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· THE EMPTY HEART OF JAINISM 291 sorrow is not necessarily an evil: to the Jaina it is either a calamity to be avoided at all costs, or a punishment from which there is no escape. One can easily understand how Jainism arose : how sensitive souls, finding the pain of the world intolerable, would resolve to free themselves from every tie that might be the means of bringing sorrow upon them, and to give no more hostages to fortune. But they forgot that by shutting themselves off from pain they closed the gates for ever against development, not realizing that, as all advance in knowledge can be gained only at the price of weary drudgery, and even the supreme joy of motherhood is not won without danger and pain, so character can only be completely developed by the discipline of sorrow: the only result of shirking suffering is for scholars, ignorance; for women, barrenness; and for all, even the highest, moral atrophy.
The more one comes to know the Jaina, the more sure one feels that they will not for ever remain satisfied with the thought of a divinity which, by avoiding emotion, has become a characterless being, taking no interest in the lives of his followers and powerless to help them. Already many are attracted by the idea of a God who, becoming incarnate for us men and for our salvation, not only promulgated a law of self-denial and of loving-kindness to every living being more stringent and far-reaching than the Jaina rule, but also Himself suffered in His life and death more loneliness, more insults and more pain than ever Mahāvira endured, and whose suffering only increased His love and power to help men in their sorrows. Alone amongst the religions of the world the faith of Christ Jesus opens to its followers conquest through pain and mystic joy in sorrow.
Despite the differences between Jainism and Christianity, the resemblance between them is striking. Both religions arose in the East, and both are to this day thoroughly Oriental in their character and spirit. The founders of the two faiths were each the son of a
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