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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
self. It is a great pity that for the want of true knowledge of Divine Philosophy the beauty of the higher thought and teaching of the Saviour has remained unknown to the world hitherto. To us these passages do not appear to be the ravings of a lunatic, or the musings of a deluded rustic, who saw the world through the prism of his own simplicity. The Bhagavad Gita has it :
"Nor at any time was I not, nor thou, nor these princes of men, nor verily shall we ever cease to be hereafter.”—(Disc. II. 12.)
We now know that I am 'means Life which is eternal and independent of the notion of time, so that the text, before Abraham was I am,' only means that each and every soul is immortal and has existed from all eternity in the past. As regards the statement
" Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad"it is clear, especially with reference to the words 'my day,' that the allusion is to the glory appertaining to the status of a 'son of God, but not to Jesus whose' day' could be seen by Abraham only if it were possible to annihilate the long centuries which separated them from one another. It is thus clear that the speech of Jesus. had no reference to his own personality, and that we go wrong when we begin to idolize Jesus, 'instead of idealizing the Messiah, or Jina (the Conqueror), as he is called in Jainism ; for, so long as we do not shake off the wrong notion that Jesus wanted our homage for his own person, we stand in the way of truth and cannot come into our own. The doctrine of Sonship is a proposition of philosophy. It is, however, applicable to the whole race and not to one particular individual alone, since every soul is entitled to become a son of God the mo
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