Eurasians -- Fiction; India -- History -- British occupation, 1765-1947 -- Fiction
The Romish notion of purgatory and the use of the rosary is evidently
derived from Tibet. Every Tibetan prays with his string of beads. The
fear of a Buddhist is the six-fold existence after death. The long
purgatory is his dread. Believing that he can pray off much of it in
this life he keeps his whirligig praying machine going continually. In
that country they have little grinding mills that are turned by the
mountain streams and common to all the community. When a man goes with
his grist to mill, he takes along a roll of paper prayers, yards in
length. Having put his grain into the hopper, he winds the prayer around
the mill shaft and turns on the water. He then smokes his pipe while his
grain is being ground and his prayers repeated by water-power. Is not
this much easier and as beneficial, as much of the church religious
praying?
In Ladak there are long lines of walls on which prayers are inscribed.
Walking back and forth along the walls each works off so much of the
dreaded hereafter.
Do I believe that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost? Not at all, any
more than any other child. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, just as I
am the son of my father and mother. My reason, my common sense, my sense
of honor, and my deep reverence for Almighty God will not allow me to
think otherwise. I cannot think of the Infinite God being born of a
woman. Such a thought is most degrading, it degrades the character and
being of God, and it degrades men to have such a thought about Him. If
Jesus could be conceived in that way, why not others? This has actually
been claimed again and again.
I read not long ago of a man and a number of women in a harem, not far
from Chicago, in America. The women had children whom they claimed were
all conceived by the Holy Ghost, and why not, if Mary could have a child
in that way? The account says that some Christian people assembled in a
church, made angry speeches, passed resolutions to bring the man and
women into court, and some proposed to mob them and burn down the
premises. The only charge against them was the claim of the supernatural
conception of the women, as in every other respect they were
irreproachable. These Christian people, whose very fundamental dogma of
their faith is the unnatural conception of Jesus, attacking this first
principle of their belief, is like thieves berating a thief for
stealing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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