Jainism Christianity and Science

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: The Indian Press Allahabad

Page 96

JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
to the Lord's own mansions, to be a light, steady and continuing eternally, entirely and in every part immutable."-(Clement) A.N.C. L. vol. xii. p. 448.
"The Lord was laid low and man rose up; and he that fell from Paradise received as the reward of obedience something greater (than Paradise), namely, heaven itself."-(Clement) A.N.C.L. vol. iv.
p. 100.
There is nothing surprising in this identity of thought between Jainism and Christianity. If religion is a science, as it is maintained it is, then it could not possibly have remained a hole and corner affair all along throughout the past. Whatever men may say today, it was well-known to the early Christian fathers that the knowledge divine was common to all people and was not the exclusive property of any particular sect or creed.
"... For wherever it shall be manifest that the true Christian rule and faith shall be, there will likewise be the true scriptures and expositions thereof, and (indeed) all the Christian traditions."(Tertullian) A.N.C.L. vol. xv. p. 22.
" Yet He has brought the report of it, under various names and opinions, through successive generations, to the hearing of all : so that whosoever should be lovers of good, hearing it, might inquire and discover what is profitable and salutary to them ..." -(Recognitions of Clement) A.N.C.L. vol. ul. p. 267.
"Numa the king of the Romans was a Pythagorean, and aided by the precepts of Moses, prohibited from making an image of God in human form, and of the shape of a living creature. Accordingly, during the first hundred and seventy years, though building temples, they made no cast or graven image. For Numa secretly showed them that the Best of Beings could not be apprehended except by the mind alone. Thus philosophy, 'a thing of the highest utility, flourished in antiquity among the barbarians, shedding its light over the nations. And afterwards it came to Greece. First in its ranks were the pro. phets of the Egyptians; and the Chaldeans among the Assyrians; and the Druids among the Gauls; and the Samanæans among the Bac. trians; and the philosophers of the Celts; and the Magi of the