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Have Christian Missions to India Been Successful ?
body the church." It is then clearly impossible that other religions should find any way to live with Christianity since the latter is pledged by its very constitution to undermine and destroy all others.
Christianity cannot now destroy other religions by fire and sword as it has done in the past when the church and the bloody sword were inseparable powers; but if the end is death, “it is a mere matter of detail” as a writer has said, “whether one gets his head cut off or is nailed up in a barrel of honey."
Next to intolerance, Christianity has introduced many vices in India which were unknown to the Hindus. You may say that these vices are not Christian, that Christianity has nothing to do with them. This may be true in a measure, but Christianity does not come alone; it does not come direct through Jesus Christ. It comes to us through its modern representatives. It comes percolating through the layers of superstition and bigotry, of intolerance and persecution, of damnation and eternal hell-fire. It takes on itself the qualities of these layers and imparts them to those that are received within its folds, in addition to the vices that are its own – such as proceed from the doctrine of vicarious atonement and original sin. And further it has brought to us its peculiar ideas of life, of marriage, of social relations and what not.
The ideas of life with which we were infused long before my country became the coveted land of invaders and which are still the underlying principles of our so-called superstitions were and are different from those of Christian nations. The idea of life with you, has always been, as one of your ablest scholars has put it, as that of a struggle for existence, a struggle for power and dominion, for wealth and enjoyment.
These are the ideas which dominate the history of all nations whose history is known to you and naturally these would be their
armen 101
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