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AN EPITOME OF JAINISM fore, they cannot but apprehend, that these external practices or religious observances which have become, as they say, fossilised into dry ceremonial rites, may at some time, grow so as to choke the internal vitality of the religion itself and eat away the essence of the same.
So far the moral character of these observances is concerned, we have discussed it at length both here at the beginning of this chapter and elsewhere, and we feel no necessity of recapulating them here over again. All that we want to show here is that the opinion as entertaind by Mrs. Sinclair or by others in her line of thinking is the revival of the old superficial rationalism as well as of no less superficial idealism which fail to take account of history and may be taken as due to perverted vision of things, ideas and ideals. We shall prove this by entering, by way of a reply, into a study of the psychology of religion, which besides corroborating what we have stated before will throw an additional food of light on it and bring into clear vision of Mrs. Sinclair and her readers that for
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