Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 380

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
359
brings it about and who is entitled for that reason to all the respect if not to greater reverence tban what is due to the progenitor of one's physical person, is its cause, or author, and must be described as 'father,' to keep up the metaphor. Now, because the Tîrthamkar * (God) is the greatest and the most worshipful guru of all, nobody is better entitled than He to the title. This was the original idea ; but when the true teaching of religion was lost sight of in the underground mazes of mythology, and the conception of divinity replaced with erroneous notions of the latterday theology which insists on reading the mysterylanguage of its scriptures in a literal sense, the purity of the original conception of the fatherhood of God also came to be replaced by the coarse and undignified notion of a maker in the physical sense. That the clergy should have remained unaffected by the errors affecting divinity is not surprising under the circumstances and is precisely what was to be expected; for they have never passed through the melting pot of mythology to give rise to misunderstanding, though many people are now ignorant of the precise reason why they should be addressed as 'father,' and take the appellation as merely a term of respect.
Such is the secret of baptism. As the cause of unhappiness is ignorance, so that of redemption must be wisdom to be acquired by study and meditation. The illumined sage, consequently does not pray to any one for help, but devotes his time to study and meditation,
* For the explanation of the term, See Chapters X and XIII.