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RELIGION AND COMPARATIVE RELIGION 71
Here we have distinctly the same teaching that the soul is by nature divine, that its natural powers and functions are not funç. tioning fully owing to the earthly tain', and that by purifying itself it shall become perfect whence there will be no fall.
The Greeks had the same teaching in ancient times. The Orphic Teacher thus explained the Dionysiac cult:
"In all of us there is a divine element not wholly overwhelmed with wickedness of which the Titans are the emblem, By inhate impurity men are condemned to the cycle of birtha and deaths, from which they can escape and be made fit for communion with Gods only by purification and initiation in the Mysteries,"
This again is quite plain, and needs no comment from me. In the Bible the resurrected Soul says of himself :
"I am he who liveth, and was dead. and behold I am alive for ever more and have the keys of hell and of death."-Rev. . 18.
Hippolytus, one of the early Church Fathers of the anteNicene period, distinctly describes the soul as a simple substance, and as such immortal. Clement of Alexandria, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and others also held the same opinion. Origen says:
"The mental acumen of those who are in the body seems to be blunted by the nature of corporeal matter. If they are out of the body then they will altogether escape the annoyance resulting from a disturbance of that kind. At last by the gradual disappearance of the material nature, death is both swallowed up and even at the end exterminated......It follows that we must believe our condition at some future time to be incorporeal...... and thus it appears that then also the need of the bodies will cease...... The whole națure of bodily things will be dissolved into nothing."
St. Paul teaches :
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God. that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service."--Rom. xii. I.
In Colossians (chap. ii. verse 11) there is a reference to the putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ, which
Shree Sudharmaswami Gyanbhandar-Umara, Surat
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| SR No. | 034889 |
| Book Title | Jaina Gazette 1927 |
| Original Sutra Author | N/A |
| Author | J L Jaini, Ajitprasad |
| Publisher | Jaina Gazettee Office |
| Publication Year | 1927 |
| Total Pages | 568 |
| Language | English |
| Classification | Book_English |
| File Size | 47 MB |