(Continued from Part 1)
"You
cannot understand the beauty of our religion. From what you say it
appears that you must be brooding over your transgressions every
moment of your life, always mending them and atoning for them. How
can this ceaseless cycle of action bring you redemption? You can
never have peace. You admit that we are all sinners. Now look at the
perfection of our belief. Our attempts at improvement and atonement
are futile. And yet redemption we must have. How can we bear the
burden of sin? We can but throw it on Jesus. He is the only sinless
Son of God. It is His word that those who believe in Him shall have
everlasting life. Therein lies God's infinite mercy. And as we
believe in the atonement of Jesus,our own sins do not bind us. Sin we
must. It is impossible to live in this world sinless. And therefore
Jesus suffered and atoned for all the sins of mankind. Only he who
accepts His great redemption can have eternal peace. Think what a
life of restlessness is yours, and what a promise of peace we have"
Gandhi is taken aback. He writes;
"
The
argument utterly failed to convince me. I humbly replied:
'If
this be the Christianity acknowledged by all Christians, I cannot
accept it. I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin.
I seek to be redeemed from sin itself, or rather from the very
thought of sin. Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to
be restless.'
To
which the Plymouth Brother rejoined: 'I assure you, your attempt is
fruitless. Think again over what I have said.'
And
the Brother proved as good as his word. He knowingly committed
transgressions, and showed me that he was undisturbed by the thought
of them.
"
And then in the chapter on "Religious Ferment", he writes,
"
I
listened to his discourse on the efficacy of prayer with unbiased
attention, and assured him that nothing could prevent me from
embracing Christianity, should I feel the call. I had no hesitation
in giving him this assurance, as I had long since taught
myself to follow the inner voice. I delighted in submitting to it. To
act against it would be difficult and painful to me
"
"
The
Convention lasted for three days. I could understand and appreciate
the devoutness of those who attended it. But I saw no reason for
changing my belief--my religion. It was impossible for me to believe
that I could go to heaven or attain salvation only by becoming a
Christian. When I frankly said so to some good Christian friends,
they were shocked. But there was no help for it.
"And, to me, the best part is here (gives you a deeper insight of the man)
"
My
difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe, that Jesus
was the only incarnate son of God and that only he who believed in
Him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us
were his sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men
were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready t
o
believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed
the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in
it. Again, according to Christianity, only human beings had souls,
not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction;
while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an
embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most
perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to
the world , but that there was anything like a mysterious or
miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of
Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other
faiths
had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same
reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically
there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the
point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was
impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the
greatest of all religions.
"
Then he writes about the Hindu religion as well...
"
Thus
if I could not accept Christianity either as a perfect, or the
greatest, religion, neither was I then convinced of Hinduism being
such. Hindu defects
were pressingly visible to me. If untouchability could be a part of
Hinduism, it could
but be a rotten part or an excrescence. I could not understand the
raison d'etre of a multitude of sects and castes. What was the
meaning of saying that the Vedas were the inspired Word of God ? If
they were inspired, why not also the Bible and Koran?
"
I want to end this with
"
As
Christian friends were endeavouring to convert me, even so were
Musalman friends.
Abdulla
Sheth had kept on inducing me to study Islam, and of course he had
always something to say regarding its beauty.
"
There are many instances in the book that suggest that he is very uncomfortable with the idea of religious conversion! If at all he came back alive today, he will be infinitely more shocked with the pesudo-secularists (Indian National Congress and its stooges) than he will be with religious intolerance in India.
No comments:
Post a Comment