Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HINDUISM AND CHRISTIANITY CONTRASTED IN the previous chapter I have endeavoured to show and emphasize the teachings common to Christianity and Hinduism. But it must not be forgotten that if their consonances are neither few nor unimportant their dissonances are far more numerous and fundamental. They meet us at almost every point of our investigation and impress us with a sense of a vast contrast. We will now give ourselves to a brief study of these divergences. The two faiths differ essentially. i. In their Initial Conceptions.—Their starting points are almost antipodal. This will seem evident when we study their views: (a) In reference to religion itself. Christianity js briefly and beautifully explained by its Founder (Luke 15) as a divine method of seeking and saving the lost. It is the expression of the Father's love yearning for the return, and seeking the complete salvation, of the son. It is primarily and pervasively a "Thus saith the Lord"—a revelation from God manward. Hinduism on the other hand has been the embodiment of man's aspirations after God. Wonderfully pathetic, beautiful and elevating these aspirations have been at times; and doubtless guidedat points by Him whom they so ardently sought. They perhaps represent the highest reach of the soul in its self-propelled flight towards its Maker. It is true that orthodox Hindus variously describe the Vedas as eternal, as a direct emanation from Brahma and as a divine entity in themselves. They constitute the "Sruti"—"the directly heard" message of God to man. But the authors of the Upanishads, which are a part of Sruti, absolve man from the necessity of accepting the four Vedas and propound a way of salvation entirely separate from, and independent of, vedic prayers and ritual. The direct influence of ... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.