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India's Message to America
misinterpretation? Is there a Christ of denial of all rights? Is there a Christ of destruction of all holy aims and humane immemorial institutions? Is there a Christ of unjust and exorbitant taxation for the support of a government, foreign to our knowledge, our thought, our religion and our consent? Who of these Christ has inscribed his name on the banner of your conquests? If you seek to conquer us under such banners and in the name of such Christ, we refuse to be conquered. But, if you come to us in the name and spirit of the Christ of Education of Brotherhood, of universal love, or in the name of that Christ who, in the valley of the Ganges and on the shores of the sea of Tiberius, more than 1800 years ago, taught and said: "A new commandment give. I unto you, that we love one another;" then I say, we will welcome you,, for Him we know and of Him we are not afraid. But all this must be understood in the full freedom of it. We cannot recognize a creedal Christ, a limited Christ, an emasculated truth, whether it is viewed from an educational or from a moral and spiritual point of view, but the universal idea, without limit, without fetters - free.
I have learned since here in this country why it is that in my own country different missionaries and Christian teachers antagonize one another. It is because the disciples are no better than their masters; because I find in this country many Christianities and the multiplied disagreements amounting to mutual oppression and excommunication, teach me that either there be many Christ or that the one Christ is dismembered and torn, and divided up among many factions, who in quarrelling over their several possessions accomplish nothing but the destruction of the real truth.
We heathens of India recognize the many sidedness of truth, and are divided into schools of philosophy and truth for the promulgation of truth as we see it, but nevertheless we are united very deep in one thought, one conception, one adoration and
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