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THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
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ment it evolves out its natural perfection. Hence, it was the Messiah, and not Jesus, whose day Abrahain had rejoiced to see, and the speech of Jesus had reference not to his own physical person, but to the real self, i.e., the Christos, which the soul becomes on the attainment of perfection.
The Messiah also figures in Hinduism, in the guise of Krishna--the centre of a keen controversy between the Vaishnavites and their opponents, the former trying to place him on the pedestal of divinity and the latter endeavouring to pull him down therefrom. None of the disputants, however, seem to understand the real nature of the divinity associated with Krishna, and are spending their energies in a fruitless dispute over empty words and concepts. There can be no doubt that there was a great personage of the name of Krishna, since a nucleus is always necessary as a foundation for the superstructure of deification ; and the fact that some of the Jaina Purâ nas contain a plain narrative of the principal event of his life, sufficiently proves him to have been an historical personage. It is this historical Krishna whom the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavad Gita have clothed in the poetical garments of the Messiah. The luring of gopis from the beds of their husbands in the darkness of night, the giddy, moon-light dance on the banks of the Jamuna, the stolen kisses and embraces, and the like, all of which would be highly condemnable from a moral point of view, if ascribed to the historical Krishna, are fully appropriate to the Messiah or Christos. As such, Krishna is the divine Ideal for the soul (gopi) to pour forth all her affection upon. She must wander out, in
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