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THE EMPTY HEART OF JAINISM ·
are also increasingly bewildered by the conflict between modern science and their own faith. The appeal of Christianity may come to them through their realizing that the true way to ensure the growth of one's own character is by gaining the noblest of friendships, that of the man Christ Jesus.
But it is when talking to the older men and women that one realizes most how restless and dissatisfied they are at heart, since the ideal their religion offers them is a ritual rather than a personal holiness. A Jaina magistrate once said to the writer: I call Jainism a dummy religion. Even if I took bribes and gave false judgements, I should still be considered a holy man, so long as I was careful never to eat after dark.' And an older man made this pathetic con. fession : 'It is a terrible thing to a Jaina to grow old : we may have tried all our lives to keep our innumerable laws, but we know the awful doom that awaits us if we have broken even one of them, and for us there is no forgiveness.' His pitiful fear seemed wonderfully to enhance the glory of the old Evangel: 'I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance'; but the man could hardly grasp the fact that, while the Redeemer of the World never uttered one word of hope or forgiveness to strong, self-sufficient, self-righteous folk, He freely offered the riches of His grace to the sinful and fallen, to the weak and helpless, to women and to little children.
A short time ago the writer was talking to a student, who had himself left Jainism, but was explaining to her how many beautiful things there were in the Jaina creed. At length she asked him why he was no longer a Jaina. He turned to her and said: 'Because in all our creed there is no such word as "grace".
In a book such as this one can only throw out a few problem suggestions for a comparison between Jainism and Chrisof suffering. tianity, and one of the chief points on which they differ is
in the value they give to sorrow. To Christian thought
The
