty looking artistic under the magic of moonshine.' Dr. Thoburn is ingenious, but his ingenuity is medievalism revamped, and that none of us want in the city of Detroit today, even if a Hindu is in town. . . .

". . . As to the merits of that which Swami Vivekananda has said, the auditors of Dr. Thoburn can best assure themselves in the way in which we Americans usually do assure ourselves-by going to hear the man. If Kananda is really an exhibit of the vices which Dr. Thoburn has taken pains to describe in a succession of names, it would seem that the presence of the man in this country should be regarded by the church as felicitous and a substantial help. If this christian minister is sure of the superiority of his faith, he can well afford to leave the alternative of the choice to sensible people. If he is not sure of it, he will hardly improve his chances by resorting to abuse. I do not mean to be understood, however, as defending Vivek¬ananda."

If the Evening News had quoted Rabbi Grossmann correctly, it is strange that he did not mean to be understood as defending Swamiji. The rabbi, whom Kripananda described as "a learned young man,"19 had spoken in support of Swamiji in February of 1894, when it was a daring thing to do. He had delivered a Sunday lecture entitled "What Vivekananda Has Taught Us," during the course of which he had said, among other things in praise of Swamiji, "Kananda has told us something of the heathen with a clearness, with a precision, with a candor, which puts to shame the confused and vehement pretension which so long has usurped an unrighteous prestige in church and religion. . . . Let us learn from the Hindu the lesson that God lives and reigns, now and ever, that God is in every flower of the field; in every breath of the air; in every throb of our blood.

"The classes the Swami had so far were filled to overcrowding. The parlour, the hall, the staircase could not hold the great crowd of people who-in Spite of the attack made against the Swami in the newspapers, had come to listen to his teachings. From another source one also learns of the crowds that attended Swamiji's classes as well as something of Swamiji himself. Recalling those days, Mrs. Funke wrote in her sketch "The Master," "They [Swamiji and Goodwin] occupied a suite of rooms at The Richelieu, a small family hotel, and had the use of the large drawing room for class work and lectures. The room was not large enough to accommodate the crowds and to our great regret many were turned away. The room, as also the hall, staircase and library were literally packed. At that time he was all Bhakti-the love for God was a hunger and a thirst. A kind of divine madness seemed to take possession of him, as if his heart would burst with longing for the Beloved Mother.

If a seed of doubt regarding Swamiji's status had been sown in the rabbi's mind by the press, he had the decency to go now to Swamiji himself to have the matter cleared up. Sometime during the second week in March the two men met, and as a result, the rabbi offered his temple-the Temple Beth-El-for Swamiji's use on Sunday evening, March 15. The lecture Swamiji was to give that evening would be one of the most largely attended and enthusiastically received that he had given in the United States.

It is significant that the efforts of the newspapers in 1896 to stir up another controversy over Swamiji fell as flat as had Thoburn's sermon. Few people bothered to express their views on the subject. Even the articulate O. P. Deldoc, who in 1894 had written long and vigorous letters to the Free Press, castigat¬ing the bigotry of the age with many a zestful metaphor, was now silent. Swamiji's battle had been won, and the people of Detroit were fully aware of it. They welcomed him with open arms, and it is unlikely that any of those hundreds who had heard him speak in 1894 and who heard him now gave the slightest importance to Thoburn's outmoded and tiresome charges. Those who feared the Hindoo monk no longer dared publicly oppose him; those who loved and honored him knew that he no longer needed defense. Indeed Swamiji had well known whereof he spoke when, a few months after his first visit to Detroit, he had written to India, "The torch has been applied and the conflagration that has set in through the grace of the Guru will not be put out. In course of time the bigots will have their breath knocked out of them.

On March 11 Mr. Goodwin wrote to Mrs. Bull, "The attacks which have been made on the Swami here, almost of daily occurrence, have urged him on to give a Sunday public lecture-altho' he does not acknowledge this as the reason-& the subject of it will be `India's message to the West.' . . . It is sure to be one to inspire him.

As we saw earlier, Rabbi Grossmann had offered Swamiji the use of the Temple Beth-El, and on Saturday, March 14, the newspapers duly announced that the lecture would commence at eight o'clock the following evening and would be free. The News Tribune had more to say: on Sunday morning it published a long editorial clearly intended to dissuade all sensible people from attending the lecture. On the basis of Swamiji's New York pamphlet Bhakti-Yoga, the paper pronounced with authority "that those portions of [the Swami's] teachings that are true are not novel in the west, and those portions that are novel to westerners are not true." "The hearers and readers of Kananda," the editorial went on, "have always been struck by the similarity of most of his moral and spiritual teachings to those of the christian teachers. " And no wonder! Why, "Kananda was educated at Oxford in an atmosphere that is altogether Christian." (One is reminded here of the St. Louis minister who, two years earlier, made the gratifying discovery that Swamiji had graduated from Harvard and owed everything but his robe and the color of his skin to the West. The editorial continued with a nastiness and an obtuseness that the present reader can be spared, and concluded: "Wherever Kananda's philosophy is untrue, it is so palpably untrue that the whole system would fall flat if it were not for the liberal mixture of Christianity that it contains. Is this chase after the orientalism of an effete people to be charged up to the mental unbalance that seems to have come over the whole western world?"

Hundreds-those who failed to arrive at least an hour before the lecture was to begin¬ were turned away. Every seat and every square inch of standing space, aisles and all; were filled. Swamiji, wearing his vivid robe and a white turban, was introduced by Rabbi Grossmann, whose talk, as Kripananda wrote to the Brahmavadin, "was one grand eulogy of the Hindus and Hinduism.

Although Swamiji had intended to lecture on "India's Message to the West," he changed his mind, perhaps at the last moment, and lectured instead on "The Ideal of a Universal Religion." This latter subject was, of course, not divorced from the former, yet in emphasis it was more in keeping with the message he wished to impress upon the American public during this second phase of his mission. Did he perhaps change his subject at the sight of his audience? He had been going to reply to his enemies, or, rather, to the maligners of his motherland, but facing him now were thousands of spiritual seekers. In the exalted mood of a world prophet he spoke not of India, but of Religion-of its basic meaning, of the endless variety of its expressions and practices, of the reality, certainty, and universality of its goal. This was a theme that he had spoken on often before--it had, indeed; been the subject of his first two classes at the Richelieu, and although no transcripts exist of any of Swamiji's Detroit talks-public or private-we can guess that this particular lecture was similar to those of the same title that he had given in New York and in Hartford and would give the following week in Boston. We need not dwell on those ideas here except to say that Swamiji felt it was of supreme importance that mankind comprehend them. "To learn this central secret that the truth may be one and yet many at the same time, that we may have different visions of the same truth from different standpoints, is exactly what must be done " he was to say in his lecture on Sri Ramakrishna later in the year. " . . This idea, above all other ideas, I find to be the crying necessity of the day.

News Report of 'Tribune' of March 16, 1896 -_x000d_ _x000d_ HEARD SWAMI TALK_x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ VIVEKANANDA LECTURED IN_x000d_ TEMPLE BETH EL._x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ Spoke on the Ideal of a Universal_x000d_ Religion-He Will Probably_x000d_ Leave Tuesday_x000d_ _x000d_ Temple Beth El was crowded to the doors last night when Swami Vivekananda delivered his address upon "The Ideal of a universal religion." The time announced for the service was 8 o'clock, but the congregation began to assemble at the temple early in the evening so that the doors had to be opened at 6:25 p.m. They were closed at 7 o'clock and the hundreds that arrived after that time had to be turned away._x000d_ "We all hear about universal brotherhood, and how societies stand up and want to preach this. -But to what does it amount? As soon as you make a sect you protest against equality, and thus it is no more," said Swami._x000d_ "Unity in variety is the plan of the universe. Just as we are all men, yet we are all separate. We find then, that if by the idea of a universal religion is meant one set of doctrines should be believed by all mankind, it is impossible, it can never be, any more than there will be a time when all faces will be the same. We must not seek that all of us should think alike, like Egyptian mummies in a museum, looking at each other without thought to think. It is this difference of thought, this differentiation, losing of the balance of thought, which is the very soul of our progress, the soul of thought."_x000d_ Swami will probably leave Tuesday [March 17]. At the close of his address last night he thanked the people of Detroit For the kind reception tendered him and his philosophy._x000d_ _________

News Report of Free Press of March 16,1896 -_x000d_ _x000d_ THE WOMEN STOOD UP._x000d_ _________x000d_ _x000d_ BIG CROWD TO SEE KANANDA AT_x000d_ THE TEMPLE BETH-EL._x000d_ _x000d_ It was a singular spectacle. Hundreds of Christians in a temple devoted to the worship of God after the manner of the Hebraic faith, and all listening eagerly to a discourse from a Hindoo priest, who discussed the religious customs of his hearers. Such was the scene at the Temple Beth-EI last evening, it having been announced that Swami Vive Kananda would speak. Before 7:30 every seat in the building was taken, and every aisle was taken up by people willing to stand wearily through the service to gratify their curiosity or learn a new lesson in religion. And not all that wanted to managed to get inside the building. For some time after the ceremonies had begun the voices of many could be heard in the hall as they tried unsuccessfully to push their way into the building._x000d_ It was noteworthy that the greater part of the audience were women. It seemed as if at least two-thirds of the attendants wore big hats and bonnets. It was the women and girls in the back part of the room that stood on chairs to look at the Hindoo monk and many of the fair ones in the audience stood in front of their seats in order that they might the better gaze upon the swarthy features of the man that seems to exercise a spell over Detroit's femininity._x000d_ There was applause when Rabbi Grossmann walked upon the platform with the Swami. After a flattering introduction by Dr. Grossmann Kananda, dressed in a red gown and with a white hood with long white streamers, began his address. He argued for the universal brotherhood of man, which he said would continue until every man was a sect unto himself; in fact until the right of every man to his own individual religious belief was fully established._x000d_ The power that emanated from Swamiji that evening was of a different quality than that which he had manifested during his visit to Detroit two years earlier. It had then been predominantly and necessarily the power that destroys "the wicked"-or, certainly, the obstructive; it was now predominantly that which "protects the righteous and establishes religion."

PRAISE FOR VIVE KANANDA_x000d_ LAUDED FOR HIS LEARNING BY_x000d_ BROTHER HINDOOS_x000d_ _x000d_ Action Taken at a Public Meeting_x000d_ Held in Calcutta._x000d_ _x000d_ On account of the recent strictures passed upon Swami Vive Kananda the following proceedings of a public meeting, which was held in the town hall of Calcutta, September 5, 1894, will prove of interest. It was called by the representative men of the Hindoo community for the purpose of expressing their gratitude to him for his able representation of Hindooism at the Parliament of Religions, held during the world's fair. Some 4,000 people were present, and speeches in praise of Vive Kananda were made by the most learned men in the community, who lauded him both For his learning and his tact. Towards the close of the meeting the chairman, by resolution, sent the following letter to Vive Kananda:_x000d_ _x000d_ The letter, addressed to Sreemat Vivekananda Swami by the Chairman of the Meeting, Raja Peary Mohun Mookerjee, followed in full and left no doubt at all that Swamiji was a bona fide representative of Hinduism and a real swami. It closed with the passage:_x000d_ _x000d_ Hinduism has, for the first time in its history, found a Missionary, and by a rare good fortune it has found one so able and accomplished as yourself. Your fellow countrymen, fellow citizens and fellow Hindus feel that they would be wanting in an obvious duty if they did not convey to you their hearty sympathy and earnest gratitude for all your labours, in spreading a true knowledge of the ancient faith. May God grant you strength and energy to carry on the good work you have begun!_x000d_ _x000d_ That settled the matter as far as Swamiji's status and name were concerned. It was not, however, until June 7, when Alasinga Perumal's stalwart and eloquent letter was printed in the Detroit Sunday News-Tribune that the Reverend J. M. Thoburn was roundly answered point by point and as roundly roasted (see Appendix A). But by then Swamiji had left the city far behind.

APPENDIX A_x000d_ _x000d_ Alasinga Permual in Defense of Swami Vivekananda_x000d_ _x000d_ In view of the attacks made upon Swamiji in Detroit in March of 1896 (see chapter eight) by one Reverend J. M. Thoburn, Alasinga Perumal, a Madras disciple of Swamiji's and editor of the Brahmavadin, wrote the following letter to the editor of the Detroit Evening News, which journal had exhibited a particularly hostile attitude toward Swamiji. It is to the credit of the Evening News that its affiliated paper, the Sunday News-Tribune, published Alasinga's reply to Thoburn in full. The letter, dated April 23, 1896, appeared on June 7 and read:

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA_x000d_ DEFENDED BY THE EDITOR OF A_x000d_ PAPER IN INDIA_x000d_ _____________x000d_ _x000d_ GIVES HIM A HIGH CHARACTER_x000d_ _x000d_ To the Editor of the Evening News:_x000d_ It is a matter for deep regret that some of your Christian missionaries should attack Swami Vivekananda and his work with an amount of pharisaic audacity which is thoroughly unbecoming of men who profess to be followers of Jesus Christ. It seems to me that Jesus Christ was in a true prophetic vein when he said that the custodians of his religion of love would so far degenerate in later centuries as to be unable to recognize the second Christ if he should appear. We see signs of it already. These paid revilers of the so-called gentiles, forgetting the principles of the religion of whose universality and charity they never tire of boasting, instead of making it a common cause with godly men to counteract the evil effects of the rapidly rising tide of materialism in all parts of the world, try to hold aloft the greatness of their own religion by decrying all other faiths and the best of men belonging to these faiths. They do not seem to understand that such unworthy tactics discredit them and their religion in the eyes of all fair minded men and women. A few illiterate and ignorant men can, per¬haps, be taken in by such willful misrepresentations, and this, I suppose, consoles their souls for all their misstatements of facts. I shall presently take up a case of missionary misrepresentation and hope to prove to the satisfaction of all fair minded readers of your paper that I am not drawing upon my own imagination for anything.

GROSS MISREPRESENTATIONS._x000d_ _x000d_ Very recently one Rev. Thoburn, on being interviewed by a representative of the Detroit Evening News, has, with a "rarity of Christian charity," vilified in the name of Jesus Christ, Swami Vivekananda by a series of gross misrepresentations and misstatements quite characteristic of overzealous Christian missionaries. I propose to examine here his utterances seriatim._x000d_ 1. "I don't know Vivekananda, nor did anyone else. I never heard of this man." He seems to argue here very much in the wake of an old character, "not to know me argues thyself unknown." I am very sorry that Swami Vivekananda did not get himself acquainted with the clergyman when he was in Calcutta. The reverend gentleman might not have known him, and that is no reason for his not being known by "anyone else". Thousands of people knew him, both in and out of Calcutta. I have with me plenty of evidence to prove to you that many a Calcutta gentleman of position and respectability, and hundreds of others who came in contact with him during his tour through India, were well acquainted with him. His own great Guru Sri Ramakrishna had predicted a bright future for him, and thousands of men came under the influence of Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa during his lifetime. Everyone in Madras and other places who met the Swami was struck with his personality and great spiritual powers. They knew that he would form an important factor in the shaping of New India._x000d_ History tells us that no great religious teacher is ever known much before he delivers the message. Swami Vivekananda was preparing himself for the gigantic task that was awaiting him. "All great men are made in the cave," says a French writer. It is unnecessary for me to dilate more on this matter. Suffice it for me to say that he was known to a large body of men in India before sailing for America and that wherever he travelled in India he always produced an indelible impression on the minds of those he came in contact with._x000d_ Amongst us a truly religious man is a crystal brook that runs at the door of every poor cottage, carrying the cool and refreshing water of eternal bliss to quench the spiritual thirst of the cottager. Our religious teachers do not advertise themselves. We seek them, and they give us religion. Religion is life. It is "to be and become." A truly spiritual teacher needs no credentials. The sun does not require a torch to be seen. Even if Swami Vivekananda were altogether unknown, that ought not to affect hie teachings, and that is certainly no reason why Christian missionary gentlemen should call him an impostor and manufacture all sorts of detestable myths about him.

WAS NEVER A LAWYER._x000d_ _x000d_ 2. The reverend dergyman next says: "From what I can learn he seems to have been an obscure lawyer." I am glad that the reverend is not assertive here, for Swami Vivekananda was never a lawyer, and though he was compelled to finish his course of legal studies, did not even take up the LL.B. degree to qualify him for the legal profession, because the bent of his mind from his youth was in a different direction alto¬gether._x000d_ Next turning our attention to the scriptures that the vener¬able bishop quotes in support of his statement:_x000d_ # _x000d_ _x000d_ 3. "The Indian Witness is the largest religious paper pub¬lished in India." This may be true so far as the Christians of India are concerned, but these number about two millions out of a population of not less than three hundred millions. The majority of Hindus have not heard even its name._x000d_ 4. Says the Witness: "If the English editors correctly under¬stood the character of the man and his teachings they would not give him the compliment of a three-line paragraph," etc. This is surely a cowardly attack. Why does not the Witness enlighten the English editors by describing in detail the charac¬ter of Swami Vivekananda. This will bring to light the true nature of the character of these revilers. They dare not, there¬fore, enter into details. We challenge them to do it. We know Swami Vivekananda has led an unblemished life from his youth and that his character is of unalloyed gold. The trials and sufferings he has undergone, and the self sacrifice he has made-all for the love he bears to God and to humanity¬ are yet a sealed book to all but a few who know his inner life, and I am sure that if this were sufficiently widely known his character will be appreciated all the greater._x000d_ 5. Reverend Thoburn says again: "It was alleged that he had borrowed the name and the monkish title Swami from a Madrassi monk and came over here to the congress of religions as the self appointed representative of a Hinduism existing in his mind only." Here again both the Indian Witness and the reverend gentleman betray an utter ignorance of the religion they are attacking. The truth of the matter is that missionary gentlemen that come here, in 99 cases out of 100, care more for their salaries than for understanding the real nature of the religion of the people amongst whom they have to work. They frequently wound the feelings of the people by ignorant abuse of all they cherish as sacred. Every Hindu knows that when a man becomes a sanyasin he gives up all old, worldly associations. He gets, as it were, a new birth and discards all conventional names and forms. He is free thenceforward to call himself by whatsoever name he chooses; he has to observe _x000d_ # _x000d_ three vows, that of chastity, poverty, and homelessness, and that's all. In other respects he is quite free._x000d_ The guru, however, from a full knowledge of his nature and tendencies, gives him a characteristic name for the convenience of others, and Swami Vivekananda is a name of that kind given to him therefore by his great guru Sri Ramakrishna Paramahansa. Sri Ramakrishna was no Madrassi monk, as the bishop would have you believe. He was a pure blooded Bengali Brahman whose influence over the Calcutta society was so profound that even now every year not less than 15,000 people congregate to celebrate his birthday on the banks of the Ganges. Among those that were influenced by him may be mentioned the two Brahmo leaders-Babus Keshub Chandra Sen and Protab Chandra Muzumdar. The latter gentleman has himself written a short account of the Paramahansa's life.

WAS DULY ACCREDITED._x000d_ _x000d_ Rev. Thoburn says again that the Swami was the self appointed representative of Hinduism. Here is again, a mis¬representation. The facts are as follows: A number of Madrassi gentlemen in conjunction with the Maharajah of Mysore and the Rajahs of Khetri and Ramnad subscribed amongst them¬selves to send him to America, and requested him if he thought fit to represent Hinduism at the Chicago Parliament of Reli¬gions, but left him perfectly free in the matter. We know well that when the Swami sailed from India he had no definite plans ahead. He had travelled in India, and wanted to travel in America and do what work God placed in his way in a quiet, unassuming way._x000d_ What gives him a representative character is his having been a disciple of a great Hindu sanyasin, and the request of a large body of influential, educated Madras gentlemen that he should represent Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions. His representative character was subsequently confirmed by largely attended public meetings held in different important centers of India, as Madras, Bangalore, Kumbakonum, Khetri and Calcutta, reports of which are sent herewith for your information.

HIS HINDUISM._x000d_ _x000d_ As regards the Hinduism he preached. That it was not woven out of his imagination would become clear to you when I say that no true Hindu in any part of India has taken exception to the Swami's exposition of Hinduism, and any impartial critic will be able to make out that the Swami has correctly expounded what is found in our vedic and vedantic scriptures. In the public meetings already referred to this has been em¬phasized over and over again. I do grant that corruptions creep in whenever an ideal is put into practice. Many a visitor to Chicago has written volumes upon the Christianity practiced therein but no sane man would ever attribute these corrup¬tions to the noble religion of Jesus Christ. Rev. Thoburn then takes to his help one Mr. K. C. Bennerjee. I am sorry he is not in good company here. Mr. Bennerjee is a native Christian of some standing in society on account of his political views, but in matters religious no Hindu would attach any value to his opinions regarding Hinduism. Rev. Thoburn himself would not like my unfolding this gentleman’s history._x000d_ I have said enough to make any impartial reader of your paper make out the fairness or otherwise of the attack made by Christian dogmatists of the stamp of Rev. Thoburn upon the representative of the Hindus at the Parliament of Religions.

DEMAND FOR MORE TOLERANCE_x000d_ _x000d_ Before I conclude let me ask Rev. Thoburn and other Christian believers to be more tolerant towards other faiths. All great religions and all great thinkers of the world teach virtually the same truths and want us to bring about greater and greater harmony between the warring creeds and sects, "They are all so many paths leading to the same goal," says Sri Krishna in the Gita. Goethe, addressing the Christian believers, says:_x000d_ # _x000d_ _x000d_ _x000d_ _x000d_ "Ye faithful, do not claim that your confession_x000d_ Be truth alone; for we have faith like you._x000d_ Science can't be deprived of the possession_x000d_ Belonging to the world and to me too."_x000d_ _x000d_ In an article on Goethe, Dr. Paul Carus says in a recent issue of the Open Court: "The church that developed from the moral movement started by Christ has supplemented the theoretical doctrines which Christ had neglected to teach, but unfortunately the dogmatists of the church replaced the broad ecce homo by a narrow ecce ego, and thus the assumptions of the ego psychology have become officially recognized as Christian dogmas. Yet I venture to say that those two masters of the world of thought, Buddha and Goethe, are nearer to the spirit of Christ than those who bear his name and call themselves his disciples."

FAILURE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES._x000d_ _x000d_ It appears to me that the last few lines apply with equal force to Swami Vivekananda also. Christian missionaries have fallen far short of the ideal set up by their master, and when this is pointed out and a loftier ideal is placed before them their fanaticism resorts to all kinds of undignified vituperation. Let me tell my missionary friends, adopting the words of Amiel: "It is not to the clever folk, nor even to the scientific folk, that the empire over souls belongs, but to those who impress us as having conquered nature by grace, as having passed through the burning bush, and as speaking, not the language of human wisdom, but of the divine will. In religious matters it is holiness that gives authority; it is love or the power of devotion and sacrifice, which goes to the heart, which moves and persuades.. .. Our business is to point men to another ideal, purer, higher, more spiritual than the old, and so to raise behind a lofty summit one more lofty still. In this way no one is despoiled; we gain men's confidence, while at the same time forcing them to think and enabling those minds_x000d_ # _x000d_ _x000d_ which are already tending towards change to perceive new objects and goals of thought. An ideal is replaced by satisfying the conditions of the old with some advantages over [them]. Let the liberal Protestants offer us a spectacle of Christian virtue of a holier, intenser, and more intimate kind than before; let us see it active in their persons and in their influence; they will have furnished the proof demanded by the Master; the tree will be judged by its fruits."_x000d_ _x000d_ M. C. ALASINUAPERUMAL,_x000d_ Editor of the Brahmavadin._x000d_ Madras, India, April 23, 1896.

New York_x000d_ 17th March, 1896_x000d_ Blessed and Beloved {E. T. Sturdy},_x000d_ I received your last just now and it frightened me immensely._x000d_ The lectures were delivered under the auspices of certain friends who paid for the stenography and all other expenses on condition they alone will have the right to publish them. As such, they have already published the Sunday lectures as well as three books on "Karma-Yoga", "Raja-Yoga", and "Jnana-Yoga". The Raja-Yoga especially has been much altered and re-arranged along with the translation of "Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali". The Raja-Yoga is in the hands of Longmans. The friends here are furious at the idea of these books being published in England; and as they have been made over to them by me legally, I am at a loss what to do. The publication of the pamphlets was not so serious, but the books have been so much re-arranged and changed that the American edition will not recognise the English one. Now pray don't publish these books, as they will place me in a very false position and create endless quarrel and destroy my American work._x000d_ By last mail from India I learn that a Sannyasin has started from India. I had a beautiful letter from Miss Muller, also one from Miss MacLeod; the Leggett family has become very attached to me._x000d_ I do not know anything about Mr. Chatterji. I hear from other sources that his trouble is money, which the Theosophists cannot supply him with. Moreover the help he will be able to give me is very rudimentary and useless in the face of the fact of a much stronger man coming from India. So far with him. We need not be in a hurry._x000d_ I pray you again to think about this publishing business and write some letters to Mrs. Ole Bull and through her ask the opinion of the American friends of the Vedanta, remembering "ours is the Gospel of oneness of all beings", and all national feelings are but wicked superstitions. Moreover I am sure that the person who is always ready to give way to other's opinions finds at last that his opinion has triumphed. Yielding always conquers at last. With love to all our friends,_x000d_ Yours with love and blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ PS. I am coming sure in March as early as possible._x000d_ V.

Had I no reason to be exasperated, not on account of my personal misery but on account of this betrayal of friendship? (The "betrayal of friendship" to which Kripananda referred here was Swamiji's failure on his arrival in Detroit to ask him if he had "a place to lay his head upon."] . . . You will say that it was all my own fault, that it was my irascible temper which caused all this trouble. I will plead guilty to this charge. But again let me ask, what made me so? I used to be respected, loved? There must be some cause for a man becoming mad. Your woman's tact ought long ago have guessed the real cause, and if so you ought not to condemn me. I am not perfect yet and have still human feelings. Can you not imagine the torments of one who after years [?] of faithful devotion sees himself thrown away like a dirty rag?

In another letter Kripananda refers twice to "that fatal occurrence with the Swami, by which he may have meant the entire Detroit episode or some specific and critical occasion of which he assumed Mrs. Bull had been informed. But whate¬ver Kripananda may have said to or about his guru, or however harshly the guru may have rebuked him, there was no change in Swamiji's love.

He knew no malice. Did one abuse him, he would look thoughtful, repeat Siva, Siva, then his face would become illumined and he would say gently: "It is only the voice of the Beloved"; or if we who loved him would become indignant, he would ask: "What difference can it make when one knows that blamer, blamed, and praiser, praised, are one?

But while Swamiji readily forgave Kripananda for his affronts to himself and those, less forgivable, to his friends-perhaps seeing in such behavior nothing worse than the inner twistings of a still unpurified but deep devotion-he was compelled for the sake of his work (and for the sake of the disciple himself) to maintain an outward coldness-a discipline that could be terrible indeed. But for his part, Kripananda seems to have recognized no causal relation between his own actions and those of his guru.

I am sure the Master sanctions every word said in this article. If he should not do so now, it would only prove that he has changed his mind since it was written._x000d_ I wrote what I thought to be the truth and stand for it, whether people like it or not, provided I have the approval of my own conscience._x000d_ As you were so eager in sending me the letter-implying another reproach on your part, I trust you will show yourself just as eager in informing me of the Swami's opinion of the article._x000d_ You are, of course too busy at present to think of me, so I wont detain you with a long letter.