Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its HistoryBesant, Annie
Religion
Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Controversial literature
From Dr. Muir's translations of "religious and moral sentiments,"
already quoted from, we might fill page after page with purest morality.
"Let a man be virtuous even while yet a youth; for life is transitory.
If duty is performed, a good name will be obtained, as well as
happiness, here and after death" ("Mahabharata," xii., 6538, p. 22).
"Deluded by avarice, anger, fear, a man does not understand himself. He
plumes himself upon his high birth, contemning those who are not
well-born; and overcome by the pride of wealth, he reviles the poor. He
calls others fools, and does not look to himself. He blames the faults
of others, but does not govern himself. When the wise and the foolish,
the rich and the poor, the noble and the ignoble, the proud and the
humble, have departed to the cemetery and all sleep there, their
troubles are at an end, and their bodies are stripped of flesh, little
else than bones, united by tendons--other men then perceive no
difference between them, whereby they could recognise a distinction of
birth or of form. Seeing that all sleep, deposited together in the
earth, why do men foolishly seek to treat each other injuriously? He
who, after bearing this admonition, acts in conformity therewith from
his birth onwards, shall attain the highest blessedness" (Ibid, xi. 116,
p. 23).
Such are a few of the moral teachings current in the East before the
time of Christ. Since that period, these non-Christian nations have gone
on in their paths, and many a gem of pure morality might be culled from
their later writings, but we have only here presented teachings that
were pre-Christian, so as to prove how little need there was for a God
to become incarnate to teach morality to the world. "Revealed morality"
has nothing grander to say than this earth-born morality, nothing
sublimer comes from Judæa than comes from Hindustan and from China. Just
as the symbolism of Christianity comes from nature, and is common to
many creeds, so does the morality of Christianity flow from nature, and
is common to many faiths; when nations attain to a certain stage of
civilisation, and inherit a certain amount of culture, they also develop
a morality proportionate to the point they have reached, because
morality is necessary to the stability of States, and utility formulates
the code of moral laws. Christianity can no longer stand on a pinnacle
as the sole possessor of a pure and high morality. The pedestal she has
occupied is built out of the bricks of ignorance, and her apostles and
her master must take rank among their brethren of every age and clime.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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