Newspaper and periodical reports published during Swami Vivekananda's lifetime
March 18, 1894
CHIMERICAL RELIGION
__________
A Brainy Writer Discusses One of the Great
Questions of the Present Day
__________
Was there No Love, No Joy, No Hope and No Religion
Before Christ Came to Us?
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Were All Noble Souls before His Time Doomed
to Perdition?
It is nearly 1900 years since the religion of Christ was taught in all its primitive grandeur and purity. A religion of forbearance, meekness, charity and love, yet its fundamental principles of truth and righteousness were old and widely known and practiced before Christ was born. There were patriarchs, prophets, saints and martyrs; men who "walked with God"; law givers and high priests; good, wise and holy men, whose bones had crumbled to dust ages before the Star of Bethlehem arose....
Was there no love, no hope, no joy, no religion then...
Were all the noble souls abiding before Christ doomed to perdition...
The question is not whether Christianity is true, but are we true to Christianity as professed Christians?
I claim that the vast majority of so-called Christians are not true, but false to the precepts and practices of their Lord and Master. They are only chimerical Christians, who roar with the lion's head, disguise their body in the form of a goat, and a scapegoat at that, and then wiggle the tail of a venomous dragon. They are continually belching forth flames of fire (hell fire) upon all who differ from their favorite dogmas, creeds and sects, vide Dr. Briggs, the "heretic," and Kananda, the "pagan." Some of their pet and petrified, dogmas are comprised in this quarto of beautiful specimens, "The fall of man in Eden"; "The sin of unbelief"; "An atonement by proxy," and "The eternal punishment of the damned." If they encounter an individual with manhood, moral courage and wisdom... they proceed at once to damn him.
These mongrel specimens love to sing "This world is all a fleeting show," and so it is, a veritable Wonderland menagerie, filled with curious, incongruous monstrosities and deformities, such as Baptist barnacles, petrified Presbyterians, and Methodist mummies....
Mind, I do not speak of those broad-hearted, liberal, thinking, reasoning, truthful Christians, of whom thank God there are many. I am speaking of the vaster body of chimerical Christians. "By their works ye shall know them." Intolerance, bigotry, superstition, envy, malice and falsehood are their prominent features.... They evade the truth, and are false even unto themselves... They delight to prate of missionary work among the heathen thanking God "they are not as other men are." The pagan, so called, could teach them more of the fundamental truth of religion than they ever dreamed of in their philosophy. Better far to be like the heathen worshipping even a false god, than to be false to the God they pretend to worship...
There is but one religion, one philosophy, one God over all. Religion is love; not love of self, but love of God and all His creatures. Religion: People preach for it, write for it, fight for it, die for it, do everything but live for it...
A religious Hindoo comes to us and talks of love, asking for bread and they give him a stone. He tells them he gladly accepts their Christ with His religion, which is old to them as the "rock of ages" upon the eternal hills, but they will accept neither his word his philosophy or his religion.... They claim Christianity has caused all advancement, all civilization. Whence came all the glory, all the grandeur and all the wisdom existing before the Nazarene Reformer was born among men and became one of the Sons of God?... It is as falsely ridiculous to claim such chimerical Christianity has been the cause of civilization as it would be to say that it was due to plug hats and suspenders....
All nations and all eras have had their reformers and their saviours, and there are more to Follow until even the despised Jew may yet have his long-looked-for Messiah....
Since the advent of the Brahmin Monk, over-zealous and bigoted preachers have tried to defame him and denounce his pure philosophy. They have pointed out the ungodly condition of India; they have claimed her women were slaves, her law corrupt and vile. A sapient lawyer has quoted whole volumes of the laws of India with sneering sarcasm [see Chapter Six]; as well might he have quoted the ancient Mosaic Code, or the blue laws of Connecticut or pointed out our own laws with regard to licentiousness, women and prohibition. India never had drunkards until Christian lands carried them liquor.
As well point out our barbarous treatment of the western Indian, our old slave laws or the records of vice and crime as found in the slums of our modern civilization....
Truth is mighty and must prevail. This world or any other of God's unlimited universe does not stand upon a turtle, nor is it supported upon any Hercules. Its corner stones are light, liberty, love and law, and it is the chimerical Christians who would knock away these four corner stones of the universe....
O. P. Deldoc
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- www.vivekananda.net edited by Frank Parlato Jr.
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