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among the followers of the different creeds about its truth has only arisen during the last 1,700 years or so, when the basic truths of religion had become buried under the cobwebs of superstition and the dogmas of a vague and mystic theology. The worship of personified gods has, no doubt, been responsible, in a great measure, for the error of modern theology. The transference of the 'fruit-bearing' properties of karmas to an imaginary godhead could not but end in positing a ruler divine on the one hand, and in robbing the individual deeds of their karmic force, on the other, with the result that transmigration had to give place to this manmade creator of theology, wherever the absence of philosophical illumination gave him a chance of establishing himself.
RECONCILIATION.
It must, however, be said in defence of the founders of the two non-Indian religions, whose followers now deny the doctrine of transmigration, that they themselves never denied its truth. The doctrine is there, sure enough, in their teachings, only it is not directly preached. Their less enlightened followers have, however, taken that which is not openly preached in their Scriptures as frivolous and false. It is a dangerous and highly mischievous rule of interpretation to read silence into contradiction. Not only have their venerable leaders not denied the truth of the doctrine of re-incarnation, but there is, on the contrary, much in their sayings to show that they were well aware of it, and spoke of it with approval. Why they did not preach it openly, might be due to two causes in the main. In the first place, they probably found their hearers not sufficiently
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