A Comprehensive Collection - Swami Vivekananda

""we308 THE IDEAL OF A UNIVERSAL RELIGION.societies stand up and want to preach this. I rememberan old story. In India, wine drinkingis considered veryhorrible. There were two brothers who wanted to drinksome wine, secretly, in the night, and their uncle, who wasa very strongly old-fashioned man, was sleeping in a roomquite near where they were going to have their drinking.So before they began to drink, each one said to the other,Silence? uncle will wake up."As they went on drinking,they began to shout to each other,"Silence ! uncle willwake up." So, as the shouting increased, uncle woke up,and he came into the room, and found out the whole thing.Universal brotherhood, are all equal, therefore makea sect." As soon as you make a sect you protest againstequality, and thus it is no more. Mohammedans say universal brotherhood, but what comes in reality ? Nobodywho is not a Mohammedan will be admitted ;he will havehis throat cut. The Christians say universal brotherhood ;but any one who is not a Christian must go to that placeand be eternally barbecued.So we are being carried on in this world after universal brotherhood and equality, universal equality of propertyand thought, and everything. And I would simply askyou to look askance, and be a little reticent, and take alittle care of yourselves when you hear such talk in thisworld behind it; many times comes intensest selfishness."In the winter sometimes a cloud comes ;it roars and roars,but it does not rain ;but in the rainy season the cloudsspeak not, but deluge the world with water." So thosewho are really workers, and really feel the universalbrotherhood of man, do not talk much, do not make littles ects for universal brotherhood, but their acts, their wholebody, their posture, their movements, their walk, eating,drinking, their whole life, show that brotherhood for man-