Pantheism's destruction of boundaries - pagina 25

i

a

Methodist Jieoiew.

Aki.

As

VII.— PANTlitrSM'S DESTRUCTION OF IJOUNDAPJES. — PART II. we tliink wc have tendency of our a^c

far as the scopo- of this article allows ns

shown

coiK'lusively that tlic

]>aiitht'istic

and the evohitiun doctrine, which is its legitimate (laughter, have in large measure effaced the boundaries and are bent upon their entire destruction. Facing now the question, What dangers threaten us by this dcsti'uctiun of boundaries? we consider first the k^son which history teaches. For under like inHuences a state of society has been developed upon a broad scale for centuries together on the banks of the Ganges, and itpart, also, in the Celestial Kingdom and afterward both gnosti cism and mysticism have inspired smaller circles with the same This is to us a beacon at sea, for a wreck is a fair image spirit. In India's beautiful of what these states and circles show. domain lives one of the most richly endowed races, ])rofound \\\ spii'it, mighty in numbers, in the midst of tropical weahh people which in everything competes with our Western nations and may even exceed us. And yet that peo])le is asleep, has long ceased to make history; and, almost without effort, Ihlam first, then the Mongols, and lastly England have conquered this royal However energetically a Keshub Chunder Sen lately people. organized his propaganda in a most mastei-ly way to arouse his people from their deathly slumbers, he utterly faileil. And the ;

—

human

ideal of {haYogi ITindoo still consists of a benighted hermit immovably staring into the sun, his loins girded with a serpent's skin, his naked breast covered by coarse hair, wild

ghrubs growing up about him, and a songless bird building

its

somber nest uj>on his holy shoulders. And what has become of Lao-Tse's beautiful fancies in China ? Mr, Balfour, who learned to know Taoism by ])ersonal obst'rvation, conqilains in his South Place Institute lecture that Taoism

"a low and des|)icable superstition, into a reliworst and lowest sense, a hocus-|)ocus and an inqjo-

has lapsed into

gion in sition."

its

And vhen

in

the pi'ovince of Kiang-si he calUnl on

the Chang-]'"cn S/nTi, or high priest of this sect, his holiness

showed him

room filled with eartlien corked and sealed, in which by his magic powei

in his beautiful i>;dace to a

jars, carefully

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