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CONFLUENCE OF OPPOSITES
377
2500 years have already passed by. For this period the prophecy is that nirvana shall not be attainable then. There is a covert reference to this in the New Testament Scripture also.
" ........... When heaven was shut ap three years and six . mooths, when great famine was throughout all the
land” (Luke, iv. 25). The number of mouths in 3 years and 6 months corresponds to 42 millenniums, taking a month as equi. valent to a thousand years. Be that as it may, it is evident that there has been great deterioration amongst men during the last 2500 years in respect of
(i) faith, that has been almost wholly replaced
by either a pure soul-less materialism or by fantastical Literalism of inythological lore;
(ii) morality, which is daily growing lax, with
deception, trickery and treachery being the prevailing traits amongst men ;
(iii) leisure and ease, which are fast disappearing
with the rise in the cost of living ;
(iv) intellectualism, the most highly lauded of
which in our day has just settled down to the belief that the founders of our religions were primitive men, and but little better in point of culture and accomplishment thai mere babes ;
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