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72 RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE JAINAS Paul does not here mean that what a man soweth in this physical existence that he shall reap in spiritual existence. For in the next passage he says : For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life ever lasting. Even the words of Jesus confirm the doctrine. In St. Mathew Ch. XI he says: “Verily I say unto you among them that are born of women there has not risen a greater than John the Baptist: rotwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force. For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John, and if ve will receive it this is Elias, which was far to come.” Does not Jesus mean that John was re-incarnated Elias ?
It is useless to multiply instances taken from the Bible. For every candid Christian student must acknowledge that the truth of the doctrine of Re-incarnation does not depend on a scriptural mention.
But some people may say : If this doctrine is true, how is it that we do not remember our past incarnations. I will ask such people : In what way do we exercise the faculty of memory ? Certainly, so far as we are living in a body, we exercise it through the brain. In passing from one incamation to the other, the soul does not carry its former brain in the new body. Even during the course of one life, do we always remember our past doings ? Can any one remember that wonderful epoch, the infancy ?
This doctrine of re-incarnation is common to Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
Out of these ideas, all of them have constructed high codes of morality pretty nearly similar to one another.
The idea of Karma is very complicated. I have told you something of it in my former lectures. The one chief point is that that theory is not the theory of fatalism, not a theory in which the human being is tied down to some one, bound down by the force of something outside himself. In one sense only will there be fatalism; if we are free to do many things, we are
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