What is Jainism

Author(s): Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: Champat Rai Jain

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ESSAYS AND ADDRESSES
The divinity of the soul is asserted quite plainly in the Bible when it is said, "I have said Ye are Gods." This declaration is fully confirmed in the New Testament where with reference to it it is said that the scripture cannot be falsified.' In the first Gospel we have the exhortation :
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'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect."
In Phillippians we are told: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal with God." These are but a few quotations that bear out what I have said today. I have recently collected, under appropriate heads, a certain number of the Biblical quotations which amply prove the statement that the true foundation of the Biblical Religion was also laid on the very same principles which are embodied in the Jaina Siddhanta (System of Philosophy). This collection has been published under the title, Glimpses of a Hidden Science in Original Christian Teachings.'
On the practical side, you have the same teaching about the crushing out of the element of desire in Christianity. The world is described as ranged in a direction opposed to divinity's; he who would aspire to become perfect must not look at her. The culmination may be said to have been reached when it is said:
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'If any man come after me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
Unfortunately this teaching was given in a fragmentary, disjointed, disconnected manner, and, therefore, does not readily command the respect of our modernized understanding, but there is no doubt that the total destruction of desire it is that is aimed at in it. A scientific study of Religion reveals the fact that there is nothing in the doctrine that is really unacceptable to reason, when it is properly worked out and when its practical side is taken into consideration. I think this much will suffice for the establishment of the unity of the teaching between Jainism and Christianity. For want of time I shall not enter into the scriptures of the other religions, but will pass on to the allegorical aspect of the teachings without