Jain Shwetambar Conference Herald 1910 Book 06

Author(s): Mohanlal Dalichand Desai
Publisher: Jain Shwetambar Conference

Page 259

A320)
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0964124/gall. Humanitarianism.
than ourselves ? How shall divine strength flow out to those who use stre ngth for injury ? How shall divine compation flow through those wbo deny compassion to those weaker than themselves ? Nay I have read in the sacred books of men and I have known men in Modern India, who had come sd near to univn with the divine, men who had so developed in themselve the spiritual nature, who had so evolved in themselves the divine love, have read of them and met them, men who could go out into the jungle and the tiger would roll harmlessly at their feet and would play as dome stic creatures. Why? Because they loved and in their love had become divine; because nothing will injure him who injures not; nothing wil Wound him who wounds not; nothing will show destructive power against him who destroys not. Those who love are guarded from injury, for that love flows out around them like divine armour, no hatred can pierce thro ugh it, no wild animal would strike them to mutilate or to harnı, The yogi walks unharmed through the jungle, the snake will climb round his neck. There is the man become divine and that is the ideal you and I should be aspiring to. He may stand bigh above us on the ladder of human progress, but he has climbed there step by step, and he has climbed by love and not by hatred, by compassion and not by torture.
Whenever we meet a pain, we must try to stop it; and if we can take it upon ourselves and set the sufferer free, then indeed the law of love is becoming perfected in us, and we ourselves are beginning to be divine.
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We are to train them ( lower animals ) not to terrify them; we are to educate them, not to degrade them; we are gradually to raise them, not to lown them-that is our function in the world.
Do not allow it to be said that cruelty is approved by the modern sons of the Aryan soil.
(Annie Besant ).