Religious Problem in India

Author(s): Annie Besant
Publisher: Theosophist Office Adyar

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THE RELIGIOUS PROBLEM IN INDIA
taught, as in every exoteric faith. Lastly, there is Iblis (Satan), who rebelled against the Most High, and with his hosts of rebel Angels fell from heaven, and became the prince of the air, and the enemy of man..
Now let us come to the duties of the individual. The first and foremost of all is Righteousness; and there is one passage on that so beautiful, that I must read it to you. “It is not righteonsness that ve turn your faces in prayer towards the East and the West; but righteonsness is of him who believeth in God and the last day, and the Angels, and the Scriptures, and the Prophets; who giveth money for God's sake into his kindred, and into orphans, and the needy, and the stranger, and those who ask, and for redemption of captives; who is constant at prayer, and giveth alms; and of those who perform their covenant when they have covenanted and who behave themselves patiently in adversity and hardships, and in time of violence: these are they who are true, and these are they who fear God."* “Verily God commandeth justice, and the doing of good, and the giving ito kindred of what shall be necessary; and He forbiddeth wickedness, and iniquity, and oppression.”+ " Have we not made him (man) two eyes, and a tongue and two lips; and shown him the two high ways of good and evil? Yet he attempteth not the cliff. What shall make thee to understand what the cliff is? It is to free the captive,
* Ibid, Chap. ii. + Ibid, Chap. xri.