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1058
THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
"If I had not come and not spoken unto them, they had not had sin ; but now they have no cloke for their sin" (John, XV. 22).
Sin, then, is a wilful disregard of truth when it is known, or a stubborn and perverse refusal to better one's condition after the way to do so is pointed out. It follows from this point of view also that one can sin only against one's own Self. Even the Qur'an declares (chapter XVII):
"If ye do well, ye will do well to your own souls ; and if ye do evil, ye will do it unto the same."*
The Christ within is constantly speaking to man of his freedom and salvation, and is ready to point out the way as well. He it is who justly proclaims : " I am the way, the truth and the life."
God is the ideal of absolute perfection for the imagination of man, and the Christ within is ready to manifest Himself, if we would but give Him a chance. So long, however, as we search for Him in the outer world, we display a disbelief in His presence within us, and, thus, prevent Him from revealing Himself. It is this state of disbelief which is all the sin, and its punishment consists in the non-manifestation of the Godhood of the soul, with all the ills of the flesh and worries of mind which are the necessary concomitants of such an un-godly condition. The lives of the Jaina Tirthamkaras show us the heights of glory to which man can rise by living the life enjoined by Religion proper, and we have to thank ourselves for being debarred from them now.
We may now conclude the subject with the observation that man would find that all the sin he commits
* Cf. “ Whoso committeth wickedness, committeth it against his own soul."-Al Qur'an, chap. IV.
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